‘Resident Evil Requiem’ Wins Ultimate Game of the Year at the Golden Joystick Awards

Back in March, when I was writing about some lunatic who turned Resident Evil Requiem’s ceiling monster into a Xenomorph, I called it “easily the game of the year.” Turns out the vote was a hell of a lot closer. Resident Evil Requiem won Ultimate Game of the Year at the 44th Golden Joystick Awards with 17% of the vote. Phantom Blade Zero had 16%. Crimson Desert had 15%.

That was one of four awards Requiem picked up in London on November 11. It also won Console Game of the Year, its “Evil Always Has a Name” promo took Best Game Trailer, and Angela Sant’Albano won Best Lead Performer for playing Grace Ashcroft.

If you’ve been away from Resident Evil for a few years, Requiem is the ninth mainline game, following Resident Evil Village. Grace is an FBI intelligence analyst sent to investigate a death at the abandoned hotel where her mother was murdered eight years earlier. A missing police officer brings Leon S. Kennedy to the same hotel. You play as both of them, and anybody who’s spent time with Leon can appreciate what a difference it makes to be playing as Grace, creeping through a pitch-black hospital with a lighter while something crawls across the fucking ceiling.

Capcom released Requiem on February 27, just ahead of the franchise’s 30th anniversary. By March 16, it had already sold more than 6 million copies, faster than any Resident Evil game had ever reached that number. By September 30, it was up to 8.5 million copies worldwide.

And if The Girl was the part that stuck with you, I love how Delanie Nicole Gill got that sound out of her throat. She gargled milk. Universal Studios Japan went so far as to build a Requiem haunted house for Halloween Horror Nights, complete with a Licker encounter and an appearance by Leon.