RESIDENT EVIL 3 Review by robiu013

Yeah, I went straight from the new RE4 remake to it's predecessor. I fell that deep down the rabbit hole. I'll probably take a break from the franchise for a little while now, if mainly for the reason that a full month's lenght of upcoming days is jampacked with releases I'm interested in.

Anyway, RE3 packs a lot of what also makes the new RE4 good. It's a 3rd person horror survival shooter. Graphics haven't exactly aged much since this game was released (I guess this might be in part that this is a PS5 update, but ok) and look quite on pair with the newer RE releases (Biohazard, Village, RE4). During the game's runtime you take on the roles of the two protagonists: Jill Valentine, a cop who is there to clear out and keep the zombie-infested Racoon City under control and Carlos Oliviera, who works for Umbrella - a pharmacy company who in their pursuits of success let loose the virus in Racoon City, which however isn't public information and of what Carlos knows nothing. The characters don't really differ that much in terms of gameplay and the 60/40 gameplay split the two receive respectively is mostly to provide a dual story perspective. But they do have slightly different weapons and items at their disposal.

Anyway, mostly the game aged fine. It's suspenseful, looks beautiful, it's immersive, sound works great. It has Nemesis: a hulking big guy of a monster who will chase you throughout sections of the game. He is mostly unkillable to provide you a sense of dread, but you will get the chance to hit back during his four boss battles. And no worries: those aren't just lazy repeats as the big fella will always switch things up and add something new to his arsenal with each consecutive failure of his. Every time it happened I just had to exclaim my favorite quote from the Worthikids animated show Big Top Burger in slight annoyance: "Oh you would pull some horse piss like this, Steve."

I guess the main complaint I could raise about this game is that there were clearly better and more ambitious games coming out after it in the RE franchise. RE3 is short - and don't get me wrong sweet - but it has barely half the lenght of the RE4 remake (for comparison: I finished RE3 in 7 hours, RE4 in 15). The story progresses quite quickly, but comes a bit short in terms of gameplay diversity and creative level design when compared to RE4 which was like visiting a theme park. There is only so many different oponnents and most boss battles are reserved for Nemesis. There are few unconventional approaches to gameplay as well, some puzzles, but there's no mine cart ride, Moby Dick-like boss battle with harpoons and no water scooter escape. The monster gallery isn't quite as colourful either - zombies, zombie dogs, big fish monsters, bugs, those behemoths in the hospital, Parasyte people and regeneradors (which are a far cry from what they become in RE4 as this game simply boils them down to sturdier zombies, who will need 4 headshots instead of just 1 or 2). Yeah, the game feels a lot more conventional than RE4 in that regards.

But oh well, you know the story: this is all just some wasted potential. Nothing about the game is bad and a lot of the potential was used quite effectively at the end of the day.