Firing up Resident Evil Requiem, I was shocked how effective the first hour of the game and how absolutely filled to the brim with more thrills, chills, delight, and horror than any recent gaming titles I’ve tested. Not only is it a rollercoaster of emotions, it’s absolutely gorgeous especially on the latest NVIDIA hardware. After seeing so much goodness in this game, in the end it was the environments that blew me away and they range from city streets, dark hallways, and clinic rooms that really show off a variety of textures, lighting, and effects.
Dark and scorched parlors, lace curtains blowing gently in the wind, toilets overflowing with maggots, and blood splatters along with flashing lights and subtle yet terrifying sound design all come together in a near perfect package with the latest entry of the RE franchise.
Just walk down this hallway with headphones on and playing in a dark room. I dare you.
To dive right in, between DLSS 4, Path Tracing, and Frame Gen, you get enough incredible eye candy without the FPS dropping into single digits. On our RTX 5090 rig, we maxed out all settings and never looked back. The only setting we ended up really tweaking was frame gen between 2x, 3x, and 3x. Also, we highly recommend the default first person camera for Grace and third person camera for Leon.
Even with all eye candy maxed, we could get 100+ FPS at 4K with Frame Gen up to 4x so with the right NVIDIA hardware, you don’t have to choose between the highest quality image and high frame rate. Now don’t get me wrong, trying to run native 4k with everything cranked up and no DLSS or frame gen, you FPS will struggle. Luckily, with the latest DLSS 4 support included, even the performance settings enabled, the game looks stellar.
The massive amount of graphics settings, tweaks, NVIDIA centric features, and more are extremely impressive.
I cannot stress enough how stunning this audiovisual tour de force especially with maxed out settings. We recommend tweaking DLSS levels and frame gen before dropping any other settings like lighting, path tracing, hair strands, etc. It’s better, in our opinion, to have lower FPS before dropping the incredible effects present here.
This game is not for the faint of heart and while previous RE games were impressive, this feels like we’ve entered a whole new era of what gaming is capable of.
This scene left me breathless with the mix of technical and artistic talent on display to convey this creepy area of the game.
There are plenty of great looking games out there but I haven’t been drop-dead impressed overall with a game like this in years! Capcom and the folks at NVIDIA have knocked it out of this park with Requiem and it’s balance between sheer terror, grit, and moments of emotion and beauty that make it almost unmatched in the market. It’s definitely the cutting edge of graphics and technology bringing a perfect way to kick off the year 2026 in gaming.
Volumetric lighting is just one of the many highlights of this incredible game and the RE Engine.
That being said, even though 2026 is packed with upcoming games, this one is going to be difficult to top with a rare combo of tight gameplay and absolutely stunning visuals. For our full thoughts on Resident Evil Requiem, check out our full review!
Resident Evil Requiem releases February 27th for PC, Xbox, PS5, and Nintendo Switch 2.
