YouTuber, Kane's Games, recently dropped a 2-hour review of Resident Evil Requiem, an excellent work and a work of genuine effort given the constraints of regular work alongside doing YouTube as a hobby.
Unlike so many soulless golems and tourists riding the Resdient Evil hype train and praising the game unobtrusively without a lick of critical analysis, Kane has graced YouTube with a heaping's worth of thoughts and feelings to chew on that you'll never find from the "post first" echochambering among the top influencers that reminds me of how great it feels to be niche.
Kane pulls no punches, mentioning the ubiquitous member berries, the confusing plot, and even retcons? What's astounding about today's consumer is that anyone who played the original games should be engaged in this kind of analysis due to their love of the franchise. But of course, the same people who are out and about social media touting this slop as a masterpiece are probably the same type of people who demand even more modern remakes of great games which, inevitably, turns everything into a generic Gears of War style over-the-shoulder third person shooters.
And don't assume, even for a moment, that the claim that tourists are mucking things up is without basis. According to Kane, Requiem boasted three times the amount of max players as any of the other Resident Evil games on Steam to date.
RE9 is about half of a good game, according to Kane, which he means to say that he didn't hate everything about the game. As a Resident Evil fan, he was genuinely looking forward to the game and even he couldn't help but feel hyped that he would get to play as Leon Kennedy. It is important he notes this because the distinct lack of critical thought and analysis on YouTube has far too many people engaging in content from a standpoint of hot or cold. Kane's mindset takes pattern recognition into account. Yes, pattern recognition, which is in very short supply in any industry nowadays because none of these companies want you thinking about how thoroughly their products have degenerated over the past ten or twenty years.
Capcom was once a company known for its quality in video games which contributes greatly to Kane's perspective about how badly Requiem was implemented. That being said, despite spending a long time ranting about the game’s many flaws, he makes it clear that he does not hate Resident Evil Requiem. In fact, he liked it more than Resident Evil 7 and 8, and even says that if it had released last year, it probably would have cracked his personal top five games of the year. Kane still sees real potential in the game, saying it is a step back in the right direction for the franchise compared to the more recent entries.
What makes him so critical, and what other critics ought to take note of, is that Kane is a genuine fan of both Resident Evil and Capcom. He is tired of watching the company repeatedly drop the ball on successful IPs they’ve already proven they can handle well (citing Dragon’s Dogma 2 and Monster Hunter as other recent disappointments) and he’s now worried about what they might do with Devil May Cry 6. He argues that RE9 could have been so much better with just a few smarter, more obvious decisions.
Kane’s core criticism is that the game feels like a game of extremes: it tries to mash together the over-the-top action of something like Resident Evil 6 with the slow, tense horror of RE7, but without splitting them into separate campaigns. The constant back-and-forth between Grace and Leon creates schizophrenic pacing, damages re-playability (a huge part of what makes Resident Evil special), and makes large portions of Leon’s sections feel tacked-on. Yet even with all those issues, the game still has that classic Resident Evil charm in spots, some genuinely high highs, and moments that made him reminisce about the older games.
Because of everything he covered Kane lands on a 7/10 which, in his estimation, is a slightly above-average game: worth playing for fans, but not worth $70 at full price given its short length (8–10 hours) and lack of extra modes like Mercenaries or Fourth Survivor. He recommends waiting for a sale (he picked it up on G2A for $40–50) or buying it discounted, rather than paying full price on launch. He hopes Capcom actually listens to feedback and fixes the obvious issues for the next game, but given the company’s recent track record, he’s not holding his breath.
Lastly, he also calls out the extreme “Astroturf” culture in gaming discourse, where every game is either complete garbage or an untouchable masterpiece, with no room for nuanced takes like his.
Overall, this closing perfectly sums up Kane’s feelings: the game has clear strengths and real potential, but it’s held back by a bunch of frustrating, avoidable problems that prevent it from being great. It’s “half of a good game,” and that’s exactly why he’s tough on it.
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