Summary

Resident Evil 3 is a survival horror game originally released in 1993 and remade in 2020. It was developed and published by Capcom. The third in a small unknown series I just thought I'd shine a little light on and let people know about. In it, you play as Jill Valentine attempting to escape from Raccoon City. It's a tad bit full of zombies these days, unfortunately. Can't imagine who's at fault there.

With RE3, we're now totally outside of my awareness of the series via cultural osmosis. No idea what's going on in this one or any of the future ones. Or if I do, it's so out of context, I wouldn't know which game something even comes from. But I've had a great time with the previous two Resident Evil games and am excited to see where we go from here.

Review

This was firmly alright to me. Not bad, fun enough. But I got problems I gotta talk about that definitely did not come up in either of the previous entries. Firstly, let's talk about the elephant in the room to me. Given that it crops up immediately in the intro and made me look at RE3 with a concerned eye, as opposed to immediately being pulled in. The setpiecey quick-timey cutsceney way we approach encounters in this game. I really really don't like it. I said this during my outro of the last episode, but I strongly believe that for a horror game to be effective, the player needs to be in control a majority of the time that the action's happening. I get why they did it. The desire to up the action effused from every pore of the game. And yes, transitioning from the standard walk around shooty gameplay to the cutscene stuff where the explosions happen allows you to have much larger explosions than you can have with the player in control. But I just feel we crossed a line. That intro where Nemesis is immediately on your ass bringing down the building and Jill is being thrown every which way. It's just too much for me. I want the times where my character's getting picked up and thrown around like a ragdoll to be my fault. Not just because we hit a predetermined point in the level, but because I screwed up and got grabbed by some shambling horror. So my hope is that gets calmed down in future entries.

Another thing that I hope for in future entries is the overall style of combat. My hope is that it slows down. I can appreciate the quick dodgy stuff in this one as it does help characterize Jill. She's a fun little spunky action girl who fucks shit up. But I overall would much rather be the low and slow big fella working my way through the game methodically. The dodging is fun, but it does also contribute to me not quite looking at everything like I did in previous entries. The world is big and pretty but you rarely get a chance to just look at it because, again, you've either got Nemesis on your ass or you're literally in a zombie-infested area with danger on all sides. So, it's effective for what it was trying to do, but not really a style that I want to go for.

I'd say I liked the story in general. Didn't really care for our deuteragonist Carlos. I'd be fine if he went away. He wasn't that bad per se. But he came on real strong with the flirting and he is in fact wearing the red, black, and white armband that means he is with the baddies. Hard to forgive. So I just couldn't trust him. Either had to be bad or comedically unaware of who he's working for. Doesn't make for a good companion. But we upped the stakes in this one and worked our way to the point I could feel us heading towards from the first game. This place about to blow. Does make me very curious where we could go from there. Raccoon City's gone (so sorry Mr. Raccoon...). I would have to imagine that with Resident Evil 4 (2005), we'd be refocusing and going on some unexpected tangent. It seems unlikely for us to yet again just up the stakes narratively. Otherwise I think it would just be fatiguing and I'm aware that RE4 is very well-regarded. So does have me quite excited for the future.

Links

Playlist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POqcoFu4N3k&list=PLXbBIoFOxaQtbY57ry8npDcjmya_yjIdx