Resident Evil 3 (2020)

I am a huge fan of the RE franchise and seeing all the classics get a do-over for modern times has been a thrill. I loved RE2 a lot so I was excited to finally try this sequel out. The reason I took so long was due to the price of this game and the hopes it would get some sort of discount. It is insane for the developers to ask so much money for such as short game! Insanity. Otherwise, the game looks amazing, graphically it is on par with its predecessor. It also has memorable characters that have a decent amount of charisma. Very resident evil gameplay where the action is mixed in with horror, not going to lie I did fall for some of the jumpscares. Now I just need to play village and the remake of 4 whenever that comes out, as a fan of the franchise for all my life I am very happy with where things have been heading after the abysmal disaster of RE6.

Pros:

• Atmosphere: I found this game even more atmospheric then REmake2 (Though still a little less than RE1). Running around the city in the early game the groaning sounds of buildings and zombies is great added with the rain-drenched almost noir style setting and you've got a great mix.
• Bosses: I would argue this time that bosses feel a lot better than in REmake 2

Neutral:

• Writing: As with REmake 2 writing is very cheesy but I found it enjoyable. Jill is a fun character as is Carlos and the main villain feels suitably cheesy.
• Gameplay: I feel like this game's gameplay was a slight step down from REmake 2 as this game is a lot more action-focused. I did not find myself running out of ammunition as often as in REmake 2 BUT there are some improvements such as the dodge feature which I did find very useful.

Cons:

• Lenght: In many ways unfortunately this game feels more like an expansion of REmake 2 rather than its own game. At full price, it is hard to fully recommend this game unless you're a big fan of the franchise. On sale, it is worth it (and that's what I'm basing my recommendation on) but buyer beware the full campaign takes around 3 hours to complete.

Great game but so damn short. Was able to get all the achievements in about 16 hours of playtime. For a full $60 dollar title that is ridiculous. Highly recommended to wait for a sale.

Wish they could have added more to the game and got rid of the stupid multiplayer that no one plays but what can you do.

I've been on a Resident Evil kick recently. Around half a year ago I played 7, then out of curiosity decided to give the other games which have been building up in my Steam library a chance. I played my way through 1, 2, and of course now 3 over the past few months. Overall it's given me a good idea of why the series attained the recognition it has today, despite certain gameplay and story aspects feeling very dated now.

However, I think 3 is the first time I've come away from one of these just feeling totally underwhelmed in pretty much every aspect. Spoilers ahead, obviously. I kinda struggle to come up with much positive to say other than that the game is great from a graphics standpoint and reaches the bar set by the RE2 Remake there. In fact, there are a lot of comparisons to be made to RE2 here. Other than graphics, eh... I guess it played fine mechanically, for the most part? More on that later.

The obvious "big ticket item" for this entry has to be Nemesis, this game's successor to the anxiety-inducing Tyrant (Mr. X) from RE2. Unfortunately, this is also the biggest issue with the game. Now I see why the original game had Nemesis as its subtitle, because he's pretty much all this game brings to the table. He stalks Jill throughout the game for reasons either totally undisclosed or not deemed important enough to tell the player explicitly. Someone clearly looked at the section(s) with Tyrant in RE2 and thought "Okay, but what if this was the entire game?" And on paper that's not a bad idea. Imagine never feeling safe because you know something is coming for you, you just don't know how it'll show up or when. The problem is they took Tyrant's relentlessness, multiplied it to the point where Nemesis literally seems to teleport around just to get in your way and then called it done there, entirely forgetting that the reason Tyrant was so great in RE2 was the atmosphere he added to the game without completely dominating the experience. Nemesis is so overbearing in this game that any atmosphere that could have existed was totally shattered by the frustration of dealing with him constantly getting in my way. The aforementioned teleporting is only one of the issues I had with him. The addition of the dodge roll to this game does little to make encounters with him feel like less of a clunky mess. His attacks felt weak and easy to dodge for the most part, but also spammy as hell, particularly during the boss fights, where he has wayyyy too much health so you end up using a ton of healing just due to the length of the battle. The game showers you in healing items anyway so it's not a big deal, but still, HP sponges are never enjoyable to fight. If I had to praise anything about him, I'd say he's pretty cool looking. But the positivity ends there because I think the game would be much better without him.

But that brings me to the next glaring issue with this game. If Nemesis were removed, there is no game here, effectively. The environments are pretty standard for the series and in a couple cases copy-pasted directly from RE2 for the sake of a couple small segments which were nothing but callbacks to the previous game and really added little to the experience. But there's nothing else here to make those places interesting. Nemesis is the be all end all "big bad" here, and you'd be hard pressed to find anything that is nearly as much of a threat as he is in your time in Raccoon City. Zombies are easier to kill than in RE2 and the two (?) other enemy types in the game aren't too big a deal either. Oh, except those moments when they decide to one-shot you for no reason with an attack that uses the same tell as a standard attack. Moments like this were rampant in the last hour of the game and were nothing but a source of frustration. There were a couple times where I had literally just finished popping a healing item to restore all my health when WHOOPS guess I got hit by one of those gosh darned totally random one shots, time to reset the entire fight!

The game also has the most paper-thin plot I've seen in the series thus far; Nemesis is chasing you so you gotta run! And also there this totally cartoon villain of a dude who for some reason is okay letting the world burn for some cash (his words, almost literally). He does pretty much nothing but show up at random times throughout the game to jeer at Jill and talk shit about how she can't fend for herself "properly." In addition, for some (again undisclosed) reason, Nemesis seems to entirely ignore him. I figured this'd be a plot point they'd explain later with some half-assed "oh well Nemesis has a chip inside him that makes him not hurt cartoon villains" but no, the game didn't even give me that much.

I'd like to say more, but that's pretty much all there is. The game was a LOT shorter than previous entries, which would be fine if the time I spent in it felt all that worthwhile but there's so little going on that it's difficult for it to. The non-Nemesis gameplay was fine overall, if pretty much the same as RE2, minus the great atmosphere. I'd only recommend this to fans of the series or someone looking for a mindless action game to play through quickly, because there's not much else here to do.

Fazit:

Ich muss zugeben, dass meine Erwartungen an das Spiel etwas hoch angesetzt waren. Resident Evil 2 war schon immer mein Favorit in der Reihe und dieses Spiel als Nachfolger trägt nicht grade ein leichtes Erbe.

Rein Optisch konnte mich das Spiel total überzeugen und auch die Inszenierung war Actionfilm Reif. Man läuft ballert und lootet sich durch die abwechslungsreichen Areale von Racoon City und langweilig wird es keine Minute. Leider sind die Minuten in diesem Chaos auch schneller gezählt als es manchem Fan gefällt.

Jill ist eine taffe und sympatische Protagonistin von der man sich mehr Inhalt wünscht und das Spiel macht seinem Namen alle Ehre. Dennoch bleibt es für mich hinter den meisten anderen Spielen der Resident Evil Serie etwas zurück.

Nach dem ersten Playthrough werde ich aber mit Sicherheit noch 1-2x in die Stadt zurückkehren.

People were not kidding when they said that the Resident Evil 3 remake was short. It took me just under 6hrs to complete and that was with me slowly making my way around and collecting everything! Could easily cut that playing time in half if you knew what was coming next.

They did implement a similar points system to RE5 where you rack up points doing various tasks (like shooting so many zombies with the handgun for example). You can then use the points in a shop to purchase HP coins and even weapons with infinite ammo. But this all seems kind of weak if there isn't much game to use them in?

I think what was most disappointing wasn't necessarily that Capcom removed a bunch of stuff from the game. It was that they had reused the Police department model and half of it was unexplorable?? And not even because of locked doors...you couldn't even interact with half of it giving an illusion that is was waiting to be opened.

I did enjoy playing it but I felt like it was missing a lot. Like it had been cut short. A little flat.

Resident Evil 3 Remake parallels the story of the second game. The story is intriguing as you follow Jill (from RE1) and Carlos (an Umbrella mercenary) who try to secure the vaccine to save Racoon City. They are impeded by the tyrant, Nemesis, and a rogue mercenary, Nikolai. The world is beautiful, but it lacks those maze-like designs of the first two. Instead, it is more of a linear trek through the city with occasional diversions. One major improvement though was the gameplay. They incorporated elements like dodging and a better knife, which made those unfair moments less annoying and made the boss fights less of a chore. The main drawback is that the story is unfortunately short and sold as an entire AAA game. It should have been sold as a 2-in-1 with RE2 Remake (or a $10-20 DLC) to make it worth the full price. But if you can get it for cheap, it is still incredibly fun and very worth playing.

3.75/5.00

Full Review: https://watchreadgame.com/resident-evil-3-remake-review/

Resident Evil 3 Remake is very different from RE2 and changes quite a few things from the original, but despite negative thoughts expressed by fans and critics, I did not find that a bad thing! This game is amazing!

RE3 is WAY more linear then the first two remakes and it excells in it. The controls are tighter than ever, graphics are sharp, they finally brought back the indestructible knife, difficulty felt more balanced then previous games, the dodge move works fine and boss battles were improved. This entry feels a lot more like RE4 than others (especially when playing with Carlos) and that's where the magic is. I loved that there are fewer and simpler puzzles this time, I loved Nemesis' persistance and aggression, the scripted parts are tense as hell and the horror factor is nearly untouched throughout the entire adventure, even with its action-packed moments. Also, they finally fixed the "B-Movie" style of dialogues, upgrading the writing, enhancing characters and focusing more on a solid story. I actually cared more for the characters and that just ramps up the tension on intense periods of the campaign.

Now, I get it, there are a lot of cuts in here and that's really bad. Although I think RE3 benefits from cutting the overwhelming amount of puzzles that the original had, cutting things like the clock tower and Gravedigger sucked a bit of the product's life and felt really unnecessary. I liked the story's pacing, but I was left wanting... more? Especially in the ending. What the fuck did that final scene means? It's clueless! The lenght of the game did not bother me, but it doesn't have the same replayability as previous ones. RE1 and 2 were amazingly well designed, with their interconnected levels and clever enemy, puzzle pieces and items placement. This one doesn't do it as well. Also, the soundtrack is good, but not used perfectly like previous REmakes.

RE3 is not as faithful to the original as Capcom's previous releases and it's certainly the least astonishing one of the trilogy, but it still packs quite a punch! You owe it to yourself to experience this tense and powerful horror classic. There's A LOT more to like than dislike.

I want to preface this review by emphasising that I generally really enjoyed this release. It’s a game that looks beautiful, features some of the awesome RE lore and has fluid, addictive gameplay.

All that said, this feels like an ideologically lazy release. Capcom did a good job remaking Resident Evil 3. This isn’t a bad game or even a bad remake. It is, however, (at least in my opinion) the absolute bare minimum Capcom had to deliver in order to call this a success. Not only did they not add anything meaningful to RE3, but they actually removed content from an already short game (the clock tower sequence).

Just as I was getting really addicted and feeling invested in the world of RE again, the game ended. Sadly, it seems to me that Capcom were intent on churning this thing out within a year of the RE2 success and capitalising on that profit-potential. This was a good remake; but imagine what it could’ve been if they’d taken another year, included the clock tower and even expanded on the story (adding new content and levels), maybe even deepening Carlos’s storyline a little more. They could’ve even thrown in some neat nods to the RE2 story happening at the same time.

I also can’t help but feel Nemesis was a tad disappointing. All I’d heard leading up to this was that he would make Mr X look like a weakling. Well...in terms of canon brute force that is true. But I found Mr X infinitely more scary. In RE2, the presence of Mr X was a constantly looming threat that added pressure to an already scary game. In this game, Nemesis is essentially a big hulking monster that signifies the player is entering a highly scripted sequence or a boss battle. The design is cool but it didn’t feel like this really captured the essence of what made Nemesis so iconic in the first place. As an extension to that note, this game really isn’t scary at all and definitely feels more like an action/adventure title than survival horror.

I’m aware this review reads very critically but that’s only because I feel there was a lot of squandered potential here. Ultimately this is a good, fun RE entry and I would definitely recommend it to fans and casual players. It’s just a shame that it isn’t a game that is likely to garner the high praise of its predescessor’s remake.

Some think this remake is a downgrade from the original, is it really?

I was impressed with the first and thought it was excellent (i hadnt played the PSX orig) haven't played the well liked second (yet)

it's nice to see this series getting a more accessible lift. I'm quite lukewarm on SH and third person games in PSX era... so it helps to have something like this.

I watched a friend play this on Nightmare and after mediating over it reading multiple people's takes I think I'm going to skip out on this one. Gameplay looks like a major step down on the fundamentals of RE2make, and the enemy design doesn't look interesting enough to justify working entirely on perfect dodges. Nemesis only following you at certain cutscene moments is also incredibly weird, probably the most significant aspect I didn't think they'd minimize.

All I'm hearing positively is the cinematics/story and the multiplayer, which I don't think is quite worth the purchase at full price (multiplayer also apparently has pretttty bad netcode). Maybe I'll try it when it goes on sale later.

Okay, so I was going to buy RE3: Nemesis Remake day 1, maybe even preorder it just after finishing Resident Evil 2 Remake. But hell! I've just watched some short reviews on this game, even when it looks cool, three aspects were common in all of them:

• There's little to no puzzles in RE3 Remake (Iike literally what makes up a RE game)
• Neither the clock tower sequence nor Raccoon Park sequence is present (the most emblematic scenes, boss and puzzles from the original RE3 ARE NOT THERE)
• THE GAME IS 5 HOURS LONG. (Like really?!? 63 dollars for a 5h long game? f*ck that Capcom, I'll pay 63 dollars for The Last Of Us Part II, not this shit)
• The Nemesis doesn't say "STARS" that much (yes, it is important!)

I had a bad feeling of this game coming up just a year later after RE2: Remake, and I was right. This shit was rushed and Capcom just wants to feed on nostalgia from the original RE3: Nemesis players. Well, I'll wait till this game is 15 dollars to buy it. I'm not falling on that one. I'm so frustrated, had been waiting for this remake so long!