Resident Evil 3 (Remake): Review

Opening

She hears screams and loud noises coming from the outside, when her phone rings and it's her old S.T.A.R.S. colleague Brad telling her that there's no time to explain and she need to get out of there. Before she has times to react, her wall blows up and a huge figure is coming at her. She runs out of her apartment and down the corridor, trying to escape. She don't manage to get to the emergency exit in time and cuts through an apartments and down the fire escape, where she sees the chaos unfolding outside for the first time. She don't have time to think about it, as the path forward is blocked and she goes into another apartment

She get caught up by the big figure, but the building doesn't manage anymore and the floor collapse. They fall down a few stories and in all the commotion she manages to get away. She runs out of the building, as the doorway behind her collapses and before she manages to rest proper she hears a familiar voice. She looks over to see Brad. They don't have much time to catch up, as the streets are starting to fill up by zombies

One of the best

A few years ago Capcom started doing a remakes of the Resident Evil series, first out was Resident Evil 2 in 2019, then Resident Evil 3 a year later in 2020 and latest out was Resident Evil 4 in 2023. Only played the demo so far of RE 4 Remake, but it looks good and I have played through RE 2 Remake twice (each character once) so I could get the true ending. But enough of what's Capcom has been up to with the RE series, let's take a look at RE 3

Improvements galore

The remake have taken inspirations from what's today's standard, but kept familiar elements still in the game

Beside when you launch the game, there's practically no loading throughout the game. No longer will you need to sit through the iconic door animations going from area to area

Unless you're playing on the hardest difficulty, there's no limitations on how many times you can save. They've kept the typewriters, so you still need to go to one to be able to save your game. Which isn't to difficult, as they're heavily scattered through the game. They've also included checkpoints at certain events, so you don't need to replay all the way back from your previous save point if you die. Checkpoint are not saved, so you still need to reached a save point if you want to quit the game

Atmosphere

They have done a good job with the atmosphere through the game, where you'll go through a few different settings and it helps sell that you're there and it's not to hide, that the game looks good

Cutscenes and gameplay just blends together, so you can't tell if anything has been pre-rendered or is being generated live. Which really helps for the immersion

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Quick time events (QTE) was very popular back around 2005, when Resident Evil 4 was released and was not present in the original Resident Evil 3: Nemesis. These days most videogames no longer use QTE, because many didn't like them and luckily it's used fairly lightly in the game. Mostly when zombies are latching on to you and you need to use it to escape, but you'll still take damage

Changes to the story / enemies was made, to make the game more modern and adapt new lore created in later games. Some are for the better and some feels unnecessary. One example is that they have introduced an similar enemy as first seen in Resident Evil 4, where the head explode and tentacles come out. It feels weird to see this enemy in Resident Evil 3, but at the same time it makes sense with the expanded lore

Points of no return exist through out the game, that will prevent you from returning to a previous areas. I wish those points at times would be more clear. As its easy to trigger by mistake, without understanding that you won't be able to return again. In one area there was cars and other rubble blocking off the road further, but there was a firetruck in the middle that you could climbed on and walk over to the other part of the road. Its clear that once you drop down, you might not be able to return. What was not clear, was that as soon as you went onto the firetruck you weren't able to go back..

Which was unfortunate, as the area was marked red on the map and it wasn't clear if the entire area was one zone or the first part was its own zone. Red on the map indicates that there's still an item in the area and yes the area was divided. So once you crossed, you could no longer pickup the item you missed

Instant kill sucks and feel unfair the way its implemented. As certain enemies can killed you instantly, even if you have full health and depending on how they spawn, you don't always feel you can avoid them or react in time. Luckily they introduced checkpoints or this would have been way worse

Conclusion

Verdict: Check it out!