Review for Resident Evil 3 Remake. Game for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, the video game was released on 03/04/2020
Capcom did it again: it was not enough to take the most famous survival horror in history and bring it back in a remake sauce as done with Resident Evil 2. They also did it with Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, and there are (albeit with fluctuating results ) succeeded once again. The Resident Evil in between, the one that sanctioned the end of a trilogy that would go down in history and, at the same time, immolated itself as a tombstone of a genre that would have suffered more and more action contaminations from then on, with Resident Evil 3 Remake it is re-proposed to us after being submitted.
At the time we had allowed ourselves a musical comparison, relating Resident Evil 2 Remake to Marylin Manson's Sweet Dreams. For Resident Evil 3 Remake we feel like making a comparison a little less marked and, continuing on the same vein, we could take Aerosmith's Come Togheter as an example: a great song, God forbid, but that does not darken or distort with so much incisiveness the original work track of the Beatles, limiting itself to making it more modern and rhythmic for an audience hungry for rock n 'roll.
Resident Evil 3 Remake takes all that was good in the previous remake and further refines the recipe to churn out a final product that does justice to a Resident Evil always too little mentioned in the chat between friends, squeezed between the titanic RE2 and the equally innovative RE4. The biggest problem of RE3 Remake is - we don't know how to put it any other way - being Resident Evil 3, in all its strengths and weaknesses: the quantity of contents, the plot, the characters, are revisited but, following the path traced with RE2 Remake, the narrative universe and the composition of the original game are not upset. This makes it a good game, but at the same time it confronts it with a direct opponent impossible to beat: that Resident Evil 2 Remake that has accustomed us to a much more succulent amount of content and replayability.
But let's go in order: Resident Evil 3 Remake takes place in the same days as RE2, with the adventure of the protagonists - Jill Valentine and Carlos Oliveira - which intersects with that of Claire and Leon for situations and places visited, but without them going never to meet. After the mission to Villa Spencer narrated in the first Resident Evil, Jill has remained in Raccoon City for an investigation, and she has a few days to go before she can go home. Too bad that the situation deteriorates beyond repair and, during the few hours of sleep that the girl allows herself after a hard day's work, the city is infected with the fearsome T Virus.
Resident Evil 3 Remake begins with a bang, slamming the goodness of the technical sector in the player's face from the first seconds, the survival strength of Jill and him, the toughest antagonist of the entire series: the Nemesis, which between flames and destruction will give you serious trouble throughout the course of the adventure. Apart from the more modern narrative cut with this beginning to the gun cotton (which for the first seconds even recalls Resident Evil VII), the rest of the story proceeds flaunting an incredible fidelity to the original RE3, taking here and there some dutiful poetic licenses that make more the story is cinematic, as well as linking the quotes to the events told in Resident Evil 2 Remake much better than in the past. From the trailer shown at the end of the demo you already know that in the game there will be Marvin and Mr. Kendo of RE2: we can not (and never would like to -NdR) spoil you anything, but know that even if they are simple cameos they are moments that give fans enjoyed it very much.
But even Capcom occasionally deserves an ear, in this case for having eliminated one of the most interesting features of Resident Evil 3: in the original it was possible, in different moments of the adventure, to decide how to behave in key moments through a multiple choice system. Hiding rather than jumping out of a window while fleeing the Nemesis, as well as choosing whether to blind or stun it by taking advantage of the surrounding environment were options that, although leading to slight variations in the plot that soon returned to the established tracks, made the gameplay intriguing. thanks to the "what if?" and they pushed to replay the campaign only to witness the scenes dictated by the different possible choices. Well, all of this doesn't exist in the remake.
And it is a real shame because, to complete the campaign it will take you just over four hours and, even by facing the challenge at different levels of difficulty to discover the various secrets, upgrades for weapons and unlock perks (available for purchase with virtual game currency) and additional game modes, the longevity of RE3 Remake is however limited if compared to the different four runs that you can face as Leon and Claire in Resident Evil 2.
However, the fact remains that the story, even if simple, in its short duration always maintains a high and tight pace: to tread the streets of Raccoon City again, to explore (even if briefly) the police station and to unveil Umbrella's plans is always a pleasure, this is not discussed.
RE3 Remake also deserves the merit of balancing more between Jill and Carlos: although the girl is the undisputed protagonist of the adventure, in this Remake we will have more opportunities than in the past to take up the rifle in the role of the male co-star of the story, who, as expected, takes on the role of Chris Redfield on duty, showing muscle and testosterone in some situations where only a trained soldier can throw himself with his head down.
Gameplay side, we confirm the excellent impression already had in the demo analysis: Resident Evil 3 Remake has been painstakingly curated to be fast and accurate in every detail, we would dare to say almost surgical. This is how, for the happiness of speed runners - again speaking of longevity, for grade S you will have to complete the game on normal difficulty in less than two and a half hours - the improvements introduced with RE 2 Remake become even more tangible: the incredible speed of uploads and saves, the passage between the various environments without slowdowns and no solution of continuity, the elimination of the zoom with description every time an object is collected, the map that indicates the areas in which there are still objects to be collect… we could go on and on, but you understand that we are talking about an overall direction work in which nothing has been left to chance.
Speaking of Nemesis, forget about Resident Evil 2's Mr. X, which in comparison looks like a rag doll: the Nemesis will give you serious trouble, and when we say serious we mean that at the highest difficulty level you will feel like a Toad in the Dark Souls universe: very few errors are allowed and the Nemesis, especially during the first two hours of adventure, will almost always be on your tail, forcing you to memorize its attack patterns, to think quickly and, needless to say, to face some trial and error to identify the best path to follow to reach the goal without the immense Tyrant massacring you with a single gesture.
The good news is that compared to Resident Evil 2 Remake, zombies - excluding extreme difficulty - are much easier to take down and, thanks to the wide range of explosive barrels and grenades, together with Jill's ability to dodge enemy attacks by pressing the R1 key with the right timing, will not give you so much trouble unless you find them in front of you in large groups, or when they will take you by surprise by appearing from around a corner.
A separate discussion for the Hunters who, when the Nemesis does not, will be able to kill Jill with a single shot even at the lowest difficulty level: it will therefore be essential to always keep your attention high, because if it is true that the game provides enough ammunition and gunpowder (to be combined to obtain the different types of bullets), it is equally important that you remember to aim for the head and check that the enemies on the ground are actually dead completely, on pain of your painful and gruesome departure.
Interesting is the reinterpretation of some of the puzzles and boss fights of this version of RE3, which obviously wink at the original game several times: if the moments in which you find yourself forced to fight against the Nemesis have certainly found new life thanks to the possibilities offered by the hardware of the current generation of consoles, the same cannot be said of the puzzles, which are unfortunately few and certainly not memorable: even counting the optional puzzles, mostly necessary to recover consumable resources or permanent upgrades for weapons , the level of challenge offered does not even from a distance equal that offered by the first two Resident Evil. To be clear, the chess pieces puzzle alone to open the door and save Sherry in Resident Evil 2 Remake is worth as much as all the puzzles present in Resident Evil 3 Remake: if you are a fan of the old KINGs, those full of backtracking to collect and place medallions, gems, and keys with playing card symbols, don't say we didn't warn you.
If there is one sector in which Resident Evil 3 Remake amazes, it is the technical one: the RE engine shows its muscles, the console blows as the machines usually do close to the generational change and the Nemesis has never left us so stunned. If in RE3 the Tyrant had "only" a rocket launcher available, in the remake Capcom also provided it with a flamethrower, and we guarantee that the graphics engine will put you in front of a realization of the fire so intense that you can feel the heat. Likewise the animations of Jill and the zombies, as well as the terrifying look of the giant spiders and the design of the environments in general, are of excellent workmanship and contribute like never before to convey what thrill of horror that will run you along the back when you find yourself suddenly surrounded by the undead in the twilight of a street, or when the Nemesis suddenly bursts in ready to make your life a flaming hell.
The music, the sound effects, too - the "Stars" pronounced by the Nemesis could not fail to be taken up and made even more scary in the remake - and the dubbing, able to rival the (always excellent and very high level) English counterpart.
Complete the package Resident Evil Resistance, the asymmetrical multiplayer game in which four players fight against monsters and the traps unleashed on them by a fifth player, the "Mastermind". Although the basic idea is based on titles such as Dead by Daylight, the fact that the "monster" on duty does not take the field directly but plays his moves from a sort of control room, combined with the charm of the very rich narrative universe of Resident Evil, is compelling and full of interesting ideas to ensure good longevity and a quality that pushes you to return to the game to complete the various daily challenges proposed by Capcom. For the moment, if you were hoping to try this mode with the public open, it seems that you will have to wait a few more days, since on PlayStation 4 and PC at the time of release there were several matchmaking problems. We therefore reserve the right to deepen this multiplayer mode by waiting for any patches and evaluating - as with any online title - the consistency and goodness of post-launch support. It will not be the Mercenaries mode that so many hoped to find redone also in this version of RE3, but it is certainly an interesting addition that can guarantee additional hours of play by making sense of the ticket price.
Resident Evil 3 Remake continues the path traced by Resident Evil 2 Remake: it is basically RE3: Nemesis brought to the current generation of consoles, with all the technical and gameplay improvements that today's technology allows to obtain. Likewise, it's also very loyal to Resident Evil 3 from twenty years ago, which prevents it from aiming for a review rating equal to that of its predecessor: longevity, puzzles and gameplay are less profound than Resident. Evil 2, now as then. If you loved it in its time, or if you have known the saga with the Remake of the second chapter, expect a more of the same of the latter, less long-lived and more action. Despite the burden of having to deal with an unattainable yardstick - it is a title that involves, that pushes you to replay to find all the secrets and to try the different degrees of challenge. And let's face it: we horror fans love to jump in the chair, and this time the Nemesis is really very (but really!) Scary.
► Resident Evil 3 Remake is a Shooter-Puzzle type game developed and published by Capcom for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, the video game was released on 03/04/2020
