Resident Evil 3 Remake review

A brand new game that can hardly be called a remake

Immediately after the release of the remake of the second part of the franchise, fans had questions about whether there would be a restart of the next series about Jill Valentine's last escape from Raccoon City, drowning in madness. CAPCOM did not keep us waiting long, and after some time announced the new Resident Evil 3. Whether the updated game will give nostalgic feelings to oldfags, or vice versa, will be aimed only at a young audience - you will find out from our review.

It has only been a few months since the incident in the Arklay Mountains, where the STARS Special Forces first encountered the T-Virus and other horrific deeds of the Umbrella Corporation. One of the members of the squad who visited that estate and experienced all the horror - Jill Valentine, tried to continue the investigation, but was removed by the local police chief Irons. In addition, the girl was literally not let out of the house by strange people assigned either by the chef personally or by pharmaceuticals??oh company. It got to the point that Jill decided to run away from the city, but it was too late. And so begins not the longest run around the city, which by this moment is literally mired in the living dead ...

Many of you probably liked the reboot of the second part of the franchise, which, although not in everything followed the canons of the original, but at least somehow tried to imitate it. I can say with full confidence that the new RE3 series is completely different from its predecessor, neither visually nor spiritually. But first things first.

In general, the plot has not undergone major changes, but the narrative of the plot can be considered a completely new author's decision. What can we say, if mainly because of such a decision, the game looks completely different. Each new location is a small but dynamic run to the next location. This run is filled with action, explosions and shooting no less than any modern shooter. Yes, in the original game you also had to run and shoot, but there the emphasis was on the atmosphere, exploration of locations and puzzles, but not on the action. Here, everything is completely opposite.

Why did I say "city run" in my opening remarks? Yes, because there is no other way to call it. In order to escape, you will have to run. The gameplay has become very dynamic. It got to the point that for the first time in my life, in a game called Resident Evil, I never used a map! In classic games, it was possible to open the map several times per location alone and explore the paths that you can, and maybe you need to get into. But there are almost no moments that would make the user stop and think: “where next?”. You have specific goals to follow. And only occasionally you can turn into an inconspicuous nook to find ... not even a secret, but a few cartridges or some kind of grenade. Of course, at a high level of difficulty, these items will certainly be needed, but in my humble opinion, it would be possible to dilute the game with more puzzles.

Riddles, secrets and puzzles - that's what the original series of Resident Evil 3 was famous for. It's a pity that there was practically nothing left of this in the reworked part, as well as some of the locations that CAPCOM cut out without any remorse with??lead. The absence of a park, a cemetery, a factory, and a clock tower, which actually exists in the game, but cannot be entered, is compensated by a small sewer, an expanded hospital, and a redesigned police station. If you played the demo, you noticed that instead of the usual tram, which in the original had to be started, wandering around the city, Umbrella mercenaries occupied the subway train. This is how the whole game is built: they took the old, cut it out and washed down the new one.

The original title, released in 1998 on the PlayStation, was called Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, which was a reference to the prototype Tyrant, a huge and strong creature that pursued Jill throughout the game. However, in the remake of the third part, Nemesis is still an important person. Compared to the boss of the previous reworked part, Nemesis can run, jump, use weapons and hit very hard. The only problem is that there will be very few direct meetings with the enemy, I am now talking about the first form. All of them are scripted and short. Of course, in the original it was possible to run away from the monster, but there were many more sudden encounters with the first form. Just remember how many times you had to face the Nemesis before you started the tram and got away from the city center. Compared to this, the new part is seriously weak.

As for the notorious "forks" that were implemented in the original, they simply do not exist here. In the classic Resident Evil 3 series, you could choose to fight the boss or run away from it. Pull yourself up and not have time to get out of the hole, or jump off and safely continue the game, and so on. All this is not in the new part of the game. Moreover, out of a large number of cut-scenes where Jill is trying to hide from a huge monster, only one has a QTE. A little modest, don't you agree? Especially when you consider that the videos on the engine are a total of over an hour.

But even these moments are compensated by the reworked gameplay for UBCS mercenary Carlos Oliveira. If in the original this character could be played for about twenty minutes at most, then in the new part of the game it is quite an independent character, who has two locations available for research: a police station and an extended version of the hospital.

The main problem of thisabout the project - a short duration. On my first playthrough, with only a few safe and locker passwords available, and assuming I tried to search every nook and cranny, I completed the game in less than four hours on the highest first run difficulty. As you can imagine, this is very little. But as soon as I returned to the main screen, the game offered me to try my hand at the so-called "Nightmare", where all objects change their location, and opponents and Nemesis himself become several times stronger. Rumor has it that after passing the fourth level of difficulty, the next one, even more sinister, will open. As we can see, the short duration of the game, in theory, should be compensated by the replay value. But whether an ordinary gamer wants to replay the same story several times is still a question.

I hope I finally convinced you that the "remake" of the third part is not a remake at all, but a completely new game that is similar to the original except for the heroes and the virus that gave birth to the Resident Evil universe. I don't want to repeat myself, but the gameplay is really very dynamic. The whole gameplay is so fast that you don't have time to look around, and Jill is already standing in front of the final boss. And the point is no longer that the game itself is rather short (although in this one too), but in what sauce it is served under. And the sauce?That one - explosions, shooting and chases. And to be honest, there is nothing wrong with that. It's just that the developers decided to finally move away from the Survival Horror genre and transfer all their efforts and funds to create a full-fledged action game. It turned out great, but not everyone will like it.