Game Review: Resident Evil 3: Remake (Xbox One)

Res­i­dent Evil 3: Remake (Xbox One)

Rat­ing: 3 out of 5 stars

**Spoil­ers!!** Scroll down to bot­tom for sum­ma­ry

Where Res­i­dent Evil 2: Remake eas­i­ly took 4.8 to 5 stars, the lat­est instal­la­tion in the Res­i­dent Evil world fell short of that mark. I was real­ly excit­ed for this game the instant RE2: Remake came out and was so good, so it stands to rea­son that it would fall flat of any lofty expec­ta­tions that play­ers like me had. RE3 Neme­sis was always the hard­er-to-enjoy game in the series with even the orig­i­nal RE2 as its pre­de­ces­sor, so my hope was that they would fix its short­com­ings with this redesigned game­play.

Not sur­pris­ing­ly, the game reused most of the mechan­ics of RE2: Remake, because why fix some­thing that ain’t broke. Not a prob­lem there. The graph­ics are good and I give it points for mak­ing Jill not only more attrac­tive than either Claire or Leon (I’m not sure if they mod­eled her after some­one like they did for C & L or if they just used pri­or games and made her more real­is­tic. I hope it’s the lat­ter) but quite a bit clos­er to the orig­i­nal Jill than the oth­er two. Bonus points for a MUCH more prac­ti­cal cos­tume. How­ev­er, what points they got for that was tak­en away for con­stant­ly show­cas­ing an up close of her face in pret­ty much every sin­gle cut scene, Res­i­dent-Evil-Degen­er­a­tion-style. On a side-note, her boobs wig­gle ever so sub­tley for the fan­boys. Car­los, Niko­lai, Tyrell and oth­er char­ac­ters look total­ly fine, though not sur­pris­ing because their blocky ren­di­tion in the past left no real bench­mark, though Niko­lai seemed to have toned down on the roids.

Graph­ics and game mechan­ics aside, the rest of it falls apart. Cap­com took some seri­ous lib­er­ties with the game and changed so much of it that it left me look­ing for pri­or sto­ry­line of the orig­i­nal. Per­haps it was too long ago, but I don’t remem­ber the bug insert­ing eggs into her throat part, I don’t remem­ber Pla­ga head zom­bies (their answer for tying into RE4, I guess), I don’t remem­ber the sew­er Hunter Gam­mas, I don’t remem­ber the dog­gy-Neme­sis trans­for­ma­tion. The remake makes no men­tion of the icon­ic gas sta­tion. There are no puz­zles. You are fun­neled into a most­ly straight­for­ward path from the very begin­ning, lack­ing the clas­sic Res­i­dent Evil back­track­ing, and seek­ing incon­ve­nient­ly locat­ed keys. In fact, impor­tant items are very con­ve­nient­ly placed for a Res­i­dent Evil game. The begin­ning sec­tion was very good and very excit­ing, on the streets of Racoon City, where detail is packed into every movie poster, the stores, and rooms. There is unspo­ken promise of the same through­out, yet failed mis­er­ably to deliv­er the instant you descend into the sew­ers. Save one sin­gle room in the hos­pi­tal. The rest of the game felt rushed, like top brass decid­ed to sur­prise-push the release date.

The lore of the game–the part I usu­al­ly love the most–felt lack­ing in con­tent depth. There were plen­ty to pick up, but miss­ing were the creepi­ness and side sto­ries usu­al­ly found in the games. In fact, some of the data files seemed like a lat­er add-in, as if game testers ques­tioned rea­son­ing behind an incon­gru­ous event, and the answer was to add a quick data file to explain that incon­sis­ten­cy.

The absolute worst part of the game for me, was Jil­l’s por­tray­al. Car­los was great. As a mer­ce­nary for Umbrel­la, he had a good mind, good action, his char­ac­ter design felt very nat­ur­al for a sol­dier. In the orig­i­nal game, he was a bit of a wom­an­iz­er and had an on/off Span­ish accent. Gone in this one. Won­der­ful. Niko­lai was spot on, Mikhail was awe­some, Tyrell was good, too, how­ev­er use­less on the whole. Neme­sis was…kind of eh. He need­ed to say “STARS…” more often, and sore­ly need­ed a third form dur­ing the acid vat fight, but he was a good dog­gy and got plen­ty of zoomies in through­out the game.

Then we have Jill. The begin­ning, like I said, was won­der­ful. Under­stand­ably, she was suf­fer­ing not only PTSD but high anx­i­ety from being sus­pend­ed for the Ark­lay Moun­tain inci­dent and know­ing that hit­men would silence her at any moment. Then Neme­sis showed up and rocked her world. Then she met Car­los who saved her life (as was his job), and like Jill would, act­ed sus­pi­cious of Umbrel­la which she knew was behind this whole thing to begin with. Per­haps she was doped up on meds, but basi­cal­ly, she was pan­icky, over-the-top emo­tion­al the entire game. This is Jill, spec ops, S.T.A.R.S. team mem­ber, sur­vived the T‑virus inci­dent in the Ark­lay Moun­tains not 2 months pri­or, through and through a cop. She act­ed con­stant­ly sur­prised by things she should have been more than famil­iar with. She walked through doors in cut scenes like she was strolling around at home, even though she should have been in sur­vival mode, check­ing her cor­ners at all times. She clung to Car­los on the radio like he was her new boyfriend and need­ed to text him every 2 sec­onds, even though she made it clear in the begin­ning that she did­n’t need any­one. She had ZERO calm about her. On sub­se­quent playthroughs, I began to won­der if what both­ered me about Jill was the voice act­ing. Like if Ada’s voice-actor said the same lines or Shep­ard from Mass Effect said it, it prob­a­bly would­n’t be so annoy­ing. Then again, it’s the voice direc­tor that end­ed up choos­ing how to por­tray Jill and frankly, I hate it.

To me, she was yet anoth­er emo­tion­al female pro­tag­o­nist. Claire, a civil­ian, and Leon, a rook­ie cop, both with no expe­ri­ence as a cop nor deal­ing with bio­haz­ard mon­sters were more calm and col­lect­ed than the vet­er­an. Claire did­n’t need a man to help her (at least in RE2…). Jill did, does and will con­tin­ue to need male char­ac­ter sup­port in the future games.

Ugh. Well, the one thing she has going for her is that Jill appears to be super­hu­man not only in viral immu­ni­ty, but phys­i­cal­ly too. Half of the game had her noodling (limp­ing) after hav­ing her body smashed onto met­al. No flak vest or pro­tec­tive pads!!

The end­ing. The end­ing sucked so bad­ly I could­n’t stand it. She shot Niko­lai in the Kevlar’s shoul­der por­tion with her 9mm hand­gun and he (and Car­los!) was inca­pac­i­tat­ed? The scene of Tyrel­l’s death? Wow. Just wow. Like…wow. So stu­pid.

Over­all, it was­n’t worth the $59.99 I paid. I did­n’t even get the promised ani­mat­ed movie that was was sup­posed to be sent to peo­ple who pre-ordered (at least accord­ing to the descrip­tion in the Microsoft Store). It was entire­ly too short and I con­cur with a review I read where the author felt like RE3: Remake was more of a sto­ry add-on to RE2: Remake than it’s own game. 2 was­n’t long either, but had the ben­e­fit of mul­ti­ple end­ings and high replaya­bil­i­ty. While the orig­i­nal RE3 had mul­ti­ple end­ings, this remake has a nor­mal and a secret end­ing. RE: Resis­tance did come with it, but I hate PVP any­thing, so nope. Hon­est­ly, the game feels like how RE5 did in com­par­i­son to RE4, though I would rate this far high­er than 5. How­ev­er, it is much more easy to play than the orig­i­nal, even if too much was miss­ing, so a win for those who care lit­tle for puz­zles and back­track­ing. I’d rec­om­mend buy­ing the game if it was $29.99 — $34.99 or less. Game­play is sol­id, if you’re look­ing for some­thing like RE:2 and the if you’re a fan of the series, jump right on in. Replay val­ue isn’t near­ly as high is in 2, but there are plen­ty of achieve­ments and easy to miss col­lectibles. Good pan­dem­ic quar­an­tine game, if you’re look­ing for some­thing fast-paced to pass the time, but if you’re on the fence, I’d pass for the moment.

Summary

Mechan­ics: dupli­cate of Res­i­dent Evil 2: Remake

Graph­ics: Great

Sto­ry: Rushed and thin, dif­fer­ent ele­ments than the orig­i­nal Res­i­dent Evil 3. Per­haps top brass pres­sure or future DLC mon­ey-mak­ing scheme. Needs more flesh.

Char­ac­ters por­tray­al: Good for sup­port­ing, bad for main. Neme­sis was strange and left some­thing to be desired.

Creepy fac­tor: Low-mid. Neme­sis was only out dur­ing script­ed scenes, not chas­ing you like in RE2, and while the begin­ning made use of shad­ows, the rest of the game were jump-scares

Rec­om­mend­ed?: If the price drops, and/or you are a big fan of the series.
Good: More of the fun game­play of Res­i­dent Evil 2. Good char­ac­ter design for Jill. Fan­tas­tic tie in from RE 2 dur­ing Car­los’s police dept sec­tion. Great begin­ning half. It’s a new Res­i­dent Evil game that actu­al­ly is about STARS and not some ran­dom swamp with insane peo­ple and a very loose tie-in!
Bad: Entire­ly too rushed, too short, and WAY off the orig­i­nal sto­ry. Not scary. Dis­ap­point­ing female pro­tag­o­nist. Where RE 2 stayed most­ly true to the orig­i­nal, RE 3 is more like the Mila Jovovich Res­i­dent Evils. There was a lot of poten­tial that was­n’t there. The con­cept art proved that there were def­i­nite­ly more lev­els designed just either axed or not imple­ment­ed. I think the inclu­sion of RE: Resis­tance proves they knew of the game’s weak­ness upon launch.