Resident Evil 3 Remake

(available for PlayStation 4, PC, Xbox One)
(version used for review PlayStation 4)

After my game of the year last year was the excellent Resident Evil 2 remake i was excited to learn of the Resident Evil 3 remake that was in development and got fully revealed by Capcom in a January edition of the State of Play. After what Resident Evil 2 did to update a game that’s 2 decades old it would be interesting to see how with the same gameplay and design choices an update to the follow up game would be especially with a relatively short devlopment time. You can get more thoughts on the game on mine and Ren’s stream of the game on my personal YouTube channel but here’s the rundown. The remake once again reimagines the events of the PS1 classic putting us in control of Jill Valentine in her attempt to escape Racoon City during the T-virus outbreak whilst being hunted by the bioweapon Nemesis who has been unleashed by the Umbrella Corporation in order to cover up their criminal activities by eliminating the members of S.T.A.R.S. which Jill happens to be a surviving member of. Now the big talk of this game was how they would handle Nemesis given how Mr X was updated for Resident Evil 2 remake. A lot of speculation was put out about how Nemesis could break into save rooms and would pursuit you throughout most of the game, I can tell you those reports were incorrect. Mr X would stalk you throughout large portions of the game and his presence could easily find out where you were and hunt you down if you were too inconspicuous making you think whether you would kill the zombie with a gun and risk having him hear you since you could only stagger him and not kill him. Nemesis maintains many of those qualities but 2 playthroughs have confirmed that all your encounters with him are tough and he will relentlessly pursuit you with only the ability to stagger him, all his encounters are scripted to certain segments of the game and if your aware of that each playthrough makes him less and less terrifying since you will learn how to avoid him. plus, Nemesis wasn’t even the hardest enemy that made me the most worried. That went to the Beta Hunters which move fast, hit like tanks and have Insta Kill moves (more about that later) which made any encounter with them terfying. as for the quarantine factor I don’t blame Capcom releasing a game about a viral outbreak during an actual viral outbreak, April 3^rd was always intended to be the release date and it would’ve be an incredibly awful thing to pull the release just days before release. I would say however don’t even bother installing the online multiplayer that comes with it because it is really a novelty at best and really did not hold my attention. This is not a game me and my friends are going to be playing on our online game nights. The multiplayer is dived into players and mastermind who puts enemies for the player to fight. However it’s incredibly difficult in my experience to get a game as the mastermind even living in an area with excellent internet access so I gave up most of the time.

Pros

• Survival horror gameplay is still for the most part really good: for the most part single player game is excellent still maintains the excellent survival horror that RE2 remake had modernized and once again it really is an excellent modernisation of combining the gameplay styles of the ps1 era games with the Resident Evil 4 and I actually really like some of the new mechanics introduced like the quick dodge
• Less puzzles and way less tedious when they appear: this is a me thing but I’ve always found a lot of the puzzles in the Resident Evil games slow and tedious and serve to grind the game to a halt and I argue the games are better when they’re reduced, hence why I like RE4 so much. RE3 remake actually cuts down on the puzzles and they don’t eat into your time too much
• The graphics are once again amazing: this is now the 3^rd game in the series to use the RE engine for its graphics and it still seriously looks good. These are some of the best looking game on their respective systems and really adds to the modernising of the designs of the PS1 games. You can see quite a few reactions to the level of gore the games can achieve in our streams Resident Evil 2 and 3 on YouTube and that’s also a gore warning for people considering buying Resident Evil 2 and 3 remake as well as Resident Evil 7

Cons

• Game length: this game has a remarkably short campaign which comes in at around 6-7 hours and the only reason to replay is to unlock extra features like costumes since unlike RE2 Remake there’s no alternative character campaign. Which considering we’re stuck inside most of the time means you have a game that won’t while away the hours of lockdown
• They took out the quick escapes with knives and grenades: this added extra strategy in RE2 Remake which made finding a knife or grenade an excellent find. It also added extra strategy as to if you’d use one for a quick escape or if you’d take a hit to hold on to it for a tougher enemy. With the mechanic gone the knife is now useless except to break boxes for resources and while grenades are still useful against Beta Hunters I still miss having the ability to use it to get out of being killed by a really tough enemy
• Too many enemies with instant kills: this is more a me thing but I really hate instant deaths in survival horror games from enemies on the basis that the whole point of survival horror games since these types of games are about conserving resources in terms of ammo and healing items and if you have an enemy that can kill you in one hit it undermines part of that. Resident Evil 3 remake has 2 types of these outside of bosses and scripted events and they’re just annoying and undermined doing what would normally be playing the game in a clever manner went to pot because they could instantly kill me, this includes the beta Hunters which already hit like a tank when not instant killing you
• Some odd removals: there’s quite a few things that have been cut to make room such as locations and mechanics for some new ideas and honestly there absent really was unwelcome and unnecessary given then how short the game is. If the game had a longer development time I think they could’ve been added to the game whilst keeping all the of the expansions made for the remake so I suspect this has been a factor of the rushed development time
• Alternate endings and routes are gone: the original game gave you several different routes and endings which added to the replay value but for the remake they’ve been completely removed it and it is the same story every time which really doesn’t inspire much replayablity for me

Overall thoughts

It’s a good game but it needed a bit more time in development and a bit more content to warrant replay value plus it doesn’t feel as interesting as it’s predecessor last year and I’m hoping that some of the feedback that has followed this game’s release for the announced Resident Evil 4 remake.

Score: 7.5/10