Play it again, Jill – “Resident Evil 3” Review

It’s a shame to admit, but I know the world of Resident Evil much better in terms of movies. I saw all the productions with Milla Jovovich and Japanese animations (and no one will pay me back that time). And the first game in this universe that I played was … Resident Evil VII: Biohazard . So the part that breaks most with its predecessors. I was not able to get acquainted with the roots of the series, or even with the remake of the second part. Therefore, the Resident Evill 3 review will be written from a freshman’s perspective and without pink nostalgia glasses.

Umbrellas, umbrellas for adults and zombies!

The main character of the game is Jill Valentine, an agent of STARS (Special Tactics And Rescue Service). As we learn at the beginning of the game, she is one of the few living members of this special police force, which the evil Umbrella Corporation would very much like to change by sending a powerful creature named Nemesis on her. All this while there is a zombie outbreak in Raccoon City. Jill, escaping the monster and the hordes of the undead, meets Carlos, a mercenary working for Umbrellas, who is unaware of his master’s true intentions. Together, the heroes try to save the city from destruction.

The game spares no more intense experiences from the very beginning. Nemesis’ first attack on Jill was phenomenal, lending a disturbing tone to the whole. The Umbrellas monster is powerful and seems indestructible. The player then only has to run away. Later, during many more encounters with the creature, you can try to slow the beast down, but this is only a temporary solution. Capcom was able to brilliantly introduce tension and a sense of constant danger.

Like other games in the series, the player gets control over more than one character. This way we play some parts of the game as Carlos. It is a pity that the gameplay of this hero does not differ much from Jill. The bodyguard, instead of an agile dodge, can hit the zombie from the bar and has grenades in his arsenal, but this is only cosmetic. It’s a pity that more variety has not been tempted.

Resident Evil, or back and forth

I have been faced with allegations about the length of the game. It took me 7 hours to complete it, which is a completely acceptable game time for me. But I see the problem in the intensity of the sensations. I have the impression that there is little content here (including locations) and that is why everything is dragged out here. Like its predecessor, Resident Evil 3 abandons the rigid camera setting known from the original in favor of a third-person perspective. At the same time, a very tunnel-like world has been left, through which any restrictions on movement are very noticeable. Every now and then the road is blocked by a car or a collapsed building. It also affects the gameplay, because although the player has to interact with zombies more often, this tightness spoils the entire immersion. Backtracking also happens during the game – Jill has to return to the previous location more than once.

A similar repetition is also, unfortunately, noticeable in the duel with the boss. While all the escape sequences from Nemesis (which becomes more and more coke during the game and does not hesitate to use a rocket launcher or a flame thrower) are excellent, the duels are boring. Where’s the finesse, how is the player’s goal to simply empty the magazines of each weapon and avoid the beast’s blows? Worse still, such a bad fight happens twice.

But it has always been like that!

Staying with the mechanics – some retros are OK. Typewriter save points with very occasional autosave are classics that don’t get in the way. It even gives a pleasant aftertaste of uncertainty, because the player tries not to die even more. There is one thing I DON’T HAPPY for that. Namely, a totally horrible inventory system. I’m not interested in the fact that this is a typical Resident element. The limited number of slots is frustrating, and the possibility of increasing them is usually offset by acquiring new weapons and having to spend space for equipment and ammunition. Additionally, the items needed to complete the mission share the same space. And instead of automatically throwing away unnecessary items, the game only marks them with a trash can icon. I suspect that I spent at least an hour of my game running to the box,

Evil Domain: Resistance

A highly exposed element of the game is the multiplayer mode, called Resident Evil Resistance (it is launched with a separate icon). It is a representative of the increasingly fashionable asymmetric multiplayer gameplay. On the one hand, you can play the role of the test subject that is to survive the experiment (i.e. a zombie attack), on the other hand, the so-called The brain of the operation, which is to destroy these efforts.

You can see some borrowings from other titles. The pattern of Dead by Daylight, each of the characters that you can choose from has unique abilities and its own development tree (although choosing it by one person blocks this possibility for other players). Contrary to this title, cooperating players, however, have the option to defend themselves against the other side, be it with melee or firearms. A peculiar novelty is the course of the game. The team of survivors has to go through three rooms, and to achieve this, you need to perform certain tasks. The first stage is to search for items (a kind of escape room), then find the keys that the zombies have, and finally destroy the Umbrellas’ objects. And all this in a limited time, where each positive action gives you extra seconds, and death (important: respawn here) and zombie attacks take them away.

In turn, the Operation Brain is responsible for controlling the rooms through cameras (a kind of Five Night at Freddy’s on boosters). He has the ability to passively set traps and summon various types of monsters, or to impersonate one of them. Each of the available brains has a unique bio-weapon, the most powerful creature (including the classic G-Birkin and Tyrant), with which the survivors have little chance. A cool idea is the training mode, in which you can go through each stage dry and learn how to place objects and cameras.

I played a few games, mainly as survivors, and… I didn’t like it. It’s obvious, but when I played with my crew (cheers to Nox-dl and NastyDumpling), it still had arms and legs (and not in the zombie’s mouth), because finding items was much easier thanks to communication with each other. The other approaches, with the aliens, were far more chaotic and didn’t encourage me to keep playing. Especially that matchmaking often takes several minutes, and there are quite often situations with the loss of the host.

Nicer than the original

The technical layer is at a high level. The character models of the main characters in particular look great, although there could be more types of zombies. The labyrinthine locations do not allow you to see too much from the background. Unfortunately, AI is lame in places. It was enough to stand in the door in some places to shoot the opponents with impunity, who did not react to it in any way.

Cutlet

As already mentioned, I am not able to judge how much the remake improved the game compared to the original. There are still some fresh elements in the game and it is a pity that they have not been modernized. At the same time, it was very enjoyable to play and I can confidently recommend Resident Evil 3 to everyone – even to those who do not know their predecessors. I myself definitely want more and will soon reach the second part to continue my tradition of playing this cycle backwards.

We would like to thank Cenega for providing a copy of the game for review (PS4).