I played the Resident Evil 3 Remake

Welcome to Raccoon City, Population: shrinking every day!

That's right, I've finally had the chance to play the story of the mythical 5th survivor of the Raccoon city incident. (Or would that be 6th. Are we counting Ms. Wong?) Pretty much from the moment the game went live to right now as I sit down to write this I've been surviving the end of the civilised world as we know it, and playing Resident Evil 3. (Hah, Jokes!) Although I've not really made nearly enough progress to start with a play-by-play analysis or anything, I do want to put up something to the effect about how much I'm enjoying things so far. If you've happened on this with any intention to play the game, however, I will warn you that there's going to mild spoilers for the intro and the first area of the game. (I just needed to provide examples for how well Capcom have got me in the right mood so far.)

Firstly, however, I need to complain for something I take personal offence to. I started my playthrough on Hardcore, as I do in just about every game I play, only to spot that in the listed details of this mode there was no bulletpoint for typewriters to require Ink ribbons. For those that are unaware, back in old-school Resident Evil (and the Hardcore mode for the Resident Evil 2 Remake) there was a mechanic wherein the amount of saves one could make was limited to the number of ink ribbons they could procure. This was arguably one of the purest expressions of the survival horror genre and one of my favourite aspect of Resident Evil as it made death matter. Unfortunately this doesn't appear to be the case with RE3, and I think I know why. After playing through the game a bit I've noticed how the pace of the game is several times that of the last title, and as a such inventory management takes a bit of a backseat to all the action. Adding Ink ribbons to the environment would really grind the title down to a halt and require extra amounts of supply runs, and even though that would technically be an optional obligation that the player took on, some folks would look upon that as bad design. (Fie on them, I say; I love that backtracking lifestyle!) So I may not like it but I understand it.

But if something I enjoyed had to be sacrificed for pacing reasons, then I'm at least glad it went to such a high-octane opening. The first few minutes of Resident Evil 3 honestly bought back memories of the first time I played 'Metal Gear Solid: The Phantom Pain' for the amount of chaos happening around you as you're still learning your footing. Hell, Nemesis is literally one of the first things that you see and he's happy to toss you out of a window if you don't wise up and match the speed that events are being hurled at you. It's quite the polar opposite to the slow build of Resident Evil 2, that went so far as to give you the perspective of a nobody eating a hamburger in it's first scene just to hammer home the crawling pace. This is a title that clearly wants to waste no time and pretty much expects you to be familiar with last year's Resident Evil 2. So if you haven't pulled the trigger on that title yet you should. (Seriously, what are you waiting for?)

As a fan of the franchise, it's practically my duty to talk about some minimal little moments that tickled my lore bone. One of the first of these moments was actually right at the beginning when we finally got a glimpse of Jill's PTSD as a result of the original title. (During which she fought zombies, giant snakes, and a whole bunch of other things that I'm not going to talk about because I haven't mentioned them in my blog series yet.) For the first time in the entire franchise (as far as I'm aware) we are getting to see real world consequences for the horrific crap that this series puts it's characters through, and I love this more serious direction the series is taking. (For the most part; but I won't keep griping on small thing until I've seen the whole picture.)

In terms of rapid narrative, I'll admit I am surprised how quickly the game has evolved as I've played it. Within an hour I went from being a no ammo scrub to having a maxed out pistol, buttstocked Shotgun and two hip pouch upgrades; and this is on my very first playthrough of this game! It all really hammers home the 'action first' design philosophy that I think took precedent for RE3. You'll also find yourself practically inundated with pistol ammo in a semi-regular fashion which makes it all the more likely that you'll find yourself spending round in the hordes you'll have thrown at you. (And there are hordes! Loads of them.) You can even find this concept realised in a much more practical way through how many environmental take-down methods you'll see littered around the map; from explosive barrels to portable generators.

Another thing I've noticed is how a relatively miniature system change for the character controls has had attributed to such a drastic change in the way I play the game, and that's the removal of defence items in favour for a dodge button. In Resident Evil 2 when you were in a situation FUBAR you basically had to do an equation in your head about which resources you were willing to expend in order to get out the otherside. When there was a huge Adult G in front of you, you had to know whether or not you could bring it down or if you had to go spending a knife in order to boss your way past them in the following struggle. In this title is all comes down to either shooting them down or getting abnormally good at timing, because you need your dodge reflexes to be impeccable. If there's a crowd of Z in front of you, you better hope you can pull of 2 to 3 last second dodges or you're getting munched on. It's one way that the consequences mount a lot more upon your head the moment that you let things slip, building tension is quite a visceral manner.

But I can't go any longer without talking about Nemesis because good lord is that guy just a nutcase. I remember how his entire reputation from the original title was built around being this unstoppable machine but this title brings that to a whole new level. Not only does Nemesis never stay down, he doesn't even go down for long. The amount of times that the characters throw hell at this beast only for him to be kicking in the next few minutes is absurd, even William for RE2 had to limit his surprise resurgences to once an Act. Honestly, I do not know why Umbrella kept up their BOW research after coming out with this guy, he is literally the perfect Bio-Weapon: you did it team! At this point I'm starting to suspect that the only way to bring the guy down will literally be to strand him in Raccoon city once the nuke drops, and even then I'm only 70% sure that'll be enough.

There's a lot of cool unexpected encounters in the game so far, including one section which Jill so aptly labels: "F-ing gross", but I don't want to spoil any of them on day one. So far I'm loving this chaotic look into the crumbling world of Raccoon City almost as much as I'm enjoying those brief moments where we get to return to locations from the original Resident Evil 2. This will probably be my last dedicated blog on Resident Evil 3 for a while (my schedule for this month of blogs is literally full) but take my whole hearted recommendation for the first third of RE3 if nothing else. (I might jump the order and do a mini-review by the end, not sure yet.)