**PLEASE NOTE: The following game review exclusively covers my experience with the single-player campaign mode. The following game does have online multiplayer modes. For further information regarding the multiplayer, please refer to exclusive articles from professional gaming journalists and communities such as IGN, GameSpot and Metacritic.**
The biggest surprise of last year for me came in the form of the “Resident Evil 2” remake for the PS4. If ever there was a product that could convince me that any type of remake was worth doing, this game was very much exhibit A. Having never played the original 1998 version prior and after having played just a few minutes of it for the first time, the achievement of the remake and its improvements over the original source material is all the more impressive and special to me.
It took what is usually the worst parts of a game, survival-horror or not, namely resource scarcity and inventory management, and made those elements seem just as fun as the gunplay and puzzles. I’ll even go out on a limb and say I liked it even better than “Resident Evil 4”, which is a monumental honor indeed. Hey, being able to move and attack at the same time is a big deal to me. Despite having a good excuse to be excited, my expectations for the new “Resident Evil 3” remake were reasonably restrained.
I simply didn’t hear as much praise for the original “Resident Evil 3” as much as I heard about the original “Resident Evil 2” time and time again. The potential to surprise me further was certainly here, with promises from Capcom saying that the primary antagonist Nemesis is significantly more threatening than Mr. X for “Resident Evil 2”. Either way, I was certainly down with checking this game out after being so impressed by last year’s “Resident Evil 2” remake.
And for the most part, “Resident Evil 3” takes what made the previous game so successful and basically carries it over to this game. We follow a different protagonist this time around in the form of Jill Valentine. After a virus causes a deadly outbreak on the citizens of Raccoon City, Jill plans to leave town to start a new life for herself after her time with S.T.A.R.S. is over. That is until Umbrella’s biological creation known as Nemesis attacks her and chases after her until she is killed.
Jill reluctantly accepts help from Carlos, a mercenary working for Umbrella who is unaware of the shady activities this corporation is hiding from the public. Together, they basically attempt to save whoever survived the outbreak, destroy Nemesis and evacuate the city. The game’s story serves as both a prequel and a sequel to the previous entry with much more of the city to explore this go around. Jill proves to be a cool and competent protagonist. Carlos is a worthy supporting player.
The cutscenes, acting and storytelling are all well done. This game retains the strong visual presentation that we saw in “Resident Evil 2”. Great facial animations, detailed textures, and some killer gore and carnage can be found here. The gameplay itself is still finely tuned and all fun to play in the moment, retaining most of what made the previous game click on various levels. Unfortunately, for my two cents at least, “Resident Evil 3” falls way short of earning its full $60 price tag in its current release state.
I’ll admit when I first purchased “Resident Evil 2” last year that its initial $60 asking price seemed pretty steep for a remake of a 20-year-old game. But that game clearly proved that it had the high value to back up its price tag. Through two different campaigns and a new game plus mode for each campaign you start off with and the different experiences you have each time you playthrough a different campaign, you had a high replay value through that aspect alone. But it didn’t stop there.
It had many challenging puzzles that required you to investigate the items and documents in your possession for clues to solve them. You had to deal with scarcity for resources and ammo. You had to plan your navigation around the police station accordingly, in case Mr. X was stalking you and not being tricked by where you were going. Even on the easiest difficulty, there was a respectable degree of knowledge and skill involved on the part of the player to navigate the game successfully.
“Resident Evil 3” surprisingly retains around only half of that gameplay value from the previous entry. And if the game itself were priced around maybe $30 or it was paid or free DLC to add onto “Resident Evil 2”, then that would make more sense. Sadly though, the biggest weakness with “Resident Evil 3” that cannot be ignored is its very short campaign length. Under the easy difficulty setting I played, I kid you not when I say that I literally beat the game over the duration of this past weekend.
Not counting the time when my game was paused, the time I ended up completing the entire campaign was roughly 6 to 8 hours. If you were to play on this game’s equivalent of the normal or hard difficulty settings to further extend the length of your playthrough, I suppose that would help. But I personally don’t know how much that will matter if the boss sections or quick time events with Nemesis or the generous loot/supply drops stay the same.
Many folks seem to agree (and I’m with them as well) that the game starts off promisingly on the right foot with a reasonable tension and terror from Nemesis, and the resource scarcity you would expect from a survival-horror franchise such as “Resident Evil”. Then for whatever reason, you quickly realize how overpowered you can become, which in turn defeats the purpose of this being a survival-horror game. Although there are a few puzzles, there desperately needed to be more in this campaign.
They would at least extend the length of the campaign’s progression and add more value to justify the price tag. For the record, I did have to pay only $50 for this game because of my Amazon Prime membership, and even then, “Resident Evil 3” needed more meat in its campaign mode. Other remakes or remasters like the recent “Spyro: Reignited Trilogy” or “Shadow of the Colossus” for the PS4 were sold for less during their initial release, $40 at most.
Said remasters had just as much if not more content ready at release to justify their prices. And although “Resident Evil 3” has multiplayer options, the multiplayer is only available online. Yet another example of a game without local multiplayer options. If there’s one thing I dislike about this current console generation, it’s that there’s not enough games with local multiplayer options. There are a few, such as “Rocket League” or games on the Switch, but we need more to go around.
As it is on its own terms, “Resident Evil 3” is a decent game. It’s great in the moment to play until it’s all over. I’ll admit that the more I thought about it and read some reviews from other critics and audiences, the more I realize that Capcom had sort of a missed opportunity on their hands.
After their last “Resident Evil” game had significant replay value after completing it, brisking through the short campaign “Resident Evil 3” offers makes you wonder if it would work better as DLC as opposed to a full priced package. It’s a good game to get when it’s on sale for about $30 or less, when you know you’ll get your money’s worth, or a simple rental, which is the about of time that you can conveniently complete the game in. If you do check “Resident Evil 3” out, you’ll get plenty of killer action from it.