I’ve been calling the remake of Resident Evil 2, that got released last year, the “new Resident Evil 2”, instead of a “Resident Evil 2 Remake”. Mainly for the reason that it, unlike the Resident Evil (2002) (usually called REmake), while being undoubtedly a remake with lots of similar elements, plays very differently. It wasn’t a good or bad thing, mind you, just different, hence why I call it this way. And a year on I still find it to be an amazing title. Except for the Ghost Survivors DLC, it’s terrible.
I find myself faced with a new problem with Resident Evil 3 (2020), however. As the only way I could honestly call this game would be “alternative Resident Evil 3”. Because calling this game a remake is simply impossible. And this time, it is a quite a bit of a good and a bad thing.
At its core, Resident Evil 3 (2020) is very similar to the new Resident Evil 2. Controls-wise, it’s a mix of different shades of old and some new, mixing ideas from the classic RE titles, the “survival action” period RE titles and having some concepts of its own, started in RE7. It’s over the shoulder, you do have to aim manually and shooting specific parts of enemies is vital. All door transitions (except for cutscenes) are real time and enemies often can follow you through these transitions. The world is interconnected (though more on this later) and backtracking is incentivized with finding new resources or new upgrades for weapons or weapons themselves. Inventory management is a thing and the game has the classic interconnected item boxes to dump items to and the save points to save at, though at all but one of the difficulty levels the game also autosaves at specific points.
The only core thing that was changed from the last years title to this one, really, is the switch from the defense items like knives and grenades to a dodge mechanic. It’s not surprising, really, given that the original Resident Evil 3 from 1999 introduced the concept to the series in the first place. The difference is, though, that this time it is a dedicated button, instead of a timed press of the Aim button (or timed action while aiming). The concept of timing the dodges, however, is still there with the addition of “perfect dodges” – if you dodge just right and then press the aim button, the time slows down, while the character aims at the weak point of the enemy they just dodged. It’s a pretty good system and, in general, is an improvement over the incredibly unreliable dodge from the original or even the weird dodge mechanic from the Revelations sub-series of RE. Though it should be noted that it’s still not entirely reliable – you can dodge or counter into an attack and take damage, the timing for the perfect dodge varies from very consistent for some enemies to almost impossible to read for others and the basic non-perfect dodge is, actually, almost completely useless.
What has been changed and drastically so is the overall design of the game flow, the levels and the encounters. The new Resident Evil 2 was a fresh take on classic survival horror with all of the core elements of the sub-genre in place, one of the key ones being the exploration and non-linearity aspect. Resident Evil 3 (2020) is not like that at all and has far more in common with the survival action period of the franchise. The only more or less open segment of the game takes up around 1/5 of the overall game and if you’ve played the demo of the game, you’ve seen everything this game has in terms of proper exploration. The rest is either a completely straight line in terms of where you can go, or a line with tiny detours, making the game feel as if we’re in the last gen again (horrible Final Fantasy XIII flashbacks incoming).
Now, on its own this isn’t a problem per se…if we ignore that this game is supposed to be a remake of the second most non-linear RE game in the main franchise. But honestly – RE4 or 5 were super linear, but they’re still fun to play. Same goes for the fantastic Dead Space. Nothing wrong with being a great survival action. Problem is – this game isn’t great. It’s serviceable. It’s fine. It’s fun to play once. But apart from its dodge mechanic and few interesting enemy encounter designs, it has nothing. It’s based on the new RE2 core which was designed for different gameplay (and was really good at that), but it’s trying to be RE4 without the craziness, the variety, the creativity that RE4 had. And because of that, it’s often simply boring.
Plus, the game wasn’t meant to be played once. It is usually expected from any RE title to be super replayable, having new modes, new tiny differences, unlockable weapons and costumes and RE3 tries to do more than RE2 did last year. Once you beat the game on the Hardcore difficulty, you unlock a new difficulty mode that, just like Madhouse from RE7 and Arrange Mode from RE: Director’s Cut, remixes enemies and items in addition to making everything harder. It’s a good idea, something that I’ve always loved ever since, well, the already mentioned Arrange Mode. But, as different as it is, I can’t say that the changes in this mode (and it’s harder variant you can unlock later) are necessarily good. They’re most certainly interesting, requiring you to rethink your pathing through the game and the way you deal with different rooms, but at the end of the day, I found most of the changes that affect difficulty simply cheap and reliant on randomness. Enemies go “turbo” more often, for example, and in this mode this involves them having literally fast forwarded animations that look stupid, especially on Nemesis. They can combo you to death more easily. They’re placed in generally cheap “gotcha” places seemingly intended to just kill you outright, instead of making you react. And the mode is genuinely unpleasant.
But since we’ve mentioned Nemesis, who is now officially named Nemesis and not Pursuer, he’s both a fun enemy and a huge disappointment. His appearances are always bombastic and fun, his arsenal of moves is good (though he has an extra cheap combo that can stunlock you to death, which is just dumb), dodging and fighting him is genuinely great. He’s far more agile than the Tyrant/Mr. X from the new RE2 which should make him automatically better, yet… Somehow their roles, compared to the original games, are completely reversed. Where in the original RE2 the Tyrant was a preset mini-boss encounter that you could fight or dodge in specific rooms at specific points, Nemesis was the first proper evolution of the stalker enemies in games. When triggered (by story flags), he’d chase you across rooms. He had a certain radius and escaping him involved going either to a certain room away from him, or escaping from him long enough so he would lose you. Yet, he could also suddenly find you, jumping from a roof in your way when you thought you’ve finally lost him. And it meant that you could, in most cases, dictate where you take the stand with him. This is the behavior that was implemented for the Tyrant in the new RE2, except with less agility.
Nemesis in this RE3, however, is now extremely scripted. Partially due to the linear locations, but also partially because every encounter with him is designed as an elaborate scripted boss encounter instead of him being a super enemy during the normal gameplay. You’re not just exploring the locations, while trying to avoid a stalking deadly enemy, you’re suddenly locked in a burning building and must escape, or must run down a linear alley while Nemesis is taking shots at you. It’s “epic”, it looks cool, but it’s also boring and feels far more like the encounters with Ustanak from RE6, than what you’d expect from Nemesis. Except, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, some of the encounters with Ustanak were far more fun than this (disregarding the terrible QTEs).
Where the game undeniably improves in comparison with the new RE2 is in its character. The story is told in a fun way with really cool characters who are extremely fun, unlike the surprisingly tame characterizations and muddy storytelling of the RE2 from last year. This feels closer to what the classic RE titles were about with good humour contrasting the horrible situations, cool character moments and the storyline that makes sense. And a really really good human villain too, who is far more interesting than his original version from 1999. Now, unfortunately, this is also the game where the swears go completely off the rails as every character seems to swear every few seconds which gets weird. I mean, I was fine with this more swear-y change of dialogue in 7 and new 2, but here it starts feeling as if the dialogues were proofread by an edgy 15 year old at times. Still, overall, this is a good fun story on its own.
I have been desperately trying to avoid comparing the game with the original RE3 however. Because if I do, this Resident Evil 3 simply falls apart in everything but some fun sequences and character moments. The story of the original was more complex and the pacing in it was far superior – it started with Jill escaping her home that’s gone to hell due to the zombie outbreak, saw the desolation on the streets and only then dialed this already desperate situation to 11 with the introduction of Nemesis itself. And it then followed with constant ups and downs that felt amazing and well deserved and crescendoed with an escape from a city that’s about to get obliterated. In this new game Nemesis appears right at the start and afterwards the pace goes down, which leads to a constantly uneven pace of the game. And the ending itself feels shockingly tame too, managing to not capture the emotions the game was going for.
The biggest offender, of course, is the structure. The original Resident Evil 3 did something really smart – it took the extremely non-linear (both gameplay and story-wise) original Resident Evil and then mixed it with the super linear and cinematic RE2 to attempt making something that has the best elements of both. The solution wasn’t entirely elegant – the Live Selection feels a bit too “choose your own adventure” even for 99, – but the heart was in the right place and the results were extremely fun. Your choices could influence how some parts of the game play and how story develops (including 2 endings to the game), while the game also constantly decided on random to switch up some of the enemy and item positions, selecting from several presets. No playthrough could be exactly the same even if you were to try to play the same way. It was brilliant! And of course, in true modern game fashion, RE3 (2020) is entirely 100% linear. Even in more open locations you are railroaded to get to a specific point in a specific way to experience the exact same scenes in the exact same way no matter how many times you play. And no, the higher difficulty modes don’t really make the changes feel meaningful either.
This change also means that the only bonus game mode in the series that I truly enjoyed – Mercenaries: Operation Mad Jackal, – is completely gone as well and, in fact, this RE3 doesn’t have any unlockable bonus modes at all. Instead, it’s sold alongside the Dead by Daylight-like asymmetric multiplayer Resident Evil Resistance, which I’ve launched once and will never launch again because I don’t care about games like this whatsoever. Though, the concept of a “shop” for unlocking bonus weapons is still there and it’s pretty cool. Epilogues from the original are also gone as are some references to some of the other characters from the franchise that were mentioned or even appeared in the original RE3. At least the music is finally returning to its proper place in the mix, with lots of music in the game playing all the time as ambience. Unfortunately, it’s still mixed in such a way, that hearing it really well is impossible even if you lower the rest of the sound settings, because it’s mixed to be in the background. And what’s also not very nice is the realization, that the best tracks in this game are remixes of the tracks from the original, and with almost all of them the original tracks were better anyway.
I liked my first playthrough of Resident Evil 3 (2020). I wasn’t excited, didn’t love it. But I liked it. Then I replayed it again and again, to get all of the unlocks. Which is usually where I start liking the RE games more, yet in this case, I liked it less and less with each playthrough. And now that I’m done with everything that that game had to offer, I don’t feel like I will ever play this again, which is not something I can say about any other main entry to the series as even the games I don’t like that much (like 0, 6 or CV) have enough interesting elements to them that make me want to get back and replay them again. But Resident Evil 3 (2020)? Yeah, I think I’m done. It’s fine, it could be good for one playthrough, which will be pretty quick. It’s bland. And it is exactly what people liked to think about the original RE3, where it wasn’t true – this is just a simple tiny expansion to Resident Evil 2, nothing more.