Instead of modernizing 1999's Resident Evil 3, Capcom has remodeled 2019's remake of Resident Evil 2. Dazzling production and clever level design are still effective fuel for the survival horror engine, but this reliance on familiar techniques dissolves any expectation of novelty and ambition. In Resident Evil 3, Jill is less the subject of a despairing escape and more the product of a regulated, orderly departure.
2020’s rendition of Resident Evil 3 is actually a remake of two different games. The most obvious is Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, first released on PlayStation in 1999. The other is last year’s complete overhaul of Resident Evil 2, which was as monumental to 2019 as its namesake was to 1998. Today’s Resident Evil 3 is not an ambitious survival-horror revolution; it is a practiced performance of an arranged routine. Jill Valentine isn’t on the run from a relentless killing machine patrolling the back alleys of Raccoon City, she’s moving through a calculated and productive series of levels, puzzles, and monsters that all borrow the blueprint of Resident Evil 2.
Some involuntary poetry is at play here. Resident Evil 3: Nemesis’ truncated development time sacrificed the breadth and range of Resident Evil 2 in pursuit of a final PlayStation entry before the next generation of hardware. This Resident Evil 3 appears to follow the same model, delivering a remake of a numbered sequel right before the next generation. Both owe an staggering debt to the ethos of Resident Evil 2, and both search for novelty through a single proposal; the Nemesis. The dramatic antagonist thought to act as a startling, menacing presence for the duration of the adventure. The reality, then and now, is that the Nemesis isn’t an omnipresent threat, but a controlled and mechanical goon deployed at regular intervals to keep the player on their toes. Following a safe path does not prevent Resident Evil 3 from entertaining its audience. It does, however, give the impression that Capcom didn’t have the time or budget to install the Nemesis as the driving force of an original Resident Evil game.
In a perfect world, Resident Evil 3 would deliver on the promise of its exceptional first act. It opens with a full-motion video sequence, a deliberate nod to the glorious introduction to the original Resident Evil, before shifting to a first-person point of view behind the eyes of Jill Valentine. We briefly get to explore Jill’s Raccoon City apartment, a cluttered hovel furnished with empty beer bottles and pizza boxes and outlined with disempowering evidence of her attempts to make sense of the incident in the Arklay Mountains. This sequence is the only interiority Jill’s character receives in all of Resident Evil 3, tasking it with presenting her current state of mind and exploring her greatest fear. After a traumatic surprise, Jill is forced to confront the urban warzone of a zombie-infested Raccoon City and escape with her life.
Then the Nemesis, the pursuing Tyrant consumed with eliminating former S.T.A.R.S. members, comes into Jill’s life. It’s here where Resident Evil 3 does its best impression of the opening of Dead Space 2 by forcing its protagonist to run, under immense fear and mortal peril, away from a terrifying threat. The Nemesis explodes through brick walls, falls through flights of floors, and is relentless in its quest to murder Jill. On the player’s end, this translates to a carefully crafted series surprises expertly designed to push the action, and the player, forward through a terrifying haunted house. This sequence is ultimately on rails but it’s no less effective in its mission; it delivers a neat and tidy one-off sequence, scares the shit out of the player and the protagonist, and never repeats the trick for the rest of the game.
Resident Evil 3 is also wise to not waste too much of its time delivering plot and mining the depths of the series’ convoluted lore. It’s an area where Resident Evil 3 greatly benefits from being a remake. What happens after Resident Evil 3 is already known, allowing the current iteration to be selective with the width of its narrative. Carlos Oliveira is a knight in the shining armor of the Umbrella Biohazard Countermeasure Service. His co-soldiers, Nicholai Ginovaef and Mikhail Victor, take turns twirling their mustaches. Notes and memos found in the field are kept mercifully short, the character roster is limited to a precious few, and, while the plot relies on genre tropes, it never loses sight of the Nemesis as an omnipresent menace. No one is expecting The Last of Us from Resident Evil 3. Its story is a serviceable component to surviving its horror.
The close and the core of the first act is Resident Evil 3 at its absolute best. Jill’s must engage a McGuffin to get Raccoon City’s trains moving. This requires her to scour the streets in search of resources, weapons, and items to help her move forward. It transforms the streets surrounding a toy store, a donut shop, a pharmacy, and a train station into a micro version of the police station from Resident Evil 2. That slice of Raccoon City, as it juxtaposes horror with colorful florescent lights, is an interconnected series of puzzles and problems that demand repeated traversal after new elements are either added or taken away. It’s a joy to discover every point of interest—Resident Evil 2’s clean and annotated map returns—and find all the clues and materials to solve the mystery of every room. The Nemesis inevitably rampaging through it all is a perfect coda. Like the FMV intro, the apartment exploration, and the chase sequence, it’s time to move on and do something new.
Unfortunately, after this point, Resident Evil 3 loses interest in doing much of anything new. Part of this is expected. The original Resident Evil 3 revisited Resident Evil 2’s police station under a series of different circumstances. This Resident Evil 3 does the same, and from a more clever point of view. Exploring the same physical space is actually a smart idea because it allows the potential subversion of every expectation. The execution—not necessarily with the police station but with the entire remainder of Resident Evil 3—is not quite up to the task. It’s fine. It works. There’s a superb and expensive-looking craft to every encounter, but it’s repeating tricks that were perfect a year ago in Resident Evil 2.
Jill and Carlos’ primary point of engagement lies at the end of a gun. It’s how they react to and modify their world. The selection of weapons (including the pistol, shotgun, assault rifle, and grenade launcher) make this point of action identical to what came before. Resident Evil 3’s zombies are extremely cool! They’re resilient to sustained fire, making it tough to get a head shot, and shamble around in challenging harmony with the player’s aiming ability. Even when Resident Evil 3 comes up with a pair of new monsters to challenge progress, defeating them doesn’t demand the development of a new or novel set of skills. I was good at Resident Evil 3 before I had ever played it.
To its credit, Resident Evil 3 makes one attempt to write a new move into Resident Evil 2’s playbook: a resurrection of the dodge mechanic. Pressing a shoulder button in sequence with an analog stick direction causes Jill to juke in that cardinal direction. The risk is it throws her off balance but the reward is she can pass by zombies without burning off her (on higher difficulties) precious supply of ammunition. This version of Resident Evil 3 also introduces the perfect dodge, which, if executed at the last possible frame, makes an appealing whooshing sound effect, dodges the lunge completely, and positions Jill for a perfect point of debilitating return fire. Nailing the timing on the perfect dodge is as attractive and addictive as engaging Bayonetta’s Witch Time or nailing the active reload in Gears of War. Dodging could have been a huge deal in a game better designed to take advantage of its value, but Resident Evil 3 positions it as a curious accessory instead of a vital tool.
This Resident Evil 3 is also eager to break away from tracing the same paths as 1999’s Resident Evil 3. I usually believe this to be a smart move—it’s essential for remakes to keep the spirit of the original alive while not feeling bound to dated puzzles and compromised geography—but Jill’s path reroutes her into familiar Resident Evil locations. Other than the police station, the player doesn’t visit the same locations as Resident Evil 2, but the architecture and asset construction may as well be pulled from the same hands of artists and sets of resources. My review email specifically says not to mention the nature of final location, but I can’t say I was impressed with the sewer or the hospital that preceded it. What’s the point of breaking away if you’re only going to return to familiar places?
Perhaps a greater expectation was unreasonable, especially just a year after Resident Evil 2, but I had hoped a modern take on Resident Evil 3 would go wild with a more dangerous Nemesis inside the safety of an established technology. When the Nemesis does appear he’s just as inarticulate and ill-fitting as he was twenty years ago. It’s a step down from even Resident Evil 2’s Mr. X, whose drifting, stomping appearance in the police station is responsible for record levels of personal anxiety in a videogame. With Resident Evil’s current hot streak (2017’s Resident Evil 7 was also a pleasant surprise), it’s disappointing to see Resident Evil 3 avoid the wild and experimental bravery that defined the previous two entries.
While I’ve been critical of Resident Evil 3’s choices, I would be lying if I told you I didn’t have a blast in my ten hours with the campaign. Keeping sixty-frames per second while surrounded with visually appealing art direction with best-in-class character models and animation goes a long way toward making Resident Evil 3 feel professionally produced and, for lack of a better description, expensive to make. It looks and sounds every bit of an AAA game. Resident Evil 3 remains a tightly wound package of light puzzles and furious action, and leagues better than whatever it was Resident Evil 6 attempted to deliver at the end of the last hardware generation. Similar to Sega’s enduring Yakuza series, Resident Evil 3 delivers guarantee of quality with a tradeoff of heavy mechanical and environmental recycling. If Capcom delivered a Resident Evil like this every year I would play it to completion until the Earth ran out of electricity. By definition there is safety and satisfaction in a successful retreat.
There is also a question of value when it comes to Resident Evil 3’s $60 package. Resident Evil 2 featured dual campaigns and effective B-scenarios for each campaign (along with the Hunk onslaught and the Tofu madness). Resident Evil 3, by its nature, never did this and will never do this, opting instead for a post-game currency system based on completing in-game challenges. The player can use that currency to purchase bonuses like regenerating health, Jill’s S.T.A.R.S. outfit, and even an ability to open up the dodge timing window. Completing challenges and unlocking rewards, which will also help manage higher difficulties, is a decent-enough reason to extend play time, but it won’t exactly make Resident Evil 3 any more potent.
That duty, somehow, is left to the competitive/cooperative multiplayer game, Resident Evil Resistance. Originally expected as its own product, it’s now bound to Resident Evil 3’s package despite being launched as a separate executable. Resident Evil Resistance pits four player Survivors against one player Mastermind. The former wins by preventing survivors from escaping while the latter wins by, that’s right, escaping the scenario. I attempted to play this several times but, as Resident Evil 3 and Resident Evil Resistance are still a week away from launch, there was not an active player population. Despite a recent history of odd multiplayer endeavors, however, Resident Evil Resistance feels uniquely positioned to better capture its place and time.
(There’s also the strange synchronicity of playing a videogame that depicts a city plagued with a destructive viral outbreak while the real world is currently engulfed in the COVID-19 viral outbreak. Videogames, activities that are primarily enjoyed indoors, are thought to be one of the safer things to do with our quarantined time. Despite the tense and violent subject matter I do not think Resident Evil 3’s Hollywood action sensibilities and stress-inducing survival horror are ill-timed coexist alongside a dangerous pandemic.)
Instead of modernizing 1999’s Resident Evil 3, Capcom has remodeled 2019’s remake of Resident Evil 2. Dazzling production and clever level design are still effective fuel for the survival horror engine, but this reliance on familiar techniques dissolves any expectation of novelty and ambition. In Resident Evil 3, Jill is less the subject of a despairing escape and more the product of a regulated, orderly departure.
