13 years after the disappointment of Resident Evil 6, Capcom is finally fusing survival horror and all-out action again—and this time I think it worked

Leon Kennedy has a chainsaw. I'm three minutes into Resident Evil Requiem, and my first fight with a crowded hospital hall full of zombies is already shouting what seems to be the game's guiding principle: the stuff you love in old Resident Evil, plus the stuff you love in new Resident Evil, smashed together into one decadent Resident Evil sandwich. Hope you're okay with zombie guts, because the cafeteria's all out of pastrami.

The three hours of Requiem I played, swapping between a grizzled-but-still-got-it Leon and more fragile newcomer Grace, deftly tiptoed the line between fan service and light touch reinvention. Last time we saw Leon in Resident Evil 4 Remake, Capcom had given him the ability to parry a chainsaw-wielding zombie with his knife, and he's got the same move here with a hatchet—only now when the mad doctor drops his whirring saw it goes skittering down the hallway, blade bouncing off the tile floor. Another zombie picks it up, which is when I realize maybe I can do the same.

There's an elegant marriage of character and combat in this short section that introduces Leon: He immediately cracks a corny joke, is completely unfazed by an orderly being chainsawed in half, then uses the moves honed in his last starring role to wrench away what used to be his enemy's deadliest weapon to slay half a dozen infected shamblers in seconds.

When Grace and Leon meet, he uses a magnum to pop the skull of a monster that she'd been avoiding in a game of cat and mouse because it could rip her to pieces. Just another Tuesday for Leon.

Capcom has declared Leon is just too cool and confident to go back to being scared of zombies, so he brings with him RE 4 Remake's excellent parry, spacious attaché case inventory, and a hearty health bar. For the first time since 2012's Resident Evil 6, action star Leon finally gets to do something new, but this time in a form that pairs much better with the tense, puzzley bits of the older games.

The next two hours I played as Grace unfolded in that more classical Resident Evil fashion. The hospital—think "movie insane asylum," not sterile modern facility—has the same twisting lock-and-key layout of Raccoon City's police department or the original Spencer Mansion, with the decor to match. The lobby, a welcome safe zone, is flanked by gleaming marble staircases leading up to the second story. Upstairs the halls are lined with old fashioned wood paneling, while downstairs has a more industrial feel with a kitchen annnnnnd yep that's a giant chef with a giant butcher knife roaming around looking for meat.

Requiem brings back the recent RE games' monstrous "obstacle" enemies to keep the tension up as you wind Grace through tight hallways looking for doors to unlock; the first time I made a mad dash past the chef I kept running through a dining room where three or four zombies were feasting on what was left of the dinner crowd, then breathed a sigh of relief when an upstairs hallway let me circle back to the lobby without retracing my steps, low on ammo.

An even more hideous creature waited for me in the east wing, barely able to squeeze his Tetsuo'd to hell mass of flesh through the wide halls as he lumbered around muttering fuck you. The tone leans more towards RE7 grit than RE4 goof when Leon isn't on screen dropping dad jokes.

So much of Grace's section feels familiar, but in welcome ways:

• Of course there's a door that must be unlocked by inserting three arcane objects into expectant indentations
• Of course there are tiers of key cards gating access to further progress
• Duh, the limited inventory keeps you constantly on edge about running out of ammo or grabbing a healing herb that might get in the way when you find a key item.

The structure doesn't feel stale because Requiem peppers in just enough of the new and the unexpected. Crafting returns, expanded, from RE4 Remake, and I initially stifled a groan when I saw it in the menu—my kingdom for a modern triple-A videogame without a damn crafting system—but then, uh, I liked it. Grace can use a high-tech syringe to slurp up the blood from killed enemies and combine it with fairly rare bits of scrap material to make ammo and other resources.

Does it make sense that zombie guts can be transmogrified into bullets? No! But to me the crafting feels like it's operating on the same illogical wavelength as Resident Evil's winkingly absurd puzzles, where evil scientists have gone out of their way to seal the doors to their offices with emeralds they hide in combination safes unlocked by specific sequences of astral runes.

There are just enough new touches in Requiem that those old bits land as cozy structure rather than antiquated design. Grace can crouch to hide, which I found much more tense than the old tank control weaving around shambling zombies. First person (which you can switch to at any time) makes landing headshots with precious bullets easier, but the loss of peripheral vision immediately spikes my anxiety. One of the new craftable items, an instakill injector, can be used to safeguard against zombies who mutate into a more aggressive form after being "killed"—I coveted these, loathe to waste one on a regular enemy.

When I finally swapped from Grace back to Leon, it was cathartic to introduce the zombies I'd been tiptoeing around to his shotgun. I hope that across the full game, this back-and-forth structure serves to balance out the typical videogame power curve. More than a decade since RE6's ambitious multi-campaign story, it's a good time to try again. Resident Evil 6 was an action game wearing a horror skin, but Capcom's last few years of experimenting with first-person hardware and redesigning Resident Evil 4's action sans Quick Time Events make me think all the pieces are in place to really make survival horror and action sing in harmony.

It's hard to be scared when you're loaded for bear with late-game stockpiles of ammo and healing supplies, but if Leon's sections are primarily punctuation for longer stretches of scrabbling survival, Requiem may really pull off the trick of marrying two very different branches of the series.