Tokyo Game Show 2025

The Resident Evil Requiem Demo Plays Smoothly On the Switch 2

At Tokyo Game Show 2025, it was announced that the newest game in the Resident Evil series, Resident Evil Requiem, would be coming to Nintendo Switch 2 in addition to the PlayStation and Xbox consoles. And if you wondered how the game plays on the much less powerful console, I have good news: I was able to get some hands-on time with the demo at TGS.

Now, the first major thing of note is that I played the game in the Switch 2's handheld mode. Thus, I can't speak to how it looks or feels to play when docked and put up on a TV screen. That said, the handheld experience was great. It was honestly smooth as silk—no frame rate drops or any kind of lag. And while the resolution is almost certainly different from its home console brethren, on a screen the size of the Switch 2, I couldn't see the difference.

As for the content of the demo itself, you play as Grace Ashcroft—and awaken in a room upside down and being drained of blood. After a cut scene, you are left to explore your immediate area—which is little more than 3 rooms and a hallway with a metal gate blocking the only way out. The atmosphere is great in this dark and claustrophobic setting. There are light switches throughout that you can flip on and off but the lights often flicker, casting shadows and tricking the eye.

But what impressed me the most was the logical flow of the demo. One room is too dark to explore, so you move on until you find the locked gate. Next to the gate is a fuse box missing a fuse. There is a key in a nearby drawer to one of the rooms you passed on your way to the gate. In that room, you find a locked fuse box and a lighter—which of course makes you think about the “too dark room” you encountered earlier. All this is to say, the game makes it obvious where you need to go and what you need to look for through environmental storytelling alone. You don't need waypoints or Grace talking to herself to give you hints. I never felt lost or confused—well, until I encountered the monster, anyway.

Throughout the demo you are hunted by a hulking monster woman with a giant hand. Obviously, Grace is unable to fight it and must instead run away and hide. However, the map presents a bit of a challenge; there are no loops to use to endlessly run away. There are only dead ends to hide in and hope the monster simply decides not to follow you into them.

The layout of the map also means that the monster moves impossibly—which, while scary (as it can literally come out of nowhere), also breaks the suspension of disbelief a bit. For example, I encountered the monster in a dead end room with a key item in it. I ran away and watched the entrance to the hallway leading to that room—waiting for the monster to pass by so I could sneak past it and back into the room. Yet, the monster never came. So eventually, I gave up and made my way back to the room—only to find it empty. Somehow the monster had disappeared despite the fact that it's both huge and there was no other possible exit from that room—which took me right out of the game.

The other iffy moment I had with the game also involved the monster. In a scripted event, it knocked away a cart I had been moving (and was hiding behind, as it turned out). This left me boxed into a corner with the cart on one side and the monster on the other. I literally was unable to move—I remember letting out an exasperated sigh as I gave up on running in place till the monster decided to bite my head rather than just loom menacingly. Luckily, this didn't kill me and created just enough of a gap for me to run through and escape.

All in all, I enjoyed this demo. As a horror game, both good jump scares and a general vibe of the environment worked well—especially when played in first person as designed. But most importantly, the horror was magnified because rather than someone in control of the situation, I felt powerless—unable to do anything but run. Personally, I can't wait to play the full game next year.

Resident Evil Requiem is scheduled for release on February 27, 2026, on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC.