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! 

Reviewing Monsters: Resident Evil 4 [Remake, 2023]

Resident Evil 4 Remake [2023]

So it's going to be quite some time before I actually play through the remake of Resident Evil 4. I am pleased to say that apparently the dseign team took the criticisms of Resident Evil 3 severely gimping the original game and cutting things out and promised that "nothing will be removed" from the far more iconic and well-known Resident Evil 4. And... to be frank, I'm excited about this game but I'm also a little bit terrified that it won't live up to my expectations. Resident Evil 4 is my favourite Resident Evil game of all time, and ranks up very, very high as one of my favourite games period, which is why I'm taking time to... well, basically 'prepare' myself for this game. I am happy to hear that the game is as universally beloved as the original that it's remaking, which gives me hope. 

That, and I've like a half-dozen other games to get through, and Steam refuses to put this game on sale. 

But I'm very much willing to see the designs of these monsters, and it's fun to see that all of the old favourites are back, including some new wacky additions to the Plaga family! I've already covered the original Resident Evil 4 way back when, so for the sake of not repeating myself too much I'll try to blaze through some of the enemies that didn't change too much in the HD-fication. 

Plaga

One of the biggest upgrades, I felt, are the actual Plaga parasites. The 2005 game clearly has some models for them, but they were rather simple and a bit lacking of detailing, relying more on supplementary artwork as well as the horror of these things bursting out of people's heads to be scary. But compared to the four-legged designs of the original RE4, the remake version goes all-in on the Alien Facehugger homage, giving the new Plaga parasites eight legs with some webbing on the most proximal end. In addition, the 'tail'-like body of the Plagas' body doesn't just trail behind it, but now curve upwards and point forwards like a scorpion. Several generations of video game graphics improvement have also made the little trailing tentacles and vines look a bit more nasty, especially if you imagine them using those tendrils to infiltrate someone's internal organs. 

I don't know if the remake still uses the original RE4 canon's division of 'eusocial' and 'dominant' Plagas, which I think is one of the biggest appeals of the remake for me -- that we'll get the RE2/RE3-remake or RE7/RE8 level of notes and information scattered in the overworld about the Plagas and the Los Illuminados cult. 

Again, it's always such a fun twist in RE4 for our hero Leon S. Kennedy as he tries to figure out the horror of these brand-new zombie-like creatures. How they are seemingly happy to be subservient to the Los Illuminados cult, and how the local villagers are still going on their day-to-day lives until the parasites decide to take over. It's something rather similar with certain types of parasitoids in real life where the host animal looks and acts fine -- or just a bit off -- like a snail infected with Leucochloridium or ants infected with Ophiocordyceps having some behaviour alteration of them moving into places where it'll benefit the parasite. 

Again, I'll update this review whenever I get to playing the RE4 remake, which could be anywhere between next month or next year. But rest assured, I'm definitely happy to see this massive visual upgrade that makes the lowly Plagas parasite look so much more sinister even though they didn't really change too much from the original. 

Ganado
The Ganado ('cattle') are still the primary enemy of the game, and they're still just Spanish villagers or psychotic castle-dwelling cultists with medieval weapons. Again, I don't have a whole ton to say about these the first time around, and I don't have much to say here other than the fact that they're the common enemies that chant more or less the same couple of phrases. Can't really say much about humanoid enemies, though the cultists look rather sinister. 

Apparently one of the improved parts of the remake is how sinsiter the 'cult' part of the game's setting is expanded, which I'm looking fowrard to talking about more whenever I play the game. 

Desnucado

One thing that I enjoy the most about the update in the RE4 remake is the expansion of the 'mutated' Ganados, where they are just called "Plaga A, Plaga B and Plaga C" in the original game's ancillary material. Here, we've got a bunch more stages and some fun names for them, like Desnucado ("broken neck" in Spanish), an intermediary stage between the regular 'human with parasite' Ganado to the more extreme mutations before. 

The Desnucado are mutations that happen on a Ganado after suffering fatal injuries. But the fact that the pain tolerance of these infected humans have increased, and they're being pupeteered by a powerful parasite, means that they can still shamble with a fatal wound -- and as the name and picture shows, this fatal wound is almost always a neck wound as the Desnucado walks towarsd leon with the head hanging broken and lolling on the side. Little tentacles of the internal Las Plagas parasite can be seen inside, and the end result is a nice, ghoulish addition that help sell another 'zombie' trope. 

Guadaña

Essentially the 'Plaga A' of the original game with some traits of 'Plaga C' is the Guadaña, meaning 'scythe' in Spanish. As per the original, the head burst open and has turned into a giant meat-tentacle of flesh tipped with a scythe... which here is much more obviously made out of bone. As in, the host's bones mutated and transformed into a bludgeon to defend the parasite within. The original game's artwork is a bit more ambiguous on whether that spiky tip are chitin from the Plagas' anatomy, but here there's an extra bit of squickiness when you realize that to make the scythe appendage, the Plagas probably is ripping apart the poor sod and rearranging the bones to make that blade. 

Originally I was about to bemoan that we lost the two almost comical snail eyeballs on the original game's "Plaga A"... until I realized that the eyeballs are still there. They're just nasty and creepily embedded into the mass of flesh sprouting out of the Guadaña's neck, looking somewhat like William Birkin's monstrous "G" forms. 

Mandíbula

The equivalents to 'Plaga B' in the original game are the Mandíbula (obviously, Spanish for 'mandible'), whose heads are replaced with gigantic masses of Plaga tissue that open up in a giant flower-shaped mouth, similar to the Majini from Resident Evil 5. Just like the Plaga B from the original game, the Mandíbula are have an instant-kill grapple attack where they grab Leon's head and try to force it into the giant mouth. They also gain an acid-spitting attack, though I don't 100% remember if the original Plaga B was able to do this or not. I think they could?

Anyway, I absolutely love the look of the Mandíbula. I honestly really just like the giant splayed-out four-petaled mouth look in general, which was what really endeared me to Resident Evil when I was first exposed to this franchise in the first place. 

Araña

And the final form of the evolution is the Araña (Spanish for 'spider'), which replaces Plaga C -- who normally take the form of an entire Facehugger replacing the head of their victim. Instead, the Plaga bursts out from the back of the poor Ganado's head, with its spidery claws and tentacles whiplashing around menacingly. The end result makes it look a bit more distinct compared to the Mandíbula/Plaga B, and it makes full use of the remake's far more detailed and menacing model for the Plaga parasites. 

I don't know how far they're planning to do the remakes, but these also remind me of the J'avo parasites from Resident Evil 6! The Araña can spit acid, and upon the death of their host, they can scuttle around and attack Leon like funny little Facehuggers... something that the original Plaga C could also do. The Araña is much stronger when controlling its host, and becomes severely weakened when detached from their hosts... again, a nice little nod to how some real-life obligate parasites can survive outside of their host... but not for long. Thus, detached Araña can jump and latch onto the back of lesser Ganado, hijacking them with their tendrils... though being parasitized by two Plagas at the same time often drives these Ganado into a frenzy. 

Brute

Replacing the generic bigger men with hammers in the original game are these far more sinister Brutes. Taking the 'Ganado' epithet rather literally, these Brutes walk around with giant cow heads covering their heads. They could be masks, but it's far more likely for these psychopaths to butcher the local cows and use them as masks. These are obviously just big, stronger people, and there are several variants -- some wielding large hammers and some wielding an auto-repeating crossbow (replacing the 'Gatling Man' miniboss in the original). I do like this little change, it makes the Los Illuminados feel more like a psychotic cult. 

Chainsaw Man, Giant Chainsaw Man, Chainsaw Sisters

Chainsaw Man's back! So are the Chainsaw Sisters! They're joined with a 'giant' variant wielding a double-bladed chainsaw! I assume that they still serve as minibosses that menace you through the game. Love that they have creepier head-wrappings. The eyes of the Chainsaw Man in particular looks a bit more sinister since the holes on his bag-mask are a bit bigger, while Giant Chainsaw Man's got a creepy clown face drawn on his bag. 

Colmillos

Oh yeah, the Colmillos ("Fangs") are so much more grislier in the remake! The base wolf form now looks hideously mutated, with gigantic fangs and teeth that are way too large for the gums and mouth, making them look unnatural even before they blow apart into gigantic tentacles. And when they do, it's not just like five tentacles as in the original game, but a mass of... well, you can see that it's like a bunch of intestines, tentacles and bone-spikes out of their body. It's a bit more over-the-top compared to the original game's Colmillos, but I appreciate the additional grotesqueness. 

Armadura

Armadura ("Armour") also make a return, and the added definition to the Plaga parasite tentacles make these things a lot more grislier as opposed to being comical. Just look at that mass of tentacles just pushing the helmet slightly ajar. The remake canonizes some additional explanation that's only told to us in supplementary material in the original game, noting that Plagas (presumably Arana) that have lost their hosts will inhabit these armoured suits, remaining dormant and stretching out their tentacles to manipulate the suit of armour when needed. That's a nice little detail, and helps to make the Armadura make a bit more sense in the context of this game. 

It also makes sense to explain why some Armadura are able to move around and chase Leon and Ashley, while some fall apart after swinging their weapon once -- those are presumably the ones where the Plagas are already on their last legs. 

Garrador

Oh yeah. Y'know I really don't have too much to say about a lot of these enemies, since for the most part the RE4 remake is extremely faithful to the original. Garrador ("Clawer") is a bit more heavier-set than his original RE4 counterpart, and he's got a lot more chains hanging off of his neck and arms to symbolize the whole 'beast locked up until he's let loose', but so many of the Garrador's important aspects are retained here. The over-the-top gigantic Wolverine claws, the torture gimp mask, the exposed Plaga on his back... I guess the fact that the Garrador's eyes are sown shut is a bit more obvious in this incarnation with the higher detailing!

Regenerator

Apparently called 'Regenerator' instead of Regenerador this time around, I always consider these guys to be one of the creepiest enemies in the original RE4. The others were more 'cool' or 'icky', but the Regenerator is always one that struck me as 'oh fuck this is unsettling. And with visible, beady creepy eyes and a model that really makes this thing look like a walking bodysuit instead of just a white humanoid makes the Regenerator somehow so much creepier. Look at that slightly slouched gait, and the rubbery skin, and the lumps on his feet. It's meant to represent how the constant high-speed regeneration has given them some rather cancerous-looking lumps. 

It's a couple small changes, but it does help fix my complaint about the original Regenerador -- it relies more on ambience, setting, its heavy breathing and the sheer indestructability for them to be scary. And kudos to the original game for doing that. I'm also happy that the RE4 remake understands this and didn't make the new Regenerator as over-the-top as something like the Rasklapanje, but changes just enough to make the Regenerator look terrifying on sight. Just like the original game, you need to hunt down the 'cores' wiggling within the Regenerator and shoot them to stop the corpse from constantly regenerating. 

Iron Maiden
The spikes for Iron Maiden are far longer than their original version, and I love just how tortured their face looks with the added definition and pixels. Taking a cue from the lesser Plagas minions, however, the designers decided to actually do the smart thing and straight-up make the Iron Maiden as 'evolved' Regenerators the way that the Guanadas and Aranas are 'mature versions' of the Ganados. It folds two 'repaint' enemies into a single species. Not too much to say here, they sure do look painful!

Novistadores

Novistadores are back! The actual design of the Novistadores ("Unseener") didn't really change all that much, surprisingly. Sure, we've got more joints and more grimy detailing on their bodies, and some extra spiky antennae, but the Novistadores look remarkably similar to the PS2 models from almost 20 years ago. Which really does speak to how well that game's design is, really! They still go invisible and still swarm and fly around and attack you as giant monstrous bug-men, but the remake actually offers some explanation as to why there's a nest of monstrous cockroach-people in the castle. 

The Novistadores are now given the codename "U-II", marking the Novistadores as the previous incarnation of the U-3 boss! That's a nice sense of continuity! And it's now specifically noted that the Novistadores are former humans, being an "experimental application" of Plagas/human fusion with insectoid genes. I've always enjoyed the Novistadores, and considering how much of RE3 they butchered, I was worried they'd cut out the bug-men that frankly don't have much to do with the Plagas plot. But I'm happy that they kept the cockroach-men around, but also even integrated them into the storyline. 

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Del Lago

Bosses, now! I really do think that these are going to be pretty short, since I'm going off of their visual appearances only. Del Lago ("From the Lake") gets a much nastier-looking upgrade than I expected, with its salamander maw turning from being rather stretched-out into a monstrous, multi-fanged lamprey. It's also got more defined rear legs, and the Plaga tentacles now don't just sprout from Del Lago's mouth but also trail behind it.

I've always loved Del Lago for being such an impressive set-piece and being such a visually intimidating and impressive giant boss, and we still even get to fight Del Lago on top of a boat! 

El Gigante

El Gigante ("The Giant") gets to be a fair bit more mutated, being a bit more exaggerated in being a giant LOTR troll. The artwork here also makes the giant parasite sprouting of Gigante's back a bit more obvious. But... I really othrewise don't have much to say about him. 

Father Bitores Mendez

Oh! Father Mendez! I think I like the almost zombie-like, exaggerated look of the original Mendez better, but it's really just nitpicking about the art style difference more than anything. Of course, just like the original game, Mendez would eventually be transformed by the Plagas and I love the update here. I don't know how many times I can repeat this, but we keep all of the important parts of the design -- the fact that his legs still look human, that his spine has turned into a fucking centipede, and that the upper body is a combination of his human torso and head, as well as a bunch of giant bug-parts. Just like the upgraded Plagas, Mendez's claws look a lot more like the jointed legs of an arthropod mixed with sinew, and I think the points of connection of the 'centipede spine' with Mendez's upper body looks so much grislier in this incarnation. 

Verdugo

I really don't think they changed a lot of the Verdugo's design, other than the obvious addition of extra details and more pixels. The upper body looks a bit bulkier and the tail segments have some extra grooves, but that's about it. The Verdugo ("Executioner") being bizarre Sith-looking armoured bug-men have always been pretty cool to me. Interestingly, the Verdugo are also given the codename "U-III" in the remake, which means that the original "U-3" (which still shows up) is a mutated, imperfect strain of this one? 

Ramon Salazar

Probably the biggest change is that Ramon Salazar now gets changed from being a literal man-child into a short, stunted old man that wouldn't look out of place among the cast of Resident Evil VIII: Village. He looks like a lunatic, but it's also rather interesting that his lack of growth seems to be because of the Plagas? The remake adds a lot more to the Salazar family and whatnot which we won't really cover here, even after I play the game... but it's also very nice to see that all the named characters get a fair bit of expansion. 

As with the original game, Salazar merges with the Queen Plagas into his gigantic boss form, and unlike most remake bosses, I can actually tell what's going on with Queen Plagas a lot better than the original. Most of the details are still preserved, but it's a bit more clear that it's a giant flower with Salazar sticking out of it. The original Salazar has always been one of the more underwhelming designs in the game (though the boss fight is fun), and while my mileage may vary when I play through the game myself, from a visual standpoint I do like this one a fair bit more. 

U-III "Pesanta"

The original game's U-3 enemy is now given the alternate name "Pesanta", or Spanish for peasant. The design is still the same with the original one and is as disturbing as the original, although the monstrous scorpion-tail-bug-mouth part gets way more parts and detailing to make it clear that it's a nightmarish amalgamation of random zombie parts. I love the fact that the giant monster mouth is actually made up of a bunch of skulls. The Pesanta's new arms also make it resemble a Verdugo a lot more, and since the remake also calls the Verdugo as a 'U-III', I guess 'Pesanta' here is a particularly evolved Verdugo... and the Verdugo's giant clawed arms does look far more threatening than the otherwise human hands that the original U-3 has. The Pesanta also has inherited the original Verdugos' face-mask thing, which makes the tongue a bit less gross... but the tongue is still there. 

U-III Pesanta in this game appears in Ada Wong's campaign in this version -- basically, while every detail from the original game is maintained, some pathways are now only explored by Ada Wong. And as such, U-III gets a backstory... he's actually Salazar's housekeeper, who was experimented upon and transformed into this hideous monster. U-III actually spends most of the game as one of the two Verdugo, and only mutates into this Pesanta form after a typical Resident Evil 'last-ditch mutation after nearly being killed'. 

Martinico

Martinico ("ghost") is the only real new enemy here, also only fought in the Ada Wong campaign. He's a particularly deformed test subject for the Los Illuminados, but is extremely powerful so the cult keeps him in one place. There are some nice detailing here like the hideously large maw, but he's otherwise just a big brute with chains... not the most exciting addition to the Los Illuminados family, I'm afraid. 

Major Jack Krauser

Jack Krauser! I... kinda forgot you're a boss fight, actually. But he sure gets a revamped backstory with Leon, and it's kind of interesting that he gets probably one of the most drastic reimagining. The original game's Krauser's monster form just has him replace one arm with an admittedly cool Plagas blade, but it really did feel kind of underwhelming, especially for a boss fight that happens so late in the game. While I appreciate Krauser not transforming into an over-the-top blob monster like U-III, Salazar or Saddler, I kind of expected more. 

The remake gives us something a bit nicer, where Krauser keeps 90% of his body, but both his arms have transformed into blades or crab claws, and those are really large claws. I like that his arms are a bit mottled from the Plagas mutation, but otherwise he still feels like he's intelligent and human underneath all that. 

Osmund Saddler

And we come to the final boss, Osmund Saddler, the lord of the Los Illuminados cult. Saddler's Plagas staff has gotten a massive upgrade to look more ragged and nasty, with multiple tentacles thrashing and squirming on it. I'll have to play through the game to experience how much they've upgraded his story component, but his boss form most certainly is improved a lot compared to the original. I've always liked the idea that Saddler's body is still hanging on the bottom of this monstrous form, but the original design had the limbs be a bit too spindly and the end spider-crab creature feels a bit ... underwhelming? 

The remake improves on this in almost all aspects, while still keeping the spiny 'hands' and the eyeballs on the legs, and even makes Saddler's detached head visible on the center of the monster form. The legs are far more armoured, and there seems to be a larger mass of tentacles and bones in the core of the figure, making it look less fragile. It ends up looking like a monster crab without actually having the silhouette of one. I like it. 

...and that's it! This is kind of a short little writeup for me to tie in to Halloween. And... I'm kind of pumped to play the remake, honestly, if nothing else just to see how much they improved the storytelling aspects of RE4.