Review: Resident Evil 3 Remake is a problematic thrill-a-minute adventure
The latest Resident Evil game is way too short, but it's a lot of fun.
Image: Capcom
A game about a pandemic infecting an entire city? What is this, a crossover episode?
Resident Evil 3 Remake is a blessing. Its predecessor near-flawlessly remade a classic horror game for newer audiences everywhere, while paying homage to its fans by reintroducing iconic moments from the original with touched up visuals and polished gameplay. I think most of us who finished Resident Evil 2 Remake immediately prayed that Resident Evil 3 would get the same treatment - and boy, did Capcom answer that prayer quickly.
Unfortunately, Resident Evil is a real mixed bag. It introduces some of the best moments the franchise has enjoyed to date - but it’s also vastly inferior to Resident Evil 2 as a whole. Instead of presenting Nemesis as a stronger, faster, better Mr. X, the iconic flamethrower-wielding monster is relegated to chase scenes and more than one disappointing bossfight.
The story so far
Raccoon City is an iconic location in the Resident Evil franchise, and it's brought to life beautifully here.
Resident Evil 3 starts out as a prequel to the game before it. Jill Valentine - S.T.A.R. officer and protagonist of the first Resident Evil game, has come out of a traumatic zombie outbreak in Spencer mansion with nothing but nightmares and questions. She knows that the Umbrella Corporation was behind the event somehow - but lacks the knowledge and power to take them down. Now stuck in a city she hates, she finds herself in the middle of yet another zombie outbreak. Poor Jill just can't catch a break.
Most of the city’s occupants have devolved into bloodthirsty monsters, and a massive beast is out to kill her at all costs. This is Nemesis - a hulking, virtually unkillable Tyrant that haunts Jill’s every step in this zombie-infested city. What I’ve described is just the first ten minutes of this game, but it does no justice to Resident Evil 3’s opening segment. It completely blows away the opening of Resident Evil 2 and kicks off Jill’s terrible, no good, very bad day with aplomb.
Nemesis will constantly hunt you down throughout the game, but it's not as stressful an experience as the game wants it to be. I would even go so far as to say that Resident Evil 2's Mr. X was a much more formidable villain during gameplay.
Afterwards, you’re introduced to the story’s key players - the most important of which are several members of the Umbrella Biohazard Countermeasure Service, including the one and only Carlos Oliveira. Carlos and Jill’s relationship in this game provides some of its best moments, blossoming from a place of distrust (after all, why would Jill ever trust an Umbrella-hired mercenary?) to something else entirely in a very natural way.
Jill’s biting one-liners and general frustration with Umbrella’s shenanigans lead to more than a few memorable moments, and I was honestly surprised by how much I ended up liking Carlos as well. The rest of the story is really nothing to shout about, however. It’s really thin, and mostly comprises three locations with a bunch of action sequences sprinkled in between them. I noticed a lot of lip sync issues as well, even in big story cutscenes. It’s a small issue, but it might take you out of the already-average story at points.
Action-packed to a fault
Bang! This is a much easier game than its predecessor, but playing on Hardcore mode might feel better to veterans of the franchise. | Capcom
Resident Evil 3 almost feels like Capcom looked at Resident Evil 6 and said, “You know what? Let’s give that action game thing a shot again. We’ll get it right this time!”
While this game blows Resident Evil 6 away with ease, it does have an Uncharted-like frantic quality that actively works against it throughout. That being said, it’s only because the original was meant to be an action game as well, so this might not bother older fans so much.
There are moments in Resident Evil 3 that feel amazing to play through. The first part of the game takes you through a breathtaking realisation of post-apocalypse Raccoon City, for example. These open-ended areas adopt the best parts of the Resident Evil formula, and fully deliver on what I wanted this game to be: a deeper dive into the world its predecessor built. I loved picking up notes and absorbing the lore and world-building Capcom wrote into this game. I loved exploring Raccoon City, and all the locations that came thereafter. When the game actually gave me the choice of going at my own pace, seeing the sights and taking the occasional knee - I adored it.
I do want to shout out some of the game's new enemy types. They're pretty great, and add some actual horror to this horror game whenever they show up. | Image: Capcom
It’s the rest of the game that’s problematic. Jill and Carlos are forced into one action setpiece after another - which take turns being either a Nemesis chase scene or a Nemesis bossfight. It feels incredibly linear, and claustrophobically so. Chase scenes rarely require anything more from the player than tilting the left stick forward, making them feel like glorified quicktime events. Bossfights (though there was one in particular that I loved) lean on being too easy, and absurdly cheesy.
On the whole, this game is much less ambitious than its predecessor. Where Resident Evil 2 Remake delivered some of the franchise’s most terrifying moments, this one just fails to reach those heights. Unfortunately, most of these issues are very much by design. It’s meant to be more action-oriented than its predecessor, which ironically makes it easier and unexciting. I finished my first playthrough with a whole bunch of unused healing items and around 30 shotgun shells, which says a lot about this game’s difficulty.
It’s really short but at least it’s got multiplayer
Resident Evil: Resistance pits three players against one in multiplayer maps.
The biggest disappointment with this game by far, is that it’s shockingly short. My first playthrough ran for just shy of six hours, which is ludicrous for any game with this price point. I really took my time with it too, so I suspect that veterans of the franchise will finish the campaign much quicker. Like any Resident Evil game, the campaign does have a ton of replayability. An in-game store also allows you to buy bonuses for repeated playthroughs - such as extra weapons and higher melee damage. Currency is earned by simply playing through the campaign.
This game comes with a multiplayer component as well, titled Resident Evil: Resistance. Resistance is an asymmetrical multiplayer experience - pitting a Mastermind against three Survivors. Survivors have to go through a map while completing objectives to get to the end and escape within a time limit. These objectives include puzzle solving and destroying equipment - and successfully doing so gives them more time. Special abilities and good teamwork is key for success here.
What might have made the multiplayer mode better is if more classic Resident Evil characters were made playable, instead of the new uninteresting ones.
The Mastermind’s sole mission is to slow the Survivors down. Masterminds have plenty of tools to accomplish this - they can track players through environments using cameras, and spawn enemies such as zombies, lickers and dogs to slow them down or kill them. Killing Survivors takes out a chunk of the time they have left to escape, and to that end, Masterminds can choose to control the monsters they summon as well. They can play as iconic bosses from Resident Evil 2 such as Mr. X/Tyrant and William Birkin, or just a regular ol’ zombie.
As far as online multiplayer modes go, this is one of Resident Evil’s better efforts. I encountered a ton of latency issues and poor matchmaking times, but the matches I did get were exciting enough. To its credit, playing as both the Mastermind and a Survivor feels equally fun in different ways, which lends the mode replayability. I’m sure it’ll find a fanbase of its own, but it still doesn’t add enough value to the game to justify its price tag.
Verdict
Jill is a fantastic protagonist, and her interactions with Carlos bring out some of the game's very best moments. | Image: Capcom
Despite many of my grievances with this game, I still find Resident Evil 3 Remake to be one of the best games in the franchise. It’s just structured badly, even as an action game. Flying through one action setpiece after another might feel exciting at first, but it quickly loses its lustre as the game goes on. Nemesis, an absolute beast of an enemy and one of the franchise’s very best, disappoints here. He doesn’t feel like the constant threat he should be (save for one area), and only pops up whenever he needs to take a beating.
Don’t get me wrong - I adored Resident Evil 3 despite its faults, and I have plans to play through it many more times. It boasts incredibly detailed environments, great characters and a fun villain to top it all off. However, it’s hard to say that I don’t also feel cheated out of what could have been. Many of the game’s environments feel like they could’ve been greatly expanded on, and feel disappointingly limited as a result.
This game is woefully overpriced, but if you’re a hardcore fan with plans to attempt multiple playthroughs - you’ll definitely want to pick this up anyway.
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