Resident Evil 3 Remake Review
Resident Evil 3 Remake was next in line after finishing Resident Evil 2 Remake and Resident Evil Requiem. I had really high hopes, given my positive experience with the franchise so far.
Another Day in Raccoon City
Resident Evil 3 Remake starts off pretty amazing with its use of live-action material in its introduction to the Raccoon City outbreak. Experiencing the news of the outbreak through television footage breeds a sense of realism that is very much in the spirit of the original games, where they used real people during its introduction in Resident Evil 1.
Afterwards, the game puts you in the shoes of a person waking up with a black-and-white screen filter on. A sense of dread and horror seems to be what this section sets its mood to be. Looking around, you see evidence that your character is someone investigating something big; made incredibly obvious with the “conspiracy theory wall” filled with newspaper clippings, printed-out documents, sticky notes, and photos. The game wants to grab your attention to your bathroom, which has running water in it. Entering it welcomes you with the bathroom sink with an open faucet, and a handgun by the side. Closing the faucet, then follows up with a reflection of the woman you are playing as slowly changing into a zombie. Then you wake up.
The entirety of this section was really well done for me, and it provides us with some background that, whoever our character is, she is having nightmares. Something about her past, her situation, her job, or her life is haunting her. That’s all, really well done, but honestly, that never came around in the game ever again.
Anyway, waking up puts you in the present time, and you can, once again, search around your apartment and investigate different items. Clearly, your character has not kept herself clean and organized, immersed in her work. The bathroom sink is still open, so you go ahead and close it, only for the phone to ring and catch your attention next.
Answering it, you hear a frantic male voice calling you Jill, which you would have known if you read the stuff lying around the apartment, trying to warn you of something—until a monstrous, wrapped-up humanoid creature busts through your walls and tries to put you down. Through sheer luck, you manage to get some space, and now a chase ensues. Pretty high-octane introduction to an enemy and an immediate change of pace—not an inherently bad thing if not for the monstrous creature who suddenly gets introduced. Why? If you are not aware at all of the previous games, then this may be fine to you. If you are, you might have the same sentiments as me: this creature is named Nemesis, and its entire purpose is to eliminate all S.T.A.R.S. members, which includes Jill. One of his iconic traits is that he says the word “stars” over and over again—a monotonous yet deadly reminder of his one ultimate goal. However, all throughout the chase sequence, he never really says it, and that is a bit disappointing.
Regardless, you, as Jill Valentine, manage to escape for a brief moment and meet up with another S.T.A.R.S. member, Brad Vickers, who was the one who tried to warn you on the phone. However, your short reunion is not a happy one, as you find out that Raccoon City is in ruins, run over by zombies. One bad thing leads to another, Brad dies, and you manage to get away safely to a subway station turned underground shelter with the help of an Umbrella soldier named Carlos Oliveira. Everything in the first 10 to 20 minutes of the game is just the introduction, and it has been really fast-paced and action-packed. This was way different in tone from Resident Evil 2 Remake, which had less action and definitely more survival horror. A shift in general gameplay focus isn’t inherently bad, and there is no problem for me here.
However, during the entire chase sequence with Nemesis, there were quick-time event moments that made me feel that things aren’t going to bode well for me. It is not that I hate quick-time events; it’s just that it felt very unnecessary for the moments they were placed in for this game. I do not like QTEs if there is no purpose to them other than a “hey, this is here to make it feel like you’re contributing to the story” when it doesn’t. That is how it was here.
That is all from the first 10 to 20 minutes; there is a lot to unpack with the rest of the game.
The combat in Resident Evil 3 Remake is pretty similar to the previous entry, but Jill and Carlos—yes, you play as Carlos just like you can play both Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield in 2—have certain defensive maneuvers they can use against enemies. Jill can dodge, and Carlos can push back enemies. There are specific windows where you can perform perfect versions of each defensive maneuver, triggering a slow-motion moment that provides more time for you to think about your next moves. Performing perfect dodges with Jill also allows her to follow up with a stronger knife slash, while performing perfect shoves with Carlos turns it into a punch that negates damage and literally throws enemies forward to the ground. Even without performing perfect dodges or shoves, there are now more ways to avoid or engage in combat, and they fit perfectly into the gameplay loop.
However, not all changes in combat made in Resident Evil 3 Remake are good. My biggest issue with this game is that zombies are much more durable than they were in Resident Evil 2 Remake. The number of times I had to shoot enemies in the head is too much, and the length of time they stay down is too short. Zombies also do not get staggered as easily as they would in the previous entry, and most often just tank hits while they continue to lumber forward until they grab you.
Another change they made that is not an inherent issue is that you cannot break off grabs like you did in the previous entry. Knives in Resident Evil 2 Remake are consumed to break away from zombie grabs immediately.
In this entry, you cannot do that. Instead, you are prompted to mash buttons when grabbed to break away quicker and reduce damage taken. It took me a while to figure out what mashing the buttons did, and it’s just not intuitive if your expectations are already set from the previous game. A tradeoff with this change is that knives do not break in this entry, and you can use them multiple times to finish off zombies.
Exploration and backtracking are a large part of the gameplay loop in Resident Evil games, and for this entry, it seems to have taken less importance. The reason being there are almost no puzzles involved, and the maps are pretty small. One thing this remake has over the other is that there are more levels and locations that Jill and Carlos go through, while Leon and Claire only take place in the Raccoon City Police Department (RPD) and its upper and lower levels.
Yet, despite there being more locations, Capcom seems to have missed an opportunity to allow players to actually get to know Raccoon City, as we only really explore two streets, an electric facility, the sewers, a hospital, and an underground laboratory. The game takes place in a lot of areas in the city, and traversing between them in a much more conjoined fashion would have been a really great experience. Instead, characters jump from one location to another.
Oh, the RPD was also explored very briefly in Carlos’ section, but it pretty much disappointed me with how brief it was. There was a nice scene at the start of the RPD section which looped us in with what happened with Marvin, and also used Brad as the one who hurt him. Still, the whole moment did not make sense, as after going into the RPD, Marvin just disappears, and a lot of the police department was locked up in ways that did not make sense at all. How were all the boarded-up doors suddenly cleared up from this game to the next? Where did Marvin disappear to?
Once you finish the RPD section, you go back to Jill, whose escape attempt from the city was stopped.
The exact location where Jill ended up wasn’t stated, but Carlos somehow manages to find Jill after their communications with each other were cut off abruptly and her location not being mentioned at all to him. Also, Carlos then manages to bring Jill to the Spencer Memorial Hospital with Jill on his back and his hands occupied, not letting him hold a gun and fend for himself. Are we just going to believe Carlos does this without a scratch? It would have been great to have us play through both Carlos finding Jill and bringing her back to the hospital. It also takes about half a day before Carlos finds Jill, who was unconscious after a fight with Nemesis.
Since Nemesis is brought up, I want to focus on him now for a bit. Nemesis’ whole purpose was to track down and eliminate all S.T.A.R.S. members. Yet, somehow, he never really deals the finishing blow to Jill whenever he has the chance. In one moment, he manages to grab Jill by the head, but doesn’t crush it. Instead, she is thrown to the ground and has a flamethrower pointed at her by Nemesis. Still, he does not shoot the flamethrower and allows her to stand up and run away. Why? The entire thing with Nemesis and Jill just did not make sense to me.
Now, let’s look at Jill. I felt like Jill was not really a fleshed-out character in this game. Yes, we had glimpses of her psyche when we played her in the apartment and after she got cured in the hospital, but for the most part, she is just portrayed as a haughty action chick. Nothing inherently wrong with it, but with how they used Leon previously, this would have been really good to continue as a trend.
I guess, to be fair, this isn’t anything new, as I felt that Claire’s personality and development were also not shown properly in the previous game.
Regardless, this does not excuse Jill being a one-dimensional character. I think they really tried to push Jill as a very cool and powerful character, and to me, it just did not work. It did not make sense to me that Jill literally has a rocket explode right beside her, yet she just gets thrown across the next street unharmed. It also did not make sense to me that in the final fight she carries a literal railgun twice her size and shoots it at Nemesis. Of course, a lot of these games are not supposed to be sensible or logical, but they just pushed the personality pin too much on one end for me to actually care and like her.
Enough about Jill, let us go to Carlos. Carlos was also a one-dimensional character, and there are only two sections in the game where you play as him: RPD and Hospital. From what I know about the older game, he never really had that much character or backstory. In the remake, albeit still being bland, he was given more involvement with the entire game and story, which was a welcome change. Still, because the game and each section is so short, he just felt too unexplored, like Jill was.
Is Resident Evil 3 Remake A Good Game? Is Resident Evil 3 Remake Worth it?
Resident Evil 3 Remake is still a good game, but definitely a step down in experience from Resident Evil 2 Remake.
The game just felt rushed, and the pacing of the story was incredibly disjointed. Transitions between characters were not done well, and the characters themselves were really underdeveloped.
It took me half the time I did in 2 Remake to complete the game. A large part of this is the small maps and lack of puzzles. Not inherently a bad thing, but it’s just a missed opportunity to explore Raccoon City more.
I was also expecting Nemesis to be like the Tyrant was in 2 Remake, but he never was.
Also, there is no extra content or side stories like the Ghost Survivors or 4th Survivor.
While I am well aware of the original version of this game, I have yet to play it and will play it sometime soon. I may have new additions to my reflections of this remake after finishing the original version.
Leave a Reply