Resident Evil: Re3 (08/60$)

I wanted to Draw Mr. X but this made more sense

I think I’m getting better at this

It took me four hours and thirty minutes to beat Resident Evil 3 on hard.  I think that fact alone makes it not worth the money.  Capcom knows it and everyone else that got trolled by this game knows it.  So Capcom decided to bundle Resident Evil: Resistance with it.  Resistance is a games as a service asymmetrical horror shooter which is slightly less disappointing than Resident Evil 3. To sum it up now, don’t buy either of these until they are less than 10$.  It might look good on the outside. The world is as captivating as always and Carlos & Jill are easy on the eyes so you are entertained for those few hours that the game lasts for.  Yet, compared to every other Resident Evil I have played.  This game is the worst.  

The best things about Resident Evil 3 are carried over from Resident Evil 2.  The graphics are amazing, which I normally try to look past but for a game with horror roots, the better the graphics the better the scare.  Not that there are any scares in this game.  Instead it is an action movie format.  This game takes place on the streets of Raccoon City and moves away from the puzzle filled estates from the previous games.  The effect is a much faster paced game that focuses on moving the player through the city instead of getting to know the ins and outs of each area. Which works well in a few parts of this game, specifically in the first area when the game is focused on Jill’s fight for survival against the Nemesis.  

After that portion, the game goes completely downhill in an odd way because, at its core, the game play feels great to play.  It is just that everything else feels like it tries to overshadow Resident Evil 2 in terms of outrageousness, but fails because it feels too forced.  The best examples are the two bioweapons that stalk you throughout both games.  In Resident Evil 3, they wanted to make the Nemesis more threatening than Mr. X so they made it uglier, stronger, and nearly unkillable.  Throughout each of Jill Valentine’s scenes you do feel like the Nemesis could burst out at any time, but it’s not threatening because these are clearly scripted happenings that are surprising the first few times.Then you realize you have no effect on these moments and the game begins to feel more like an interactive cutscene.  Whereas Mr. X was slower and had very few scripted moments.  So when he caught you or you spotted him coming towards you, you felt pressured to get out of danger and when you did you breathed a sigh of relief that felt good because you saved yourself. In Resident Evil 3, most of the time a random set or plot piece comes to the rescue.  By trying to make the game more tense it now feels less tense.  

This is a massive problem for Resident Evil because it is a series that lives off it’s tension.  Resident Evil 2 played up this tension by setting their stories in large metroidvania inspired levels that constantly changed.  Despite going in a room 10 times, you were never sure of what was going to happen each time you went in.  The areas were dark and subtle, and they made the player want to learn more about the settings.  Resident Evil 3 spends so much time moving through Racoon City that you don’t get to learn more about the setting.  Infact, the only world building that happens is related to filling the backstory of Resident Evil 2.  Which is frustrating because it makes you miss those small moments of story in Resident Evil 2.  They try to fix this by leaning into the absurd.  At one point Nemesis dons a flamethrower and then at another he uses a rocket launcher.  Mr. X did not need over the top anime weapons to be a threat, he already was one.  

So you are left with a game that is decent in gameplay but poor in everything else.  Everyone knows it too and that is why they include the Resistance with Resident Evil 3.  Only Resistance is not that good of a game either.  It clearly pushes players towards loot boxes.  Playing as the survivors does give a great Resident Evil feel but playing as the mastermind trying to kill the survivors is hard and unrewarding.  Sure you get to control Mr. X, but the game would be much better with a basic horde mode.  That being said, it is meant to be a games as a service game.  Updates with new features could make it better, and it does do some good things like melee weapons and good character/game design.  Plus it does have AI masterminds, so if you and your friends don’t want to worry about finding a lobby or being the dick who makes zombies, then you will have a pretty good time when playing through some of the harder levels.  Yet, I will need to spend more time with the multiplayer to give a good score.  So how do I go about scoring the base game?  I normally do the set MSRP at the time of my review, convert the games length using a dollar per hour ratio.  Then add up the positives and negatives to see if they affect that dollar amount.  But Resident Evil Resistance is not sold separately only bundled with the Resident Evil 3 and the Raccoon City collection that includes Resident Evil 2 and 3 for 80$.  Resident Evil 3 is 60$ by itself and Resident Evil 2 is 40$ standalone.  I’ll just use the MSRP for Resident Evil 3.  Because ultimately the addition of Resident Evil Resistance doesn’t stop this game from being an absolutely terrible value.  8/60$