[Resident Evil 3 Remake - Honest Review

Resident Evil 3 Remake - Honest Review

I had been playing Resident Evil games since late-1990s, including the first original game back in 1998 when it came out. Resident Evil 1 can be considered one of the action genre games which I played first, along with Dino Crisis 1 and 2 which marked my transcend from RPG gamer to an action genre gamer. 

However, I had been hearing about the Resident Evil 2 and 3 remake recently (since 2020) and tried not to get spoils for the game through channels like Youtube. I cannot be feel hyped for the remake, as I believed that they could have added more contents and plot to the already establish storyline. However, I had been hearing a lot of criticism and complains from fans of the series regarding the remakes.

I have recently brought Resident Evil 2 and 3 in a bundle package over the Playstation Store when they had an offer a few weeks back (and on my birthday nevertheless). Gave it a try and Man! I think a lot of those complains I had been hearing about on the Internet is justified. 

The first thing I have noticed is just how small the game actually is, compared to the price tag CAPCOM was putting on the game. Here in Malaysia, the price tag is (Malaysian Ringgit) RM249 when it was released and it went down to RM179 after about half a year or so (maybe to boost the sales). But compared to the price tag and the game content, it is very steep price for a shallow content.

In the old 1999 game, you had about at least three to four parts in the game which made you spend at least three months playing it. You had a main part which was the Raccoon City itself where you had to run around gathering parts like Fuse, Battery, Jewels, cables etc to fix various things while avoiding a large monster which was hell-bend in stopping you. Later, you end up in the Clock Tower and had a boss fight with Nemesis, which results in Jill valentine getting infected and the game turn over to Carlos who had the whole Hospital scene to himself. Finally, after Jill was cured, you have to navigate through the Park and get out of the city through the Factory. The whole game was one roller-coaster ride after another, forcing the player to be on the edge of their seat at all times, not knowing when the Nemesis will arrive through the door or when we could walk through the door and see him waiting.

However, in the new game, not only the gameplay area is too small in comparison (it is only three areas and one of them (the power station), you do not need to go back there after turning on the main power to the train station. Therefore, it is really two large areas which you can memorize fast, maneuver easily and zip through without any problem whatsoever, which was one of the reasons why a lot of gamers felt the game was too small in size (when compared to the amount they had to pay).

Furthermore, I think the old Resident Evil 3 game had a lot more actions compared to the new one, especially with the monsters. In the old one, your normal enemies are the zombies and your challenge one is the Nemesis. However, in-between these two monsters, the game will throw at you things like giant worm, giant spiders (in the hospital), Hunters, large insects called Deimos and some dogs. You could not know when these enemies will show up (except for the spiders, they specifically appeared in Carlos' stage only) but there was some serious tension of a city which had been overrun by biological mutations.

However, in this new game, most of the enemies seems to be in specific locations and you could not encounter them again when you move to another location. zombies are everywhere and they upgraded them with a new head-tentacle zombie due Nemesis infecting them with its tentacles. And you will only get one scene with the zombie dogs (on the way to the power station the first time). 

Also, the Deimos insects are only found at the power station where they build their nests. You can also only find the Hunter Alpha (large frog-like creature) and the Hunter Gamma (the faster frog-like creature) at the hospital (and couple of time in the underground facilities). So basically, instead of mixing the monsters up to various spots, we could only find them at specific locations and no where else after that, which made the game experience less menacing than it was in the old game where mixtures of monsters could appear and send a dread through young gamers' mind. 

To be fair, they did create that "naked" zombie that regenerates, a sort of poor excuse for a regenerator which we can find in the classic Resident Evil 4 but it came a little too late in the game to peek our interest or give us a proper scare.

Furthermore, you can literally finish the first 25% of the game (restarting the power grid at the station) in less than 30 minutes tops, especially if you just run through from the starting point, to the diner and then to the substation to get the water hose and then come back to the alley with the fire, put the fire out, go to the warehouse to get the cutter, see the scene, go to the power station and get the lockpick and then reactivate the power like what I had. Even with the cutter and the lockpick to unlock doors and get things like accessories and shotgun (among other things), you can still do this within 30 to 40 minutes which made a lot of people unhappy. 

The second part is in the sewers and it goes like Jill escapes from Nemesis into the sewers, explores, encounters those large Hunter-type enemies, gets some new weapons, finds the battery and get out of the sewers. That's it. You can run through this mess in about 10 minutes - especially if you have infinite weapons (since you won't be needing those rocket launchers). 

The boss fight on the top of building is too easy as all you need to do is run around, shooting the tank on its back and make it explode. A few dozen shots to the face and Nemesis goes down. The annoying part here (at least for me) is that, even so this is the first real (boss) fight you have with Nemesis, they should have done it better. You are literally safe from any of its attack as long as you stay away from him and shot from far. And I don't know if anyone noticed it or not, but Nemesis moves in a straight line. If he stands at Point A and you are standing on Point B, he will go straight to Point B in a direct line. All you need to do is read the moment and run to the sides, take aim and fire away as soon as he stops moving. That's it. I had fought all sort of monsters in Resident Evil series (since 1996) and I have to tell you that that is a very disappointing boss battle.

The third part goes to Carlos as he and Tyrell reached the hospital to find this prick named Bard who claimed to have a vaccine for the T-Virus. Actually that plot is good and it does explain a few things about Jill Valentine which came out in later games (like how she was able to survive being infected in Resident Evil 5, without turning into a monster but still maintain a super-human agility and strengthen - unless someone going to tell me that normal people in Resident Evil series can climb walls like a gecko). 

That part ends with Carlos having a massive shoot-out in a zombie siege which I must say was intense and eventful like that which you can find in older Resident Evil games. Unfortunately, such intensive scene was rare and you are back to your boring exploring style game later when Jill Valentine wakes up.

The fourth and final part of the game is merely the part where Jill wakes up from her beauty sleep, only to find that she have mere hours before Raccoon City get blown to kingdom come by the government. The final part consist of Jill finding her way down to the underground laboratory, finding the two ingredients need to make a vaccine, make the vaccine, escape from a scene that looks like one of those hentai tentacle animes, get to the underground arena where she has to fight Nemesis, confront Nicholai and then defeat Nemesis one last time before getting out of the facility and Raccoon City once and for all.

The main problem many of the gamers found (myself included) is that the game is too short for the money a lot of gamers had paid for. We basically paid for something that expensive (it is expensive in Malaysia) for a game which could end in an hour and half or two hours at best. I had finished the game in two and half hours (because I was exploring everything and trying to get those trophies) and you can actually find people on the Internet who speedrun this game and finished it under 46 MINUTES. 46 Minutes! You pay around USD 50 for a game which you can finish in less than an hour. 

Furthermore, have you played Resident Evil 2 which came like a year before Resident Evil 3? Have you compared the two games side by side? Anyone who did play Resident Evil 2 could know that RE2 was the better game between the two. You had two characters (Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield) and just like the original game, you can play both campaigns separately as well have replay value in form of harder levels. 

So what was the problem of not doing the same thing here with Resident Evil 3? Why didn't they make two separate campaign for Jill and Carlos (since both characters played crucial role here) and extend the time frame? Why they did not create a better environment and mix-and-match monsters to appear in the game other than just your regular lame slow-moving zombies? Why the town is so small, you can literally run around the whole Raccoon City (top side) in less than half an hour and spend another less than half an hour in the sewers and hospital? Why the whole game could be finished in 2 hours and plus?

The conclusion here is that CAPCOM had a good chance of creating an epic remake with a larger time scale, better story telling, contents and context, and they kinda of blew it up. Their game looked a lot like a rushed job and a lot of gamers felt somewhat cheated, especially with the amount we need to pay for this game.

PS : Just platinum it last night (26/1/2023).