Reviewing Monsters: Doom Eternal

 

The sequel to the Doom soft reboot that I reviewed the monsters of a while back is Doom Eternal. It's bigger in scale, going for more spectacle and jumps straight to a demon invasion having taken over most of Earth, and throws us straight into the lore of the origin of the Demons and the Mayk

rs that have only been mostly hinted at via collectible notes in the previous game. As someone who read all the notes, I can follow the story, but I can imagine this would be quite jarring for those that played through Doom 2014 and saw it as a simple, self-contained story about a destroyed scientific base on Mars with some sojourns to hell via portals. I did like Doom Eternal's main story, though, which I found to be quite fun and entertaining -- not so much the platforming, or the DLC -- but for the most part it was a positive experience.

That said, we're here not to talk about storytelling or gameplay, but rather the monsters and demons!

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Returning Enemies: Soldiers, Shield Soldiers, Cueball, Unwilling, Imp, Lost Soul, Revenant, Pinky, Spectre

A lot of the enemies return to this game from Doom 2014, and some have their art and visuals and behaviour revised more than others. Some don't. The Soldiers and Shield Soldiers get brand-new models that keep them more in-line with older games with a less serious 'body horror' vibe like Doom 2014 and more of a 'chunky' feel, but they're more or less the same. The Cueball, Unwilling, Imp and Lost Soul really don't change much. The Pinky is a bit pinkier, and both it and Spectre look a lot less 'meat-gore monster like they did in Doom 2014. The Revenant also has a bit more of a 'cleaner' look to it, removing a bit of the grittier vibe of the previous game.

I started with Doom 2014 so I do miss the more body-horror look of the 2014 designs, but I also appreciate them trying to evoke the original appearances of these monsters, which the fanbase probably would appreciate more. There's a bit of explanations in the lore pages with how the Revenant program continued even after the destruction of the Mars base, and how the Spectres are actually created by Hell instead of what was originally thought to be the result of UAC experiments, but otherwise the data logs for the monsters are a bit of a step down in quantity and quality compared to Doom 2014, being a lot more concise. 

Returning Enemies 2: Zombie, Hell Knight, Cacodemon, Mancubus, Cyber Mancubus

Some enemies change quite a bit. The Zombie replace the 'Possessed' of the previous game, which were utterly skeletal with whorls for faces. The basic zombie enemy is... just a cartoonish zombie, shambling around zombie-ing around. The killing blow for the Zombie has Doomguy bash the skull so hard that it gets embedded in the torso, a surprisingly Looney Tunes kill that you'll see a lot in the game. 

The Hell Knight gets a more fleshy tone and whatnot, which is fine... but also gains two beady eyes. I feel this is a lot less intimidating and makes him a lot more boring than his original Doom 2014 eyeless design. The Cacodemon shares most of its prior appearance's looks, with two key differences -- the insides of its mouth glow blue now, and its eye now has a pupil. It makes the Cacodemon a lot less threatening and a bit goofier. But for the Cacodemon specifically, it does feel like it's intentional since it's the game's mascot. 

The Mancubus and Cyber Mancubus get the biggest change, which the game actually notes in-universe by explaining that the Doom 2014 Mancubi were created from a different alien race; while these Mancubi are more associated with transformed humans. They are more bulky than hideously obese, still having bulk but ones that are more proportional. Gone are the chitin armour, and even the base Mancubus has clear man-made weaponry grafted to it. The face is the biggest change, however, getting rid of the single eye and massive fangs, and replacing it with two beady eyes and a somewhat orc-like mouth. The Cyber Mancubus gets a completely brand-new swanking bright green armour with massive shoulderpads, making it a lot easier to instantly tell it apart compared to its non-cyber brother.

Mecha Zombie

A new 'mook' enemy that replaces the 'Hell Razer', the Mecha-Zombie is essentially a Zombie with additoinal mechanical parts grafted to it. That face definitely reminds me of the Terminator, and I'm a huge fan of the barbed fingers on one hand, the exposed metal endoskeleton in the legs, and the visible guts shown. The Mecha-Zombie sadly doesn't really get any lore to it, so we don't know if they were mechanized and cyborgized before or after they became zombies. 

Gargoyle

A new weaker demon is the Gargoyle, which is noted to be 'brethren' to the Imp. It's more elaborate than just giving the Imp some bat wings and calling it a day, though! Gargoyles also get a longer neck and nicely different face, with one of those lower jaws that split apart. Gruesome, and cool. Their arms also end in two massive blades, that glow as they try to shank you. The Gargoyles are noted to originally be regular species in the Sentinel world (which is a secondary medieval-magic-themed location that Doom Eternal visits a couple of times) before they got converted into Demons for the specific purpose of gaining air superiority. 

Arachnotron

Arachnotrons are smaller versions of last game's final boss, the Spider Mastermind. The Arachnotron keeps a lot of what made the Spider Mastermind so distinctive, being mostly a giant brain on a spider-mecha leg, but also with glowing eyes and a screaming demon mouth on it. Doom Eternal pivots to having most of the stronger demons having a specific weapon or mod that is particularly effective against it. The Arachnotron's powerful turret and mobility is countered by the sticky shotgun shells, which latch onto the Arachnotron's gatling-laser-gun thing and disables it. 

Arachnotrons are cloned from the material recovered from the original Spider Mastermind, and interestingly the brain matter ended up being receptive for 'impulse-controlled prosthetic frames' built by the UAC. Like the Revenants, the Arachnotrons were originally built by the UAC to combat demons before they inevitably broke free and slaughtered everyone in the UAC facility. Because that facility runs on its own AI, the factory continues to produce Arachnotrons in perpetuity. Nice little worldbuilding showcase to the smaller conflicts that happened in-between Doom 2014 and the war. 

Dread Knight

This one is cool. The Dread Knight is a cyborgized version of the Hell Knight. That's really all there is to say, since the Dread Knight behaves similarly, being a relentless pursuer that chases you around the map. Pretty cool design, though, with a Terminator metal skull-helmet, mechanical arms, glowing yellow tubes and two massive energy blades mounted to his wrists. 

Interestingly, the UAC cultists that modified the Dread Knight did a lot of sci-fi modification with hormones and neurotransmitters to cause the Dread Knight to be injected with dopamine any time it gets a kill. It's otherwise always roiling in epinephrine-induced rage. I really don't think that Hell Knights and demons in general need more incentive to kill humans, but the Dread Knight does so seeking the high and temporary reprieve from the rage boiling inside of them. 

Whiplash

The Whiplash is a cool one. I really like her head, a skull with two horns pointing backwards. She's also cybernetic, with her lower body being a complex, coiling snake body and her arms ending in black mechanoid augmentations holding twin daggers that are tied to her arms with whips, giving her surprisingly long reach. Whiplashes are very fast, if more fragile than the other 'heavy' demons. The combat in Doom Eternal definitely tries to give us a lot more variety in enemy, and not just 'mooks and durable guys' that was in Doom 2014. 

Prowler

Another stronger demon, the Prowler initially just looks like a slightly off-shade Imp. But the head and their abilities set them apart. Prowlers are able to go invisible, and teleport short distances away from the Doom Slayer. I really like its head, with three dot-eyes that resemble a stealth helmet's nightvision goggles (it gives me Splinter Cell vibes specifically) and I like that those jaws don't even look like they can close together properly. 

Prowlers are jumpy little shits that try to leap away and teleport away from you. They're not the most dangerous alone, but combat in Doom is always chaotic as all kinds of demons try to jump you, and the fastest way to get rid of a Prowler is to use any of the mods that can 'heat-seek' and track them, whether with missiles or rockets. 

Pain Elemental

My favourite! The Pain Elemental is kind of an upgraded Cacodemon, but it's a variation of the iconic design that looks so distinctive! The Pain Elemental has the 2014 Cacodemon's pupil-less eye, two much more developed arms, two horns... and like eight extra mini-jaws that open and close and give the Pain Elemental so much personality... and creepiness. Nothing in nature should have so many jaws!

Pain Elementals, as their name implies, feel only its pain. They are 'cursed' to always forge Lost Souls within its own bodies, a process that, of course, causes itself pain. This process is only alleviated for the brief moments that the Pain Elemental can unleash that pain upon others. In combat the Pain Elemental will actually summon Lost Souls not just as extra minions, but it will reach into its mouth, chuck Lost Souls at you, and even sometimes summon a horde to fly around it as a shield. 

Probably my favourite demon in Doom Eternal, by virtue of its wacky multi-fanged deisgn.

Carcass

Oh, this asshole. Reminding me of Lord Harkonnen from 1984's Dune adaptation, the Carcass is an another angry cyborg corpse. Its lower body is turned into a three-legged spider body, and it holds a massive cannon... that creates forcefields in front of allies. The Carcass itself isn't particularly threatening, but it can jump surprisingly far distances with those legs, and the shields can really screw up your maneuvering and demon-killing. The shields blow up with blasts from the plasma cannon, but that weapon otherwise isn't the most effective against other demons. 

The Carcass is noted to be 'neither living nor dead', except it's not reanimated just by demon powers like the zombies. Instead, the Carcass is fully a decaying organic host being forced to move with cybernetically-simulated electrical impulses. This one is definitely a monster that I love to hate, and the glory kills made to this one is particularly over-the-top.

Maykr Drone

The last 'middle' enemy we see is the Maykr Drone, which chronologically only appears in the last couple of levels in the game... but I find it strange putting them above the mini-bosses. Maykrs are the setting's analogues to angels, and are also robotic. They are ostensibly against the demon horde initially, but the Doom Slayer would find out that the Maykrs have been manipulating things all along and led to the downfall of the alien civilization of Argent D'Nur. 

None of these are really important to the monster, which are just floating robots with golden masks. Under the robotic 'robes' you can see glimpses of their true form, however -- red writhing tentacles, the true nature of which becomes more apparent as you near the end of the game. Despite having some amount of individuality, Drones are all part of a hivemind that is subservient to the Khan Maykr, and are unable to resist a command from them. They are particularly weak to headshots, which instantly kill them. 

Fireborne Baron

The Barons of Hell from Doom 2014 do not make a return in their original form, but appear as an upgraded version -- the Fireborne Baron. Initially having a grayish-black outer shell, as you damage them their internal true skin is revealed and it's just made straight up of magma. The Fireborne Baron also shoots out a lot of fiery attacks. This divergent abilities and visuals does really help to set them apart from the Hell Knights, since they do just feel like 'Hell Knight but bigger and hornier' in the original Doom 2014. 

Archvile

Probably the demon I fear the most is the Archvile. His design isn't the most special, just being another 'flayed man' demon. He's a lot less bulkier than the Barons or Dread Knights or Mancubi, but is easily the most terrifying. Creating fiery shields to protect himself, the Archvile will summon entire extra waves of minions to crush you. Doom is already hectic enough with any given stage having large numbers of demons swarming, having indefinite amounts of waves as the Archvile teleports around and tries to get away from you is even more horrifying. 

I do like the vibe going on here too, with the chest actually being hollow inside, the long claws, and the frowning, more intelligent-looking face. Archviles are noted to be descended from the eldest demons, and hold the position among the ruling caste. Neat!

Tyrant

The Tyrant is a 'degraded' version of the Cyberdemon boss from Doom 2014, but has an appearance that matches closely its original design from the first 3 Doom games. Pretty menacing 'big towering monster' demon, with a monstrous goat-head and tusks, and clear parts of the body being replacde with cybernetics. Love the exposed machinery in place of intestines, and of course it's got a giant cannon arm. I'm not a big fan of the very fleshy elephantine organic leg, but I suppose that does show stark contrast with the hyper-detailed robotic leg. 

Alongside two more others that debuted as bosses initially, the Tyrant is one of the toughest enemies in the game in no small reason that they appear alongside entire hordes of minions and are such gigantic health-sinks to bring down. 

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MINI-BOSSES:

Doom Hunter

The first Doom Hunter was introduced in a pretty cool manner, as the Doom Slayer runs around a base and sees the first Doom Hunter's mechanical and organic parts being moved around and assembled as he goes through the Cultists' Base. It's a manner similar to the excellent Cyberdemon level in Doom 2014. The Doom Hunter itself is another cyborg demon, with the upper body of a one-eyed demon with large horns, a chainsaw for one arm and a giant gatling gun/mace thing being held by the other. The spine connects down to a hoverpad coupled with even more cannons. The Doom Hunter is faced in a two-phase fight, where you need to bring down the energy shield and then blow up his lower tank-body, and then the second phase has his upper half fly around and shoot you. 

The backstory is that the Doom Hunter is one of a race of beast-like hunters that were excavated from the frozen depths and resurrected with a combination of dark magic and science. The coolest thing, of course, is that while the first Doom Hunter itself is a pretty neat boss fight, later on it will appear as minibosses throughout all the levels, sometimes multiples at a time, and is treated with more or less the same gravity as Archviles and Tyrants. That's pretty neat.

Marauder

Simultaneously the most annoying but the visually coolest enemy is the Marauder -- again, initially met as a boss fight at the end of the level, and being one of the few demons to speak. The Marauder's design is quite simple, a pale demon-man with horns and dressed up in a 'barbarian' version of the Doom Slayer's own outfit. He wields a massive laser axe (to contrast the Doom Slayer's sword) and even a double-barreled shotgun similar to the Doom Slayer's own. 

The backstory? The Doom Slayer was once part of the Night Sentinels, a group of anti-demon hunters in the now-fallen world of Argent D'Nur. Many of the Night Sentinels ended up being corrupted, betrayed Argent D'Nur, and defected to demonkind and transformed into the Marauders. So each and every Marauder is technically part of the same knightly order that the Doom Slayer was once part of, theoretically making them all as badass and as powerful as the Doom Slayer. 

In practice, they are annoying due to being a very strict 'counter him with a specific weapon during a specific part of his combo', which is cool when the Marauder is the final boss of his level... but otherwise he's just not the most exciting enemy to fight, being more tedious than anything. They at least look cool, though.

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ONE-OFF BOSSES:

The Gladiator

The Gladiator looks like he's part of the same type of demons that became the Cyberdemon, with horns and a 'Predator'-esque style of lower jaws. He's huge, with bull legs, and is fought at the end of an arena as the Doom Slayer goes around dimensions to try and kill the three Hell Priests. The Gladiator is a demon brought to make a mockery of Argent D'Nur's gladiator arena, and wields a shield that 'entombs the tormented soul of his undying master'. 

I really don't find it particularly interesting, and even the whole "shield contains the soul" isn't communicated particularly well in my opinion, especially not compared to how well-done the Pain Elemental was. In fact, I actually completely forgot this was a boss fight!

Khan Maykr

The penultimate boss is the Khan Maykr (pronounced 'Maker'), the leader of the angel-like Maykrs that we would find have been in cahoots with the demons, siphoning the souls of the dead to create Argent Energy to empower their people. The Khan Maykr torments the Doom Slayer throughout the game, mocks him for his failures, and later tries to get him to stop just to prevent the status qou from being shaken up. 

The fight against the Khan Maykr is a bit of a gimmick one that involves her flying around with her robotic angel wings spread out as she nukes the battlefield, while we try to survive and wait for her vulnerabilities to show before we grapple up with our chain-shotgun and punch her in the face. Pretty fun boss fight! 

The design of the Khan Maykr herself is pretty all right, more or less what you'd expect from a 'robotic angel' -- a design choice that is always neat but has appeared in quite too many things for it to be novel. What is cool, though, is as we deal damage to the Khan Maykr, we tear off chunks of her armour to reveal a fleshy, demonic face beneath -- showing that for all their talk, the Maykrs are hypocrites and are likely the same type of being as the demons themselves. I really did feel that for how much they tried to spotlight the Khan Maykr, the Maykrs themselves aren't the most represented among the enemy base -- and I wished we had maybe one or two extra Maykr levels instead of all the Maykr world being still infested with the same demons. 

Icon of Sin

And the final boss is a titanic, kaiju-sized demon robot called the Icon of Sin. The Icon of Sin was the boss in Doom 2, back then being 'merely' a giant goat-head on a wall to represent the head of a large demon. The same demon head also appears as a cameo in Doom 2014. Now, the Icon of Sin is fully realized as a titanic demon that is such a powerful source of magic that could warp space-time itself if he's allowed to remain on Earth for too long. There's also a background where the Icon of Sin's form is actually born out of a 'devil's pact' that the Maykrs made with a traitor among the Night Sentinels, resurrecting his dead son into this monstrous form.

The final level has the Doom Slayer jump from building to building as the Icon of Sin walks through a city, crushing and toppling buildings and lurching around in the distance like goddamn Godzilla, while the Doom Slayer slaughters all the demons in his path to get to the final rooftop that he fights the Icon in.

The Icon of Sin itself is a giant boss fought on top of two different large rooftops, and you have to slowly whittle down his health... with a twist. Each part of the Icon of Sin's body has a separate health bar, and you need to tear off the mechanical armour of each part. Some parts are easier to shoot than others, while others move around so much; or the ideal place to shoot them is too close to where the Icon will unleash his attacks. The battle's second phase has the Icon of Sin stripped to demonic flesh underneath, which you blow up until he's just bone. 

It's a simple, if long, boss fight. All the while lesser demons keep popping up to both harass you but also serve as ammunition drops. Design-wise I feel like both the Icon and Khan are both pretty effective for what they are, covering their respective tropes well and being both visually and gameplay-wise quite impressive. 

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...and that's it for Doom Eternal! There are some variant monsters that appear in The Ancient Gods DLC, but I... I didn't have the best time going through that game, with an over-abundance of platforming puzzles, supporting characters going through rapid and questionable character development, and a real lack of lore that explains what's going on (instead focusing on the past). Almost all the enemies are just remixes of old models with one or two extra gimmicks, so I don't really feel they're particularly interesting to talk about either. We'll see if I ever pick up The Dark Ages, but until then, it has been a blast mowing down the forces of hell in the world of Doom!

Reviewing Monsters - Resident Evil 9 - Requiem

Resident Evil Requiem, or Resident Evil 9, is the ninth primary entry in the Resident Evil franchise. After the highly positively-reviewed 7 (Biohazard) and 8 (Village) which starred Ethan Winters and had a strong mix of going back to basics with horror and also bringing in a new twist to the franchise with the Mold, the franchise has been the strongest it's ever been since the PlayStation 1 days, particularly with both newer games and the reboots of beloved games like 2 and 4 being so well-received. Over 2025-2026 I've been actually replaying through all of the 'new post-reboot' games for Resident Evil, some for the first time. So I did 7, 8, 2-remake, 3-remake and 4-remake. And I also did a full run of RE5 and a partial one of RE1 as well.

It won't probably happen in time for this month's Halloween, but I do want to do a re-visit to my monster reviews of all the 'newer' games. 

And all of this was to coincide with the release of Resident Evil Requiem. Taking cues from all parts of the franchise that worked well, Requiem was an interesting exercise in having both styles of gameplay -- Grace Ashcroft is a newcomer to this zombie madness as she discovers aspects about her parentage and gets locked in a crazy giant hospital and has a heavier 'survivalist' vibe to her gameplay similar to 7; while series veteran Leon S. Kennedy comes in like an action hero to murder everything that's a zombie between him and his goals. 

The storytelling was also fantastic, with some great callbacks to the earlier parts of the franchise. The game also takes place partially in Raccoon City, with some loving showcases of what happened to some beloved older locations like, of course, the Raccoon City Police Department building that was the set of the excellent Resident Evil 2. Unfortunately I wasn't the biggest fan of the last leg of the game, and I thought the game's final of its villains was kind of poor and that the conclusion had a couple of, shall we say, ass-pulls. I've ceased to try putting the summary of these games in the intros, and if anything is relevant for the story to the monster review, I'll mention it in the body of the monster reviews.

That doesn't undo the fact that a good 80-85% of the game that preceded it was just full-on fantastic, some of the best Resident Evil I've done.

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ENEMIES:

Zombies (Wrenwood)

So after spending the last couple of numbered, non-remake games all dealing with either Mold-infested or parasitic-empowered Las Plagas, Requiem brings us back to proper zombies. A good chunk of the game showcases a re-release of a modified version of the T-Virus from the original 3 Resident Evil games, but theoretically updated to a much more powerful engine that could do a lot more with the zombies. And for the most part, the zombies are quite consistent even to how they were depicted in the RE2 and RE3 remakes. 

This batch are zombies from the streets of Wrenwood, just a bunch of civilians that unfortunately got caught in the rampage of the game's initial main villain, Victor Gideon. 

Zombies (Hospital)

The bulk of the game's first half (or first two-thirds in terms of gameplay time, but let's not mince words) takes place in the Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center hospital, and this is where a lot of the coolest stuff that the game designers manage to do with programming the zombies. Some the zombies in the hospital retain enough of their original sensibilities and instincts that not all of them are just shambling around for you to shoot or avoid. That adds a lot of 'minibosses'... except the minibosses aren't so much dangerous and more of an interesting puzzle you need to solve. They're mostly only marginally more powerful than a regular zombie, maybe a bit faster, but you can also avoid them while you go around scavenging for more materials and resources.

We've got doctors/nurses, support admin staff, the patients, and the maids as the primary 'common' enemies. 

Since this is that kind of an exhaustive review, I'm going to talk about some of the more common 'quirky' zombies. The game designers put in a lot of effort here, and I want to acknowledge them! The maids, for example, are just utterly obsessed with cleaning any stains they see on the ground. Which, being that they themselves are a rotting corpse, they continue to cause a mess! Poor poor maids. This means that they go back and forth between places with stains, and you can sneak past them. If they do manage to attack you, the maids try to scrub off your face, which gives you a very nice close-up to the fact that their arms have shards of glass and mirror embedded in them, probably from scrubbing too much!

The initial introduction to these kid of zombies is the 'Lights Out' Zombies, who have enough of a speech ability left to mumble about how lights need to be out, and no lights after a certain time. They were part of the admin staff, and you can make this zombie go out of their way to certain corridors and prevent them from blocking your way if you sneak around and play with the light switches. 

One of my favourite has to be the Surgeon. We see one of these surgeons exactly once, and you can just sneak into the room next to him and he babbles so much creepy but hilarious black comedy about dissections and autopsies as he goes back and forth monotonously working on a sliced-up zombie on his operating table. 

And finally, one of the most famous smart zombies is the Misophonic Zombies. These always carry a metal IV stick, and they are very angry towards sound. So angry, in fact, that they go on a berserker range if you manage to toss a glass bottle and smash it. The Misophonic Zombies have some of the most powerful attacks in the game, so you can take this advantage to have these IV-wielding badasses rush and murder other zombies in the room for you. There's even a way to have these IV zombies kill one of the supposedly unkillable actual 'stalker' minibosses! 

Zombie Singers

Two of the zombies, Eileen Zimmerson and Selena Corey, are the 'banshee' singing zombies that whirl around several locations of the Rhodes Hill Care Center and constantly emitting this wonderfully creepy singing and giggling. They are hostile and will use a video game screaming attack at you (and to summon all nearby zombies) if they see you, but I find them to be so cute and delightful as they twirl around! Notes around the hospital would give backstory to the two singing zombies, because the two apparently have a cute little rivalry when they were alive. 

The Zombie Chef

The unnamed chef of the Rhodes Hill Hospital is one of the more significant enemies in the Rhodes Hill, being this unkillable monster earlier in the game when you see him and explore his wing. Not really having a name, the Chef is another early introduction to the 'zombies can be a puzzle' thing as he repeats the same meat-preparation movements over and over again during his first encounter. And then he walks out of the kitchen and starts wandering around on a pattern!

The Chef is kinda neat, the stock photo isn't the best at showcasing him, but he's easily double the size of poor little itty-bitty Grace, and he's holding a massive cleaver knife. You can actually save some of your one-shot hemolytic injector weapons and kill the Chef as Grace... or sneak around the Chef all the time, return later as Leon who can take this guy down in like a couple of shots. 

Blister Heads

As is typical now among most of the 'minion' zombies in the Resident Evil games ever since the original RE4, we've got a new version of the 'Crimson Heads' or the monstrous Plagas mutations. They turn into 'Blister Heads' now, convulsing on the ground in a horrifying manner before turning into the more monstrous monsters. For Leon, it's just a zombie that takes three or four extra shots to take down. For Grace, they might as well as be minibosses that you need to save those aforementioned hemolytic injectors for. Blister Heads don't appear until around halfway through the hospital level, where any zombie you don't kill with a headshot has the chance to go through the convulsion and return stronger.

One interesting thing about the Blister Heads is that their heads are modelled to specifically resemble Lickers, with exposed brain that's covering their eyes, and an extended tongue. We don't get anything specific that confirms this, but I thought it was a nice showcase of the 'evolution' of these T-Virus zombies.

The Girl

We meet 'The Girl', or Marie, very early on. Essentially the enemy in the very atmospheric tutorial levels, the Girl is a giant hunched-over woman in rags that towers easily three times over Grace. She looks quite mundane otherwise -- ugly, monstrous mouth and bedraggled appearance, but other than those weird dinosaur-like legs, she's just a big lady. And I absolutely wasn't impressed the first time I saw her.

The Girl takes over the role of the big, stalker enemy for most of the tutorial level, and returns way more times than I expected throughout the hospital stalking Grace specifically, until she becomes the primary threat chasing Grace around the subterranean levels of the hospital. This is quite similar to Jack Baker in Resident Evil 7 and perfected with Mr. X in Resident Evil 2; and later repeated with Nemesis (RE3) and Lady Dimitrescu (RE8). And the execution is done quite well, in no small part due to how fast this monster is, and how she crawls across ceiling sub-levels inaccessible to our character, other than the noises she is making. 

One additional wrinkle is that she's repelled by light, something that makes the 'safe rooms' quite safe. Her skin literally burns off as she enters it, vampire-style, due to some hypersensitivity in the skin. Which leads to a nice bit of running around and hiding in safe spots... at least until she figures out that she can tear through the cables from the ceilings. That's a fun bit. The story behind Marie is also quite sad as it's told through both her behaviour in her story (she stalks but never hurts an actual little girl called Emily) and the in-game reading material. 

Ultimately I still find her probably the weakest 'pursuer' enemy compared to those other four I've listed, but The Girl was definitely a very effective presence throughout all of Requiem.

Chunk

The Girl isn't the only pursuer enemy, because while the West Wing only had the predictable Cook, the East Wing had Chunk! Who is a gigantic baby-like monster with grotesque, flappy bodies and a really distorted head. Chunk was introduced in a literal jumpscare as he bursts out of a corridor yelling actual profanities at us as he charges through walls and chases us. Chunk has a rather fun bit of animation because he can't fit through some corridor doors, leading to this surreal and horrifying appearance as he roars and squirms and tries to reach in like a diseased mutant baby. 

Chunk used to be a patient brought in for an eating disorder, but the treatment that the lunatics in Rhodes Hill did to him instead caused him to develop a never-ending hunger and cannibalistic tendencies, leading Chunk to continue eating and eating and become even more violent as they get enlarged. Or rather, the Chunks. There are two of them, Thomas and Timothy Jackson. One of them menaces Grace for a majority of the lengthy East Wing sequence (and the lighting of the 'asylum breakout' is quite well done) and can only be killed with much sneaking around and dodging by injecting five hemolytic injectors. This was a nice bit of a chance, where Chunk was dangerous in some portions of the East Wing, and you need to learn which corridors are safe and small enough that Chunk can't break through. 

For Leon? A second Chunk on the attic of the hospital is just a regular miniboss for him. Which was quite a nice bit of a difference between the two different protagonists. The Chunk that Leon faced was treated like a regular 'big zombie enemy' boss similar to older, more action-packed games like RE4 to RE6, with Leon jumping around and pumping shotgun shells into him while cracking one-liners. 

Blister Borne

Speaking of old-school bosses, turns out that the Blister Heads don't turn into Lickers, but into... Blister Borne? The Blister Borne hsa mutated into something even larger, with a nicely creepy yawning mouth and several obvious 'weak point' blister-like tumours. The Blister Borne is fought as a boss by Leon in a very atmospheric church; and later again in Raccoon City. 

Blister Bornes are quite tough and durable, and are also able to eject a nasty gas that transforms the zombies that are around it into Blister Heads. This is a bit of a more 'MMORPG boss fight' ability, I feel, but I found it quite cool as it forces me to deal with zombies that keep coming in and making sure they are headshotted, to prevent the Blister Borne from turning them into even more monstrous enemies.

In addition, the giant tumours are obviously the weak points, but Leon shooting those cysts would cause the gas to instantly be ejected and transform nearby zombies, so even dealing with the weak points too early might screw you over. I do like the Blister Borne, even if they feel a bit too 'mundane' as another humanoid enemy. 

The Children

So 'the Children' are encountered during an intermission sequence between the Rhodes Hill hospital and the Raccoon City, around slightly more than the halfway point of the game. You take the form of a young confused girl in the Raccoon City/Umbrella orphanage, where you need to avoid these creepy other giggling children. They've all gotten glowing red eyes, a bald head, and stitches showing the lobotomy that has been done to them. The story behind the Children is a bit convoluted and involves some of the plot points I don't feel the game explains particularly well, but they're effectively creepy -- the character we're playing as has no way to actually harm or deal with the Children.

But honestly, they're just really creepy.

 

Titan Spinner

The Hospital is the highlight of Requiem, and after fighting the final boss (the Girl) and going through that flashback with the children at the orphanage, Leon Kennedy travels to the nuclear-blasted wasteland that used to be Raccoon City. And immediately after walking around, he meets a bunch of spider webs... and is assaulted by a gigantic, monstrous spider called the Titan Spinner -- ostensibly, based on its name, the Titan Spinner is an escaped 'Web Spinner' from the Arklay facility in Resident Evil 1 that grew into a titanic size. As you'll see, a lot of the enemies in Requiem's Raccoon City portion tries to homage the first 2-3 games of the franchise. It is an anniversary game after all. 

There's not much to say about the Titan Spinner that you wouldn't expect from a giant video game spider boss fight. The spider is large enough to crawl across a giant building, and the fight takes multiple stages as Leon tries to escape the spider throughout a building. She's got webs and tiny, smaller pale babies that aid her in the battle, and the baby spiders also show up rarely later on in other parts of the city. 

The Titan Spinner has got a monstrous mouth that's nonexistent in real spiders, and she's got extra weak-spot tumours on her head and a tumour on her abdomen. I always appreciate a good giant spider boss fight, and thanks to the updated engines the Titan Spinner was really fun and atmospheric to fight -- a nice 'bang' return as to how the franchise is treating its giant monster boss fights. But it is still at the end of the day 'just' a more monstrous giant spider. Ain't nothing wrong with that, of course. 

Zombies (Raccoon City)

Unfortunately, despite all of the talk I had earlier in the game about how cool the zombies in the Rhodes Hill hospital is with them being little puzzle bosses... there's no such thing about the zombies in Raccoon City. There are great model for the 'soldier' zombies that were Connections (the Umbrella successor as the enemy organization) operatives slaughtered by the inhabitants of the city; as well as the near-skeletal, white-skinned remnants of whatever bodies survived the not-nuclear bomb that wiped out all life in the city. Some of these hide underground or in bodies of water and only rise up if Leon gets too close. Good models, nicely raggled and nasty-looking...

But I really don't have anything to say about them when I had so much praise for the hospital zombies. And that is kind of a shame; I felt like there could be a lot to be done with the same concept and applying it to zombies 'haunting' a dead ghost town.

(I know, I know, different strain to the specific one Victor Gideon was using in the hospital, but that was such a cool concept that I wished it was brought in for some of the other zombies in the city. The city was a cool level but the enemies were so boring!)

Garmr

We need zombie dogs! And the GM-G-002 Garmr, named after a mythological wolf from Norse mythology, are gigantic poochies. Where the Cerberus, Colmillos and Adjule from previous games tended to just be big hounds, the Garmr are mutated to be as large as wolves. They've got a very good model, keeping the over-the-top Plagas mutations to a minimum, but showcasing some really nasty ribcages, a gigantic tongue and a mouth that's way too wide for a regular dog. 

More importantly, the Garmr are large enough to pursue vehicles. They are only fought in a rather extended motorbike sequence as Leon pursues Victor and then gets chased and attacked by these giant bioweapons across the land-blasted highways of Raccoon City like it's something out of Transformers or Fast and Furious. 

It is very cool, although a bit of a shame that they weren't encountered as regular enemies later on and were restricted to the bike part of the game. 

Tyrant T-501 / Super Tyrant

Leon would eventually return to the abandoned ruins of the Raccoon City Police Department, perfectly matching up to the version in the RE2 remake. It's a fun trip back memory lane, since it's been a half-decade since even the release of that remake! The RCPD level is mostly calm and somber, focusing on the history and the broken-down location and a couple of puzzles. And lots of easter eggs. 

AND THEN MR. X SHOWS UP!

I actively cheered as Mr. X appeared to interrupt a cutscene and started chasing Leon throughout the broken-down ruins. It's not the same Mr. X -- or Tyrant -- as the one we met in RE2, of course. It's a newer model, the T-501 instead of the T-00. But at some points in Requiem you just have to accept that it's just there for the rule of cool. T-501 is relentless, still as indestructible as ever, and at one point tries to murder Leon with the same helicopter that heralded his predecessor's arrival back in RE2. 

And finally, there's a boss fight. T-501's 'monstrous' form is more or less similar enough to the original RE2 Tyrant, and Leon fights him in the courtyard outside of the RCPD. He's got an exposed heart, and a massive mutated Tyrant arm that ends in spikes. None of the more over-the-top mutations of the original RE2 Tyrant, which I thought was fine... although I also thought that maybe we could've gotten a second form that was more faithful to the dual-clawed original RE2 design. Again, this was just meant to be a 'rematch', and T-501 does some really cool attacks that involves launching cars or chunks of the pavement at Leon. 

It's Mr. X! I don't have much to say about him other than to fanboy about him. 

Plant 43

The next chunk of the level takes place in a set of destroyed subterranean chambers that used to be the city's subway station. Unfortunately I don't think we see any of the actual station parts we saw in RE3, but the vibe is still there. And as we enter deeper and deeper, there are more vines tearing through bedrock and getting in Leon's way. I thought that this was going to be the Mold, but turns out that it's... Plant 43!

Yes, Plant 43, who is just the giant monster plant from Resident Evil 2. The original Plant 42 form Resident Evil 1 was a giant plant monster that was fought, Zelda-style, but RE2's Plant 43 was just a plant that spawned some Ivy Zombies. Well, turns out that Leon and Claire didn't do a good enough job wiping out the 'mother' plant in RE2, and it survived all this time and expanded into a massive, monstrous form. 

Plant 43's vines menace Leon throughout his journey, and the final battle is one of those bosses that take up a full chamber. Plant 43's main body is a giant flower with tendrils, and it attacks Leon with giant arm-like vines and the main body is a mass of roots. I liked the atmosphere of the journey down and I appreciate the boss fight, but I also wished that the design was a bit more creative as a giant plant monster? I do get that, again, as an 'anniversary' game they do want to keep some of the homages a bit simpler, but I felt like with all the environmental buildup that we had as we reach deeper and deeper into Plant 43's lair that it would be a bit more creepier .

Licker Beta-2

The final battle is in a facility called the ARK, which had some of the white, desiccated zombies and regular soldier enemies... including 'The Commander', a.k.a. HUNK, a recurring character from the older games. Those humanoid enemies are cool, but beyond the spirit of just talking about the monsters!

Another classic monster returns, the Licker, who at one point you can release out of its containment cell to attack the Connections soldiers. I thought that was neat! Again, there's not much to say about the Licker -- it's got a couple of minor variations to the previous models, and a thicker, more serrated tongue. But it is just a Licker and if you aren't paying attention to the logs and readable material, you could easily handwave this as just artistic interpretation. And above-the-table, it definitely is... you can tell they wanted to bring back this classic, iconic enemy as-is. And the behaviour is basically the same as you'd expect from Lickers. they're fast, they're furious, and they're blind. There were definitely places where you need to sneak past them (especially as Grace!) and some locations where they scuttle and swarm over the facility. 

Their name, Beta-2, means that they're improved from the RE5 Licker Betas. Apparently these were more stable, and the Connections has been able to reliably trigger the mutation DNA that will cause the creation of a Licker. Again, just like Mr. X or the Titan Spinner... it's cool to have them back, but they are essentially just returning monsters.

Dr. Victor Gideon

Dr. Victor Gideon is our final boss, and technically we have two primary antagonists. One of them gets dispatched with little fanfare, however, and I still have problems about that from a narrative standpoint. But Gideon menaces Leon and Grace throughout the entire hospital level, this giant, soft-spoken scientist with weird glasses and a fancy snake-skin suit. Leon and Gideon would have a motorcycle chase scene that led to his seeming death... but that's honestly a bit silly and thematically not the most appropriate for someone that's been depicted as a scientist-type character. 

So of course Victor has his own mutations, and is fought at the end of the game as the final boss. Victor's initial phase has him transform one of his left hands into a giant zombie tentacle, and later he gets several more that sprouts out of his back like Dr. Octopus from Marvel comics. Victor's base design is neat and interesting enough, but this form isn't the most epic-looking for a named villain. It's similar to Krauser and other baddies, I guess, but not the coolest. 

Fortunately, it later turns out that Victor is the host to a 'Nemesis Gamma'. It does admittedly come out from nowhere other than a blink-and-you'll-miss-it list of products that included the Nemesis among them. I suppose it does explain Victor's sheer durability throughout the game. And I almost wished that Victor had an in-between form that referenced Nemesis's more iconic look.

But Victor's final form is a giant mass of flesh, organs and gore with two long-elongated arms and an obvious weak spot in the middle of his exposed ribcage that's clearly where you're supposed to shoot the missile launchers. Just like the original Nemesis final form, it's a giant mound of flesh that takes up a huge chunk of the room. It's cool, and fun to fight, but it's just a bit too messy for me to appreciate the way I did G-5 or the original Nemesis. I can't really complain all that much, though, as having a giant flesh-monster is a staple in Resident Evil. So quite happy to have this as the final boss!

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Ultimately a chunk of the bestiary for Requiem isn't the most exciting. A lot of them are retreads of older monsters, or just regular zombies. But I am still filled with so much love for this game in general and since it's an anniversary game, I can't fault that they're essentially just reusing a lot of classic monsters while keeping the focus on the execution and the homages. Despite some of my gripes with the writing choices near the end of the game, Requiem was a fantastic game to go through, and I really enjoyed my time with it. 

Now, I had planned to do a 'countdown to Halloween' and my original plan was to rewrite the 'post-soft-reboot' games, so 7-8-9 and maybe the 2-3-4 remakes over this Halloween, but things didn't turn out as planned and I got way busier these past couple of months. You guys still get Requiem, though, and it'll probably be some time that I work on rewriting older reviews again!