NOTE - because the RE3 Remake uses the same engine/baseline assets as its predecessor, in-depth discussions about the graphics will not be had here minus signaling highlights and/or notable differences
NOTE #2 - should you play this, I recommend doing-so before RE2R due to it not only bridging the gap between the first two games, but setting up some things you witness in the second
RE3 marks the first time I actually saw the turning point in a title’s quality, this observation serving as both a blessing and a curse: on the plus side, it means I can definitively call it a great experience for portion X, but on the downside, it means I can also definitively call it a poor experience for remaining Y.
Before delving into my personal dilemmas, though, let’s first address those popular sentiments you’ve no doubt heard about RE3 on the interwebs (and why I believe them to be faulty): yes, this game is short, though not to the point of being DLC. I’ve always hated this notion that a shorter sequel should be relegated to extra content due to that thinking severely misinterpreting the inherent point of a story expansion: to elaborate on the characters from their preceding material. If you’re focusing on an entirely new cast, then what you’ve done is create a brand new product that consequently deserves its own, full-fledged release.
Now, charging $60.00 for a seven-hour game is plainly inexcusable and worthy of scorn; however, that’s a fundamentally-different argument from the one made by DLC claimants, particularly when their hypocrisy is taken into account -- not a single one of these individuals would call for Hearts of Stone or Shivering Isles to be published as sequels despite offering close to 20 hours of content each, meaning they agree that length is not an indicator for such labeling.
The other common complaint against RE3 is that it abandons its predecessors’ survival horror elements, and again, that’s just not true. There is a greater emphasis on action here, no question about it, but foregoing inventory & ammo conservation will absolutely be the death knell of you should you ignore them (more on that later).
Those topics aside, let’s get into the real meat of things. RE3 is interesting in that it’s more of a sequel to the OG than even RE2 was in the sense that it’s directly continuing off the events of the first via focusing on Jill as she lives under a self-imposed purdah courtesy of Umbrella all-but-hounding her into rescinding her statements about the Spencer Manor. Things take a turn for the worse when a tyrant named Nemesis assaults her apartment amidst an outbreak in the surrounding city, jumpstarting the game’s narrative of aiding in the evacuation whilst avoiding Nemesis.
Look, from what I understand, the Resident Evil games have never been strong on stories; however, I must give credit to Capcom here for at least trying something new -- between Jill’s nightmares and the greater use of cinematics, there definitely was an attempt to push RE3 beyond the B-Movie roots of its predecessors, and while that obviously attracted detraction, the unpopular truth is it fundamentally lends the cast a more-investable manner. These aren’t a group of archetypes tossed within a tongue-in-cheek set-up, but “real” people slung in the middle of a horrific nightmare. Don’t get me wrong, there’s still PLENTY of DNA from the B-Movie era (Jill’s nigh-invincibility/one-liners being the cream of the crop), but compared to RE1 and 2, where I felt it degraded the immersive factor significantly, that doesn’t happen here and I ultimately found myself caring more about the fate of Raccoon City’s denizens.
That said, I did claim things go down-hill after a certain point, and part of that’s owed to the back-half of the game literally rehashing your classic RE set-piece of a laboratory infiltration amidst scores of increased threats & really annoying boss fights. However, the silver lining to all this is I can tell you exactly when the quality switch occurs: during said hospital section, there’s a part where you have to kill two Hunters in a room only accessible from the adjacent chamber (itself filled with two zombies). Alright, no big deal - you’ll temporarily incapacitate the zombies before moving-in and dropping the Hunters, only….there’s a door between you and them that auto-shuts, and going inside fully would be suicide courtesy of the Hunters’ one-shot slice.
Alright, no big deal, we’ll just attract their attention and goad them towards the linking area: surely that’s a safe bet, right? Yeah except….there’s very little room for maneuvering here, and did I mention these b@stards have a one-shot attack? Okay, then just drop a flashbang (assuming you have some): that’ll stun them for a death blow right? WELL….did I mention these guys are only vulnerable in their mouth area, and that flashbanging will just send them spiraling in circles that make it infinitely harder to aim?
Okay, then lead them into the adjacent corridor - surely there’s plenty of space there for proper combat engagement? The great news is there is! The bad news is…you can’t: the Hunter that followed you is unable to leave the second room, while its buddy is programmed to stay put in his original spot, meaning the game is literally coercing you into doing things the way it wants.
Yeah, I’m not lying when I tell you guys I died at least 10 times here, and it wasn’t because I lacked the skill to take on two Hunters, but because I lacked the fortitude to fairly deal with them in a tight-knit pen. You can’t strategize & you can’t avoid them, forcing you to do one of three things: master the dodge-punch, drop grenades, or outright cheese the game via shooting through the portal space within the open door frames.
The first one is faulty, not only because of an annoying grace period between strikes, but because knocking down a Hunter has a chance of putting it in a position where the camera literally prevents you from aiming down at its mouth. Grenades, on the other hand, are privy to inventory management, which I admittedly failed at due to using all of mine on the preceding Licker & Nemesis fights.
So yes, if you were an actual strategist who saved your bombs, you’ll probably be scratching your head wondering why the hell I’m b!tching so much. But for the rest of you, chances are you won’t have two grenades on you, and even if you do, you’ll still have to contend with a THIRD Hunter who surprise-attacks you in the aforementioned corridor RIGHT AFTER this ordeal.
And what makes the whole fiasco particularly d@mning is that it wasn’t just a one-off incident: from that point onward, I genuinely felt the game get worse, and I think it had to do with a design shift towards mandatory action: you’ve got a section holding off waves of zombies, multiple boss fights with Nemesis, and one of the most groan-inducing fetch quests ever thrown in a third act involving even more brawls with Hunters. I’m not sure what went wrong, but to those complaining about RE3 cutting out content from the original, I literally have no idea how you came out of this game thinking it was too short -- the last act drags like crazy, and if there was more intended, the devs made the right choice culling things.
Everything before that point, though, is largely solid, and I was even enjoying things more than RE2. Part of that has to do with the greater emphasis on wider spaces- you’re not contending with cheapshot zombies hiding behind doors but an overrun piccadilly ripe with complexes, and the surprise factor of not knowing what’s behind every nook & cranny runs miles above the repetitive stagnation that overran the RE2 station
More importantly, though, RE3 incorporates a lot more scripted events, which might seem counterintuitive to the series til you realize it was what happened in RE1 -- some of the most famous scenes from that game were linear in-scope, and it therefore adds to my earlier argument about RE3 being the better sequel as far as consistency.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that a number of these moments involve Nemesis, a decision that’s drawn ire from OG fanboys courtesy of him being pure RNG in the original game. Now, I am sympathetic to that criticism given how objectively big of a change it was; however, at the same time I understand why it was done -- Capcom not only wanted to wring greater cinematic value out of their product, but blatantly wished to avoid rehashing Mr. X from the RE2 remake, and I got to say, I frankly found Nemesis to be the scarier of the two solely because you never knew when he was going to pop-up (at least initially, more on that later). I know fans will claim that that was technically the case with X; however, they’re no doubt forgetting that sick synth beat that would drop signaling the tyrant’s arrival. Nemesis, au contraire, has no such indicator -- when he does show-up, you have the option of either fighting him for an upgrade or hauling @ss until he disappears.
Unfortunately, Nemesis does lose a lot of his intimidation factor in the, you guessed it, second half wherein his reappearances come across as both predictable & silly courtesy of a reactive adaptation ability. There’s also the fact that, just like with the first two REs, the boss fights here aren’t that great, and though the devs added a dodge function for Jill, the cool-down period combined with her painfully-slow walking speed renders it largely useless (for bosses, not normal enemies).
On that note, gameplay has been largely retained verbatim from RE2R, with players having to balance inventory management against general shooting. In particular, you’ll want to master the headshot as soon as possible due to it providing a stagger effect enabling you to run past zombies without risk of injury or wasted ammo. Item crates and typewriters return as safety deposits/save stations respectively, though I will say, as someone who sucks at horror games, even I felt RE3 was a bit TOO forgiving at times with the sheer amount of save boxes it would throw at you (to give you a guys an idea, there’s one tossed-in during a chase sequence with Nemesis).
A few parts of the game have you control a secondary character named Carlos, and he was definitely intended to be the more action-oriented of the two in view of his assault rifle & aforestated falcon punch. However, because RE3 wasn’t designed as an action game, Carlos ironically ends-up being not that fun to play as due to the cramped spaces, high encounter rates, and his general blandness as an individual.
His voice acting is also mediocre, with actor Jeff Schine doing a bad Nolan North impression to boot. Thankfully, everyone else is solid, with Nicole Tompkins, in particular, giving an outstanding performance as Jill, her role successfully exuding the cop’s fear, anger, and general bad@ssery in the face of terrifying obstacles.
Sound, unfortunately, is hard to judge as, yet again, the PC port of RE3 stumbled in the audio mixing (and no, it wasn’t just me as the plethora of Steam forums indicate). There were times where the sound cut-out completely and I had to relaunch things, but the real problems laid in the game playing at a diminished decibel even with my speakers turned all the way up.
Based on what I did perceive, though, RE3 definitely has your routine AAA excellence, with item interaction dins, in particular, standing out as crisply-constructed. That said, my sole complaint would be some laziness I discerned via the silent enviro foleying concerning the whirl of ceiling fans within rooms or the buzzing of channel letter signs above shopfronts, though I acknowledge this could’ve just been a casualty of the aforementioned muteness (headphones users tell me otherwise).
Music was somehow attributed to four composers (Masami Ueda, Azusa Kato, Kota Suzuki, Takayasu Sodeoka), who, nonetheless, did a solid job accentuating the action horror undertones of the game. They definitely weren’t trying to scare players, but moreso throw them into adrenal-drenched scenes, and the score definitely succeeds at that for better and for worse (the laboratory and boss tunes occupying the former, the Nemesis track of drum cadences and hive screams occupying the latter).
Graphically, I’m not going to go too in-depth since RE3 is basically a facelift of RE2R (right down to the pain animations); however, this is far from a bad thing as both are absolutely spectacular specimens and showcase why the RE Engine is a firm competitor with Unreal in terms of photorealistic performance. Despite featuring extensive fictional phenomena, every entity & locale here feels as though it could’ve thrived in the real world, and I feel that’s always been the strength of Capcom’s zombies compared to other releases like Days Gone or Dying Light -- these creatures are believable as far as potential. Furthermore, Capcom’s artisans took the time to add even more aesthetic diversity to their undead, ranging from blood drench and multiple races to a sundry of clothing styles reflective of Raccoon City’s heritage.
Now I’ve heard some folks claim the gore factor was trimmed down from RE2R due to an emphasis on larger crowds, and while I can’t speak on whether or not that’s accurate (I didn’t engage in much combat in RE2), I will agree that blood, in general, does look less vivid here than it did in its predecessor, often resembling a paint job versus the splattered-on horrors of before (the lab section, in particular, losing a lot of its appeal as a result).
Additionally, there were a few hitches I spotted despite playing on max settings: first, puddles not reflecting Jill’s model; second, a general blurriness in city portions (perhaps intended to convey pollution, but which ultimately came across as unnecessary haze); and third, the fact that most of the enviro bullet impacts you see are relegated to predetermined animations over the free code nature of most shooters (i.e., you aren’t going to glean shattered glass from gunning a window).
Finally, I was not a fan of the flashlight being auto-triggered as it meant you were forced to squint when placed in dark spots not preordained by the devs as “black enough” for a torch.
Nonetheless, these are extremely small complaints as the lion’s share of the title is absolutely top-quality, with some of my favorite observations being the following: mirrored reflections on poster cases, light bleed off vehicular lamps, the fleshy contusions on Nemesis himself, and of course the sheer amount of detail adorning every area (a newsstand in the subway, for example, being chock-full of snacks, books, and titled magazines).
Fundamentally, though, what matters most in these kinds of games is the general flow of things, and on that front RE3 sadly stumbled way too much to be worth a hard recommend. And you guys have to understand, contrary to my implications, the beginning parts aren’t faultless: you will get frustrated during certain sections or moments, and a solid second half would’ve been the perfect alleviant for these pips. As it stands, you’ve got to take the partial bad with the badder and simply make a decision as to whether or not your love of Jill Valentine is worth the excursion.
NOTES
-One thing I never understood is why Umbrella even sent Nemesis after Jill when they clearly had the personnel to dispose of her cleanly & quietly. I did strive to collect all optional stationery and didn’t see an explanation in there, though it’s possible I simply missed out on the proper doc.
-Speaking of documents, while I’ve praised past REs for the quality of their writing, I did feel the ones here were of a lesser degree. They still fleshed out the world, but just felt more exposition-y compared to the anecdotal tales of yore that concurrently expanded RE’s lore.
-Speaking of Nemesis & Jill, I agree with critics that the amount of cutscenes showing him grab her head was extraneous to the point of ridiculousness -- if he was capable of doing that, why not just pop her skull like a balloon?
-Nemesis entering a doorway is the exact same animation as Mr. X’s.
-The opening of the game is completely live action and surprisingly well-shot.
-I loved how you could see the impact each graphical change would have on the game in the settings menu.
-One unfortunate oversight - when reloading the grenade launcher, Jill will fill all 5 cartridges even if you have less than that amount.
-The Save Room and Laboratory melodies were excellent and worth a listen to.
