My last escape: How Resident Evil 3 is just Resident Evil 2+, and why that’s okay

Poor old Resident Evil 3 has come in for a fair amount of flak over the years, both on its original release and its updated remake for modern platforms. And while some of the criticisms levelled at it are understandable, they’re by no means enough to make it a “bad” game, as some people seem to imply. In fact, particularly in its remake form, it provides a very enjoyable, entertaining and worthwhile part of the series that is a lot of fun to engage with.

As with previous parts of this series, we will be focusing on the more recent remake of Resident Evil 3 today, as that’s the more readily accessible version of the game.

In Resident Evil 3, you take on the role of Jill Valentine, one of the two heroes from the first Resident Evil game. Following the “mansion incident”, as depicted in the first title, Jill has found herself at a bit of a loose end — though through some nice environmental storytelling in the remake’s opening sequence, it becomes clear that she’s been pursuing her own independent investigation into Umbrella Corporation after the things she witnessed.

We join her in Resident Evil 3 as she is having a very bad evening. Not only does she have a nightmare in which she turns into a zombie, but when she wakes up she finds that Raccoon City is in a bit of a state, as depicted in Resident Evil 2. And to make matters worse, it’s not long after this that she finds herself pursued by a relentless bioweapon known as the Nemesis.

After an initial frantic chase sequence, Jill meets up with Umbrella’s paramilitary organisation UBCS, who clearly have no idea that the entire situation is the fault of their employer. We’re introduced to Carlos, who has fabulous hair, and Jill enters into an uneasy alliance with the group in an attempt to get the few surviving civilians to safety.

What then follows is an all-action adventure in which Jill, with the assistance of Carlos, must escape from Raccoon City, dealing with the threat of Nemesis once and for all along the way.

Mechanically, Resident Evil 3’s remake functions almost identically to Resident Evil 2’s remake, with a few additions. Most notable among these is a quick-step function that allows Jill to quickly dodge out of the way of incoming threats, including a “perfect dodge” mechanic if timed… well, perfectly.

The game is still modelled more in the third-person shooter mould than the fixed camera angles of the original Resident Evil 3, and while purists may continue to scoff at this, at this point it’s hard to deny that it’s a change for the better. The modern third-person presentation allows for a much greater feeling that Jill is doing what you want her to do, but the change in perspective by no means lessens the impact of the more horrific moments.

Like Resident Evil 2’s remake, Resident Evil 3’s remake makes excellent use of lighting and darkness. Since a substantial part of the game’s opening is set on the streets of Raccoon City, the modern consoles’ raytracing capabilities are put to excellent use with neon signs and reflective surfaces; aesthetically speaking, the strong contrast between the bright, colourful neon of establishments like Jim’s Crabs and the bleak happenings occurring on the streets is extremely effective.

The third-person perspective also allows for plenty of Capcom fanservice throughout the game, as you’re able to examine many elements of scenery in a lot more detail than you could in the original PlayStation version. Like Resident Evil 2’s remake, Resident Evil 3’s remake eschews the original game’s ability to examine random scenery items and get brief text descriptions of them in favour of using high-resolution textures that you can simply look at. Poke around and you’ll be rewarded with references to all sorts of Capcom classics, including Ghosts ‘n’ Goblins, Mega Man, 1942 and many more.

The key elements of survival horror are still present and correct, however. On your first playthrough of the game, you’ll find yourself constantly uncomfortably low on ammunition and concerned about whether it’s safe to use a precious healing item. Surviving the experience becomes as much about knowing which enemies to avoid as which ones to shoot, and there are plenty of interesting tactical decisions to make along the way.

And, of course, there are plenty of surprises, too. While Nemesis tends to show up at predefined moments in the story rather than constantly being in pursuit, the first time you encounter each of these moments it’s a delightful surprise. And, like the Tyrant in Resident Evil 2’s remake, outwitting the Nemesis during sequences where he’s chasing you can be very satisfying indeed — particularly if you’re able to temporarily down him and score an upgrade for your weapons in the process.

There are a couple of boss fight sequences throughout Resident Evil 3’s remake that feel like they outstay their welcome a little bit, as they largely involve simply hurling everything you’ve got at Nemesis until he falls over. That said, the two-part final boss confrontation is excellent, because these encounters are about more than simply running around dodging and occasionally firing off grenades.

There are plenty of other memorable sequences, also. Probably the most horrific part of the game comes early, where Jill needs to reactivate the power in a substation in order to get the trains running again. Unfortunately, the substation has been completely covered by a disgusting insect nest, and of course all the levers she needs to flip are right in the depths of this mess. The enemies here are particularly horrible giant flea-like things that have a habit of jumping on Jill’s face and impregnating her orally with parasites. The only way to cure Jill of a parasitic infection is to induce vomiting through the use of one of the series’ iconic healing herbs.

Elsewhere in the game there are some excellent enemies, including several variations on the Hunters, which require specific strategies to deal with. Dynamic damage modelling makes it immensely satisfying to blast chunks off enemies, hit them in weak spots and exploit their vulnerabilities. These rare moments of feeling a sense of genuine power are particularly thrilling in survival horror games, where you tend to spend the majority of your time feeling very weak and unsafe.

Probably the most interesting thing about Resident Evil 3’s remake, though, is how it’s built for replay value. This is simultaneously one of the best things about the game, and likely the source of many of its criticisms.

Your initial main story runthrough of Resident Evil 3 will likely take you somewhere in the region of 7-10 hours. This is quite short by modern game standards, so if you leave the game behind after beating it once, it’s understandable that some people might feel like they haven’t really got their money’s worth, particularly if they paid full price for the game.

However, it’s very obvious that your experience with Resident Evil 3’s remake is not supposed to stop there. Upon beating the game, you unlock a “shop” in which you can spend points earned through completing in-game challenges and earning trophies, and through this you can unlock a variety of features that provide the potential to change up the way the game plays considerably.

Probably most notable is the ability to unlock certain items earlier than you would usually get them in the story, and to acquire various weapons with infinite ammunition. The latter option is significant, as it allows the game to be played more as an action game than a survival horror.

The long-term metagame for Resident Evil 3’s remake is for you to be able to clear the game quickly enough to attain an S-rank, which requires you to blast through everything in about two and a half hours, manually saving only five times or fewer throughout the game. (It’s worth noting that there are fairly frequent auto-save points, so this isn’t as much of an issue as you might think.)

Each time you play through and earn more points, you get closer to unlocking really helpful weapons such as the infinite ammo assault rifle and rocket launcher — and by the time you unlock those, ploughing through even the harder difficulty settings in record time should be well within your reach. Of course, the real pros can attempt to speedrun the game without taking advantage of any of these bonus items, and there’s value to be had there, also.

This emphasis on replay value has been part of Resident Evil since the very beginning. All the games in the series, even the early ones, had things that unlocked after you beat them once — and most have incorporated some means of making subsequent playthroughs noticeably different from your initial story run, be it simply through adding new weapons, offering new characters to play as or even opening up entire new game modes.

It’s long been a pattern with survival horror games to make your initial runthrough one where you care about the story, and after that provide a variety of gameplay-centric activities to engage with. This isn’t just the case with the Resident Evil series; Konami’s Silent Hill and Koei Tecmo’s Project Zero/Fatal Frame have always been like this, too, among plenty of others.

So if you find yourself a little underwhelmed with Resident Evil 3’s remake after a single runthrough, don’t stop there. Unlock some of those bonus extras. Play through again, see if you can beat your time. Engage with all the additional elements included to provide the game with extra longevity. And you might just find there’s a lot more long-term appeal here than you initially thought.

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