We should be used to disappointment by now. Thankfully, I had never played the original Resident Evil 3, so I didn't have such expectations. I had played Resident Evil 2 remake, though, and I had those types of expectations. Either way, both parties were extremely let down. This game was missing something, a lot of something, and it was style. This game just was not that engaging. We barely even got a look at our character before her wall imploded with the attack from a giant zombie! Seriously, everything is just so condensed and noticeably shallow throughout this entire game.
It has a lot of what made the RE2 remake work. It has a good UI that's fairly easy to figure out just from intuition, which is important. The real problem is that it didn't know how to pad out its runtime with anything extremely interesting. We start off with a dream sequence where Jill Valentine has the T-Virus and kills herself. Yes, quite shocking. Then we have the exact same thing happen, sans the T-Virus. Instead, we answer the phone and find out that the T-Virus is taking over the city. Before we can do anything, Nemesis knocks through the wall and becomes more of an annoyance than an imposing figure bringing fear to the player.
He just becomes more and more annoying with the use of his tentacles and the use of his super-charged virus that makes the zombies harder with bug legs opening from their faces. Instead of becoming more interesting, the game just becomes more and more tedious. It was already annoying enough with the zombies coming out of nowhere to bite you while you're concentrating on another one coming in at you. This can be effective, but there needs to be more than that. It's really just a game of backtracking over a small area to do little tasks and get fetch quest items so that you can escape on a subway train.
There were some seriously nasty parts, like when Jill gets some tendril shoved down her throat and she injests some disgusting bug parasites. This was horrifically nasty and we think it's going to affect her in some serious way, but no. You walk around, unable to run, until you turn on some machine and then she suddenly vomits it all up and carries on. Seriously, this was not cool. Seeing your character treated like this while having to fight off giant spiders, all for it to add literally nothing but a slight difficulty, it's a little insulting.
All of this, paired with the annoyance of Nesmsis coming out of nowhere to pull you in with tentacles and hit you really hard, this game was a slog to get through. You go from the streets, to the subway, to the laboratories and it's all just so by-the-books at this point. It tries to add more interest with the zombie mutations but it's just more of the same. There really isn't much more to say. The main boss battles are lackluster with the last battle of Nemesis just being a constant process of wearing him down in different forms. It's not without its merits of an interesting battleground and cool rocket fire wearing him down, but it's not worth the journey.
A lot of people noticed that this game was stripped down of a lot of gameplay from the original. I'll be playing and reviewing the original Nemesis, and I'm really hoping it's a better experience than this. The survival elements are all there. They keep you low on ammo and health items. It does keep you starving enough to choose your battles wisely and try and sneak past Nemesis as much as you can. Does this add much, though? No, it really doesn't. It just makes the game more frustrating while also being outright boring.
Boring, that's the real word for this game. Jill is a nostalgic character, but that's not nearly enough to carry the game throughout its entire run. There just isn't enough to keep it exciting. You're still just running around performing tasks while some people yell at you to get a train moving. Then you're in another laboratory with a bunch of new zombies and it does very little to keep interest. This game is just not worth the time and effort. Resident Evil 2's remake is far better and full of more interesting content, including the puzzles. This game is lacking a great deal in puzzles. The closest thing it has is a confusing part where you need to get the tracks working to get to the subway's destination. Maybe if they made Nemesis more like Mr. X, it could have been more natural, rather than him just popping up out of nowhere in random stints of the game. It is kind of funny when he punches random zombies out of his way, though. He's still a cool character, but this game just couldn't do him justice. Just try and keep away from him without wasting too much ammo. Also remember to drink your water.
