Pacing is crucial in third-person adventures, and Requiem’s expert flow of puzzles, stealth sequences, horrifying set-pieces, and brutal combat scenarios is pacing at its best. The respite comes to an end, of course, propelling the duo on a journey across the French countryside, through rat-infested tunnels, and across the rooftops of plague-ridden slums. Set shortly after A Plague Tale: Innocence, Requiem finds protagonist Amicia and her younger brother Hugo during a brief reprieve from the Macula, the sinister plague that gives Hugo vicious powers, but is also eating him from the inside. And despite the pedigree of the above examples, I have encountered few “escort” stories as stunning as that of A Plague Tale: Requiem.

Whether it be a man escorting his proxy daughter through an apocalyptic America, a father guiding his son through the trials of mythical Armageddon, or a government agent sent to retrieve the president’s daughter from a remote Spanish village, this is a medium obsessed with those who have been deemed guardians. Video games have an endless fascination with protectors. Signalis is available on Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X via Game Pass. Its unforgiving atmosphere and PlayStation 1-era graphics belie a modern, clever approach to one of our most revered - and intense – genres. Ammo is limited and deranged enemies won’t hesitate to rush you with butcher knives. It puts you in the robotic shoes of a reawakened android as she searches for her counterpart in a wintry, forsaken base. Its controls are (mostly) smooth its puzzles are intuitive it’s downright eerie. Signalis, on the other hand, is brand-new, and it shows. They hold a special place in my heart, and I’ve devoured their numerous remakes and remasters whenever they see the light of day. Their fixed camera angles, intimate locales, and focus on survival made for a palpable sense of dread, but their cumbersome control schemes and opaque, often infuriating puzzle structure can make all but the most patient modern players quit. For as good as the original Resident Evil games are, they’ve been hard to recommend for a couple decades now.

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