Counting backwards, we continue with the Resident Evil Retrospective with the most fun, tightly coiled and enjoyable Resident Evil experience I've had so far. Providing an incredible amount of innovation to the "classic" Resident Evil formula, as well as one of the most terrifying and effective villains in the RE-verse, Resident Evil 3 is an action-horror masterpiece. But is it flawless?
Jill Valentine has had a pretty shit week. After being sent to investigate a mysterious mansion in the first game, she now finds herself trapped within a zombie-infested Raccoon City and desperately searching for a way out. To complicate matters, she's being relentlessly pursued by a seemingly invincible killing machine and racing the clock against an impending nuclear cleansing. Despite this incredible premise, the story falls on it's face right from the beginning. Jill is just an uninteresting character. Outside of generic badass chic, she really has nothing that resembles a personality. Joining her is Carlos Olivera, Mr. 2D Hot Latino Guy, and his team of "russian" mercs with secret motivations. Thankfully, the Nemesis is such an effective character and plot device that it stops things becoming boring. The incredible tension and horror this relentless machine creates is reminiscent of Resident Evil 2's "Mr X" (who I'll talk about him in my Resident Evil 2 Retrospective), but retains an originality all to his own. There's no real explanation for who or what he is, or why he is relentlessly pursuing any remaining STARS members, which only layers on the tension. Every other aspect of the story just doesn't work. The voice acting is as awful as ever, but now without an interesting script or at least well-written characters to counter it. The only real ingenuity in the story are these "live trigger" moments, where you can make a binary decision at key story points that supposedly affect the story, though after only one playthrough I can't really comment on how much this does affect things. Such a thing seems run-of-the-mill these days, but was innovative back then and still provides a fun distraction now.
On the gameplay front, Resident Evil 3 really shines. It feels like the perfection of the mechanics. The tank controls remain, but now there's a quick 180-turn (which would become a staple of the series from now on). Jill seems to move faster, too, and all the animations (doors opening, stairs climbing etc) play out much faster, keeping the pace way up. The real strength of the gameplay comes from a seemingly tiny thing - the dodge move. If you press the 'action' button at the right time while holding your weapon, Jill will perform a context sensitive dodge move. This one simple thing makes combat much more fun, especially against the faster, more vicious creature. No longer do you stand around uselessly shooting and then desperately try to rotate and run away from their attacks. This not only makes combat more interesting, but balances out the boss fights a lot better. Nemesis especially is relentless and powerful with his attacks, especially some of his later forms with tentacles and spikes and ranged attacks. The puzzles remain, but are way more streamlined and way less obtuse than any previous games in the series. The inventory management, health management and saving system remains exactly the same. There are only 8 inventory slots, so excess items must be stored in item boxes scattered around the place and traded in and out as necessary. Saving is limited by however many ink ribbons you have (although easy mode provides unlimited saves a la RE 4) and health is managed by a variety of different healing items. Nuts and bolts aside, it's damn fun, really balancing the feel between action and tension. I played through on easy mode, which has more of an action feel with more weapons, more ammo but hard mode still retains a very survival horror feel. Not to mention it is damn hard. You really have to nail the dodge move, as well as managing every single bullet, every single healing item and every single save.
Graphically, Nemesis could easily be mistaken for it's predecessor. Character models are blocky and aliased, their mouths don't move when they speak. Gun models are kind of blah as well. The backgrounds are well designed and all pre-rendered, but the textures are very muddied. This PS1 game after all, but it is disappointing that there's been no improvement since 2. The locations are bigger, though. You really get the opportunity to explore Raccoon City, and a lot of locations within it. The hospital and the clock-tower are especially creepy. CAPCOM is really great at telling the story through the scenery. The city is in ruins, and it's often fun looking around at the wreckage and trying to work out exactly what happened here. Locations change occasionally, too, on return to them. An extra dead body, or more junk, just little subtle things that can shake things up. The colour palette is a bit more varied, too, with some brighter primary colours. It all seems slightly less blurry and murky than the original.
The soundtrack remains strong, with a lot of recognisable themes returning, such as the save room, but also a lot of original work. The music blurs between industrial, electronic and classic B-grade horror cliches. Sound effects have improved slightly, but are still very low-quality. Weapons sound rather weak, especially. The voice acting ranges from bad to awful. The zombie and monster sound effects are very good, though, especially the Nemesis' creepy mantra of "STARS". It chills you every time you hear it, often just before he appears sprinting wildly at you, fists swinging.
Despite the strength of it's gameplay, Nemesis is ultimately let down by bad characters and a badly told story. Nemesis himself remains probably the most effective and terrifying RE villain, but none of the main characters are strong or interesting, especially Jill and Carlos. That said, the gameplay is tight, tense and incredibly fun and I can recommend this on it's gameplay alone. If you can look past the story and all it's flaws, there is a tonne of fun to have with Resident Evil 3: Nemesis.
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