Well it had to happen. There was no way RE2 was gonna get an update without RE3 following closely behind. I had the pleasure of playing through RE3 for the first time while doing this series, so I may be a little bit more vocal since its all fresh in my mind. I’m not even going to bother talking specifics of the game, because honestly there’s nothing here that is going to surprise anyone. So without further ado, my thoughts on my recently completed first play-through of Resident Evil 3 Remake!

Jill looks good. This shouldn’t be an observation, but it has to be, in my case. I’m a die hard Jill fan. She’s been my favorite since the beginning, and as a character she’s really had the rollercoaster ride. She’s also had the most diverse character designs. Even tree-trunk-neck Chris Redfield hasn’t gone through quite as many transformations. Which is why I was curious what her “realistic” design was going to look like for RE3. All of her other looks have been pretty similar to other spies/special ops guys. Her RE5/Revelations look was reminiscent of Sam Fisher or maybe even the Baroness from G.I. Joe…

…sorry I got distracted by the image of Jill dressed up like the Baroness. Anyways, her realistic design works. It looks enough like her for me to say “Oh, yeah, that’s Jill” but I have to admit, I can’t picture that character model in her later outfits (or even her STARS outfit, which I haven’t unlocked yet.) The unfortunate side effect of these remakes is how they don’t really fit it with the rest of the RE universe. In order for that to happen, they’d need to remake all of them. Which, who knows, by the time they crank out the RE4 remake (more on that later) and get around to releasing RE8, maybe the other games will be getting old enough to justify remakes of their own. If they do, I really hope they don’t water it down too much and keep some of those outfits around for her to wear. I’ll admit, following behind Jill in her wetsuit for the entirety of RE Revelations wasn’t the worst way to spend my time.

Apparently I’m not the only one that thinks so, as there are already quite a few mods out there that swap out her new attire for something way less practical, like micro bikinis and short skirts (which aren’t an accident, you’ll spend quite a bit of time watching Jill get up off the floor). In honesty though, the one mod I do really want to see would be classic Jill. Not the old blocky Playstation Jill, but the actress that they modeled the sequels from. There’s nothing wrong with the current model, but the one from Remake, Revelations, and RE5 is the Jill I know and love.

They cut a bit out of Resident Evil 3. I had read the critics and gaming outlets commenting on the length of the game, which for me was about 6 and a half hours, including deaths. That’s not too bad, and to be fair, the game was so fast-paced I don’t know if I could’ve done it for much longer than that. That being said, they cut a lot out of the game that was originally there, and the original RE3 wasn’t that long of a game, either. It was a bit of a bummer that the build-up to Nemesis and the clock tower were cut out. I think the clock tower could’ve been included without adding too much extra play time to the game. They could’ve retained the hospital sequence and just had Carlos travel to it from the clock tower. That really could just be me being picky. I don’t know if I would’ve wanted to wander around yet another area, unlocking even more doors.

One of the more noticeable omissions for me was the chaos and downfall of the city. Despite a Walking Dead-ish intro sequence, we weren’t given much else. Jill wakes up and is immediately attacked by Nemesis, and we get a brief look at the chaos unfolding in the city. But it’s quickly pushed to the side and we’re introduced to Carlos. Nemesis and Carlos don’t come along until later in the original game, giving Jill time to explore a quickly collapsing society.

I can’t help but wonder if they would’ve been able to add a little bit more instead of working on Resident Evil Resistance, which is a multiplayer game that I guarantee nobody will be playing in a few months. I would’ve much rather had a more gradual introduction than having the attack from Nemesis right off the bat.

Carlos’s assault rifle still sucks. His rifle sucked in the original RE3, and it sucks in the remake. I get it, they didn’t want to make his rifle feel overpowered, but it should be, it’s a fucking assault rifle. There’s this weird dynamic in gaming where they feel the need to balance out the rate of fire with the damage being dealt. The faster a gun spews out bullets, the weaker each individual bullet needs to be. I’ve always hated this mechanic, but until developers want to come up with more imaginative ways to limit the player’s power, they’ll lean back on this one every time.

They didn’t give Carlos any real firepower, and I guess that was intentional, but damn that made the police station and hospital intense, not always in a good way. The police station was actually starting to get on my nerves, both with the amount of zombies and with the tight hallways.

Stage 2 Nemesis looks fuckin’ great… but some have argued that it comes about a bit too quickly. I’m inclined to agree, because aside from a quick battle here or there, Jill doesn’t really do much damage. They blow him off the back of a train, drop a car on him, etc, and all it does it tear his jacket. Then, a little bit of fire and he all of a sudden has a complete make-over?

Don’t get me wrong, when he leaps out of the water and slams onto the bridge (uh… spoilers?) the animation and lighting are on point, and he looks absolutely terrifying. But then, for the remainder of the game, he stays in Stage 2 no matter what you do to him, only showing up as Stage 3 Nemesis for the final battle (in which he also looks incredible, by the way). My complaints aren’t with his design, because I loved them, they’re with the disconnected means in which he mutates. To compare, Birkin has multiple changes in RE2 Remake that are a direct result from Leon and Claire’s constant blasting the shit out of him. His felt much more organic and it transitioned well. Each Nemesis transformation takes place off-screen and thus feels a little cheap, like an old B-movie that had to cut away from the monster to change up the prosthetics.

Did fucking Brad “Chicken Shit” Vickers have a hero moment? Brad’s nickname from the original Resident Evil games was Chicken Shit, given by an 18-year-old me back in 1997. You see, Brad’s a coward. It was literally his character. At the beginning of both Resident Evil and the REmake, after Alpha Team lands and is attacked by the zombie dogs, Brad is piloting the chopper that flies away and leaves them stranded. He flies away and fucking leaves his entire team behind to die. It wasn’t for any other reason than the fact that he’s a chicken shit. He attempts to redeem himself at the end by coming to the rescue of Chris and Jill, and tosses them the rocket launcher that is used to defeat the Tyrant, but this is all rendered moot when you consider that they only reason they were there in the first place was because he fucking left them.

Fast-forward to the original Resident Evil 3 and Brad makes a surprise cameo when it appears as though he is running from something. Brad? Running away? That part gets a bit of a chuckle out of the player, because of course Brad is running, he’s a chicken shit. Then, all of a sudden, Nemesis breaks through the wall and grabs Brad by his face, lifts him up, and shoves a big ol’ slimy tentacle through his head. The last thing you see of Brad is his limp body and a large gaping hole. It was a fitting end to the Bradster. Later on, when you get back to the police station, you can find and kill Zombie Brad. Jill had to have liked that, at least a little.

But now, in the RE3 Remake, Brad meets Jill outside of her apartment as she is fleeing from Nemesis, and he starts leading the way, saying something like “This way!” or “Follow me!” You get the idea. Anyways, he knows about Nemesis, and is trying to help Jill escape. Okay, Brad, you have my attention. Then, while trying to get the door closed, he’s bitten by a zombie. Both Jill and Brad, and us playing along at home, knows what that means. Brad’s toast. But, what happened to Brad deep-throating a Nemesis appendage? Sadly, we don’t get to see it this time around. Instead, they’re trying to make Brad come off as a bit less pansy. Almost noble. While I personally didn’t care for the change, I was like “Okay, Brad felt the need to redeem himself. I get that.”

Then we learn that Zombie Brad is the one that killed Marvin. Well-played, Capcom. You found a way to make me hate Brad Chicken Shit Vickers even more.

WAS THE REMAKE NECESSARY?

Yeah, I suppose. It would’ve been weird having updated versions of all the main RE games except for RE3. That being said, the game feels very much like an afterthought. It plays like a blockbuster action movie, and it very rarely relents. With the game only having come out a single short year after RE2, I can’t help but wonder if the two of them couldn’t have been rolled together into one, epic masterpiece. Since the stories intersect with each other, it might have been cool to see them intertwined with each other organically, or maybe through cutscenes that could then be watched in chronological order after beating both stories. I digress, I suppose we should be thankful we got what we did, especially after the wait we had for RE2.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

The more I think about it, the more I’m convincing myself that RE2 and RE3 would’ve made one hell of a single compilation. It would’ve easily been Game of the Year. But, I’m not a businessman, and Capcom definitely is a business, and they definitely convinced me to spend twice the money on the game that I would have if they would’ve just released the two games as one. So, yeah, there’s that.

The thing that’s left me wondering is whether we’ll ever see Resident Evil go back again. I won’t get into it here because I still have more RE games to get through, but I almost miss the RE5 style. You’ll have to wait till I get there for an explanation.