Directors: Yasuhiro Seto, Yasuhiro Anpo, Yukio Ando
Producer: Masachika KawataOh, Capcom… why must you play with my heart? It was easy to assume that R3make would be another great title, following two of the best titles in the history of the series and made on the same engine — but alas. All Capcom had to do was remake the game the same way they made RE2, but instead, they chose the route of a ‘reimagining’. Indeed, this is less a remake of RE3 and more of a mis-marketed standalone expansion for RE2, loosely based on a few of RE3’s concepts. A lot of what you’d expect is missing here — ink ribbons, limited ammo, mercenaries mode, zombie physics, dismemberment gore, diverging plot points, defensive weapons, most of the original locations, and most of the puzzles are all absent. In their place is a mostly linear action-oriented game which feels like a compromise between the RE2 remake and the action-oriented approach of RE4. Like the original RE3, this was released just a year after RE2 — but since AAA games in 2020 require a bit more development time than they did back in 1999, this edition feels like even more more of a rushed cash-in. This title is the first casualty of Capcom’s newly planned yearly release schedule for Resident Evil, and it likely won’t be the last.
One of the the things RE2 did incredibly well was expand the original campaign without affecting the pacing, but the opposite happened here — the campaign was reduced and sped up. The original RE3 had 5 overarching areas — the city, a return to RPD, a clock tower, a hospital, and city outskirts. Of the 4 areas that are unique to RE3, the outskirts (park & factory) have been cut entirely in this remake, as has the indoor section of the clock tower — only the boss fight in front of it is represented here, albeit unrecognizably. The city areas are heavily cut and hardly resemble their original counterparts. The cut areas have been replaced by scripted chase sequences and new segments which allowed for more asset recycling from RE2 (more sewers, more NEST). And the recycling doesn’t end there — for instance, music is reprised from (the original) RE2 and the item boxes from RE7 return here without any alteration. Other details feel unfinished, like the laser reticule — a red dot which looks like it came straight out of MS Paint. New enemies sometimes show up in only a single section of the game, never to be seen again. All of this adds up to an experience which feels oddly budget in spite of its AAA production values.
All of this could have been forgivable if the game still provided the wonderfully tense feeling that I seek from Resident Evil, but the only time I felt it in my first playthrough (on Hardcore difficulty) was in an optional item-gathering sequence at the end of the hospital, following on the heels of a pale imitation of RE4’s house seige. Otherwise, the game is designed like an on-rails shooter that just happens to retain a few design elements from RE2, and this is reflected by the game’s perfunctory plot pacing. Everything happens a lot faster right off the bat, with Nemesis being introduced almost immediately and Jill meeting the Umbrella team less than 10 minutes in. By contrast, the original game built up to the first Nemesis encounter, and Jill spent a bit of time in the city on her own before encountering the Umbrella team. The game breezes through the heavily cut city areas, which is a shame, because they’re the only part remake which feel true to the spirit of the original.
It’s hard not to imagine the missed potential here. The city could have been the game’s main selling point — a big, open area, filled with puzzles and vastly expanded from its original scope — but instead, it was abridged. Relative to RE2, this makes little sense — how does it take longer to explore one floor of a police station than it does to scrounge through several city blocks? Granted, RE3 was always about running more than getting to know a space intimately, and they’ve dialed that up here, but in practice that just means that most areas in the game feel underutilized and underdeveloped. This change in focus is reflected in the abundance of ammo and the focus on combat. There’s a new dodge mechanic (that’s thankfully a lot easier to use than in the original title), and quite a lot of emphasis is put on dodging and rolling here — special retaliatory moves are hidden behind perfectly timed dodges. Defensive weapons have been replaced by a quicktime event used to reduce zombie damage. In essence, the moodiness of RE2 has been replaced with RE6’s incessant floor-rolling.
The star of the show here is, of course, Nemesis, whose redesign looks rather… unfortunate, to my eyes. His face his covered with a trashbag at the start in order to later provide a dramatic face reveal, but said reveal ends up providing a sinking feeling instead of the intended fear. Replacing his facial scars and stitches with a nose makes him look significantly goofier and less menacing than his 1999 counterpart, and his Alien3-inspired 2nd stage is far more cliche and uninspired than his original transformations (more angry dog than intelligent stalker). Looks aside, only the brief city portion has him stalk you like Mr. X — in the rest of the game, he is relegated to scripted chase sequences and boss battles (providing more of what was arguably the weakest part of RE2’s remake). Even in the city, he ends up being more of an annoyance than a terror, chasing you at high speeds, jumping in front of you, and knocking you over with his tentacle. Despite how overpowered and scary this may sound, it feels like the developers had no idea how to make this a fair fight, and instead opted to artificially reduce the difficulty. For instance, he never attacks you after knocking you over, and instead lets you recover for a moment and get up before attacking you again. I never expected Nemesis to be so principled and considerate!
On the note of surprisingly friendly things, hardcore mode is considerably less hardcore here than it was in RE2. The game frequently autosaves (allowing you to easily get away with saving less than 5x) and there’s practically a typewriter and item box in every other room. The frequency of safe rooms removes the need for most of the inventory management and also makes it quite easy to retreat to safety. There are 2 unlockable difficulty modes after Hardcore — Nightmare and Inferno — but they still autosave, lack ink ribbons, and feature frequent safe rooms. Enemy placement is different in these higher difficulties, and the pacing of the city area actually works a lot better in Nightmare — provided you skip the brash cutscenes, this is the closest this game comes to providing a classic Resident Evil experience. The feeling is short lived, as nothing much can fix the game’s lackluster back half. By the time I reached the final boss in Nightmare and discovered that the only way to defeat it was by mastering perfect dodge, I was ready to call it quits.
Unfortunately, since mercenaries and decision points were cut from the remake, these difficulty modes provide all of the game’s replayability. To incentivize replaying, the challenge system from RE2 returns with a twist. Completing challenges gives you points which can be used to purchase things like stat boosting items, new weapons, and weapons with infinite ammo. Many of the challenges involve killing large numbers of zombies, often with a specific weapon. This grinding is yet another way I was reminded of RE6.
Much hubbub has been made about this game’s length, but a short campaign isn’t unusual for this franchise — the real problem is the game’s focus. It does the same thing for RE2 that the action-focused ‘Not a Hero’ DLC did for RE7 — but that was a free DLC that played more like the main game at higher difficulties. This full retail title isn’t even up to that standard, and it would have been disappointing even if it had been sold as a $30 expansion for RE2. The weird compromise between the design of RE2’s remake and the shooter dark days of the series feels a lot like the first Revelations title — a linear shooter with just enough hints of classic survival horror gameplay to make you mad at the missed potential. RE3 isn’t as bad as Revelations, but the fact that this game appeared in what seemed to be an era of renewed focus for Capcom makes all of this sting that much worse. They might have saved themselves a lot of ire if they’d simply made this a new title without the weight of expectation. RE3 remade in the style of RE2 could have been a glorious thing to behold, but thanks to this game, we’ll never get to find out.
RATING: 6/10 Hunter Gammas
[Originally posted in 2020]
RESIDENT EVIL: RESISTANCE
The RE3 remake was packaged with a multiplayer title called ‘Resident Evil: Resistance’, an asymmetrical title developed by NeoBards Entertainment where 4 survivors face off against a mastermind. The mastermind tries to prevent the survivors from escaping by summoning monsters and setting traps and camera turrets, while the survivors have to solve puzzles, avoid the traps, and battle the monsters. The mastermind is able to control monsters in third person and attack the survivors firsthand. Each of the seven survivors (including RE3’s Jill Valentine) has a special skill — healing, hacking, traps, firearms, etc. — as do each of the five masterminds (including Anette Birkin).
It’s hard to evaluate this game beyond the tutorial and practice missions (which sadly lack AI controlled enemies), as it’s been delisted from the Steam store, the player base has dwindled, and the matchmaking seems broken. It at least seems like an interesting concept for a Resident Evil multiplayer title, complete with a proper plot setup — Umbrella is conducting human experiments on virus transmission. Reviews indicate that the game was less successful than this promising setup might indicate, especially because it had balance issues and was plagued by cheaters.
