I didn’t have a clever caption for this one.

After the smash hit that was the Resident Evil 2 Remake, fans clamored for more. Would we see Capcom remake the rest of the series in similar fashion or was RE2 just a one and done experiment? Spoiler alert: Capcom isn’t done.

In one of the Playstation State of Plays, Capcom dropped a surprise trailer for Resident Evil 3. Hype achieved.

What You Need to Know

Resident Evil 3 follows Jill Valentine and Carlos Oliveira on their journey to survive Raccoon City amid the zombie outbreak and survive against the terrifying Nemesis. Cool little tidbit, this game takes place during and after the events of Resident Evil 2 so you’ll see some overlapping. I’ve never played the original versions of these games so this was cool to me.

Gameplay

Resident Evil 3 plays exactly the same as Resident Evil 2. If you haven’t played 2 then it plays like Resident Evil 4 but if you haven’t played 4 then go back and play it.

Resident Evil 3 is a third person survival horror game. Players assume the role of Jill Valentine/Carlos Oliveira as they navigate Raccoon City trying to survive. Have no fear as both are members of elite task forces so they are pretty capable of murdering zombies and taking care of themselves. The shooting aspect of the game takes place as an over the shoulder experience as you line up shots to murder zombies. Both characters are equipped with a combat knife they can use to stab stab, although it’s no damn Excalibur. New to the series is a combat roll. Dodge at the right time, and the world will slow down so you can either escape or line up a shot.

The survival aspect comes from everything else. You find ammo, healing items, and weapons sparingly so you need to decide when you want to fight or flight. On the easier difficulties, consistently fighting is easy to do, but the harder the difficulty the tougher it gets. Each character has their own inventory that allows you to hold a limited quantity of items, which eventually becomes an interesting game of Tetris. You’ll find key items in the world that force you to decide what you want to hold on to. Stressful as heck.

Outside of inventory management and killing, there are plenty of puzzles and side items to encounter. You’ll find weapons, weapon modifications, and safes that contain hip pouches that increase your inventory. These are missable so don’t be surprised if your friend says they uncovered a sight for their gun that you didn’t get.

Review

I watched a review before I played this one, and I’ll try to brush off the bias the review gave me. To be honest though, this one was good, but not Resident Evil 2 good.

Resident Evil 2 was a pretty substantial game. You played as Leon and then had the ability to play as Claire totaling two playthroughs. The biggest thing going into this game is the length. You can beat this game in around 5 hours. Heck it took me 4:45-ish to beat this game and that was after doing my very best to explore everything. I never played the original Resident Evil 3, but many players are saying this version had so much content cut off.

One of my biggest issues is the setting. As I mentioned, this game takes place during and after Resident Evil 2. A lot of the locales are from RE2 so you’re basically backtracking through previously visited places. It is cool because you’ll see how a certain event came to take place, but after the cool factor, I was stuck thinking “Wow I really paid $60 to go through the same places.” Also, the Nemesis experience wasn’t as good this time around. In RE2, Mr. X would follow or interrupt your process at random points creating an overbearing sense of tension of when would he show up. Nemesis only shows up at scripted events, and while they are really intense, you only experience scripted events. There’s no more random encounters.

Capcom must think people wanted another multiplayer experience because this game comes with Resident Evil Resistance. Resistance is similar to other survivor games like Dead By Daylight or Friday the 13th: a group of four players must survive and escape a facility full of zombies while a mastermind must prevent them from escaping. The four survivors come with different abilities that compliment each other, while the mastermind has his/her own specialties. Honestly, it’s a cool experience but since it just launched servers have been janky and in favor of the mastermind so my friends and I got screwed a bunch of times.

I just realized that I’ve been overly negative. Forgive me.

This game looks phenomenal. Fires fire, Jill is so well detailed, and Carlos is gorgeous. I’ve never seen hair that looks as good as his. It’s also so refreshing to go back to this style of game after Resident Evil 7 was a departure for the series gameplay wise. I started playing the series with Resident Evil 4 so going “back” and experiencing the story behind these games has been incredible and a great experience.

Warning back to negativity. I think the biggest flag here is the price point. If as much content was cut from the original as fans say there was, this should’ve been a $40 game because I’m sure nobody asked for a new multiplayer Resident Evil game. It also has me concerned because rumors are surfacing that Capcom is going to remaster Resident Evil 4, and if that’s true, there is a possibility that they could mess it up. If that happens, then oh boy. All I’m saying is I want the original voice actor for Leon not the one in Resident Evil 2 Remake or Resident Evil 6 (never played it so I didn’t know he had a different voice actor).

Despite my negativity, I really enjoyed this game. I’m actually thinking about going back to 100% it since my Twitch viewers said I should which includes an incredible 3 hour speed run and multiple playthroughs. For now, I’m going through all the games in order which is helping me understand the backstories and setups.

That’s all I got though. It’s a good game, but I’d say wait for it to go down in price. What’d you think of Resident Evil 3?