Resident Evil Requiem Mod Takes Insanity Difficulty to Brutal Extreme

Resident Evil Requiem has been out for a little over two weeks, and the consensus is clear - Capcom has absolutely cooked with this gem.

We called it a ‘gory, gruesome, gorgeous masterpiece’ - Rich’s first 10/10 working here in 3 years! Between the claustrophobic dread of Grace Ashcroft’s segments and Leon Kennedy’s awesome, shirt-straining shootouts, it’s arguably the most refined the series has ever been.

However, if I may add one criticism I’ve seen floating around the internet this week, it’s a bit easy. Yes, even Insanity difficulty options.

As with any modern Resident Evil title, once you’ve mastered the combat and inventory tetris, the horror can start to feel a bit... manageable. Despite the visceral gore and the terrifying memory-retaining zombies, players, for lack of a better phrase, have started to get good. Arguably, too good.

If you’re playing on PC and find the vanilla Insanity difficulty experience a bit too forgiving, a new mod titled Bites Matter - Infection by user Veoxys is here to turn your "Standard" run into a waking nightmare.

Zombie bites now actually infect you. In the vanilla game, a bite is just a health tax. With this mod, it’s a death sentence on a timer. Every time a member of the undead sinks their teeth into Leon or Grace, it adds an infection stack. An infection stack drains 1 HP per second - the more stacks, the faster you die. Oof.

Best of all - infection persists across saves, per character.

This is great if you fancy a bit of a challenge. Go on, prove you can do it.

Suffling zombies in Resident Evil Requiem, Capcom

If you thought you could just outlive the damage, or find a rare Med Injector, think again. The infection escalates if you ignore it, and in a stroke of masochistic genius, the mod has removed Med Injectors.

What I particularly love about this mod is how it transforms the game from a tense resource-management thriller, into some body horror, frantically racing against your own biology. It adds another level of immersion when it's your own body betraying you.

The lone zombies are pretty easy to avoid - some would say they’re more of an annoyance than a threat.

Now, they can be a potential game-over state that persists across your saves. My heart is racing just thinking about it.

But don’t worry, it’s not actually impossible. That would take away all the fun!

A green herb buys you10 minutes and removes 1 stack.

If you pick up a G+G Blend, it gives you an extra 15 minutes and removes 2 stacks.

The ultimate cure - a G+G+G blend removes all but one stack and grants 30 minutes of "suppression," pausing the escalation timer.

How to Install Resident Evil 9 Difficulty Mods

If you're ready to make the Resident Evil Requiem zombies as scary as they were in 1998, you'll need REFramework for Resident Evil 9, which you can find here. Drop the reframework/ folder directly into your Resident Evil Requiem game directory. Launch the game, and the script will load automatically.

It’s a brutal, unforgiving way to play, but in a month where Pokemon Pokopia is dominating our cozy time, maybe a little bit of genuine, infectious terror is exactly what we need to balance the scales.