(Originally published to Glitchwave on 10/30/2023)
[Image from glitchwave.com]
Resident Evil 3: Nemesis
Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Genre(s): Survival Horror
Platforms: PS1, Dreamcast, PC
Release Date: September 22, 1999
Technically, from a narrative standpoint, RE3 is a direct sequel to RE2 only on the basis that the number in the title is the successive follow-up in numerical order. We do not witness how the T-Virus outbreak has expanded beyond the parameters of Raccoon City and the Arklay Mountain outskirts with global panic ensuing in the streets. Apparently, the singular situation in Raccoon City seen in the second game was so monumentally cataclysmic that we needed ANOTHER storied account from yet another perspective. The person’s point of view, however, should come as a pleasant surprise as it's S.T.A.R.S. member Jill Valentine from the first game. Chris’s backpacking conquest across the pond was evidently a solo venture removed from his police adjacent outfit, so Jill is an unfortunate victim of circumstance in the Raccoon City pandemic, who did not fully anticipate this zombie pandemonium occurrence if her comparatively tarted-up civilian clothing is any indication. Her mission now is to use her special training as an advantage in surviving the chaos.
Jill not only gets the special distinction as the first returning Resident Evil protagonist but one that soaks up the entirety of the spotlight as the sole primary protagonist of RE 3. There are no mirrored events to Jill’s in another campaign playing as another character. Only one playthrough of RE3 with the little lady from S.T.A.R.S. is necessary to grasp the full breadth of the game’s story. However, I still somewhat recommend playing RE3 twice as a lark to experience what should be the soonest of Capcom’s “bright ideas” to spot that were implemented for the third game. Capcom has decided to (literally) cut out the middleman and omit the normal difficulty selection as an option, offering a “hard” difficulty for the seasoned Resident Evil veterans and an “easy” difficulty level for the flock of newbies that they anticipated would now be interested in playing their popular survival horror series. Despite how it may initially seem, forcing the two types of players to accede to what is a stark division of skill levels isn’t completely baffling. One could argue that someone who has survived two outings in a hostile, zombie-infested environment should challenge themselves by ramping up the stakes of their third excursion. On the opposite end of the spectrum, uninitiated players should keep it breezy so as to not taint their first impressions of the series and deter them from all other Resident Evil titles as a result. I chose to play on hard not only because of the rationale listed above but to also preserve any somewhat tangible gamer credibility that I suspect I might have (but probably don’t). As it turns out, with a few exceptions, RE3’s hard mode doesn’t ratchet up the base difficulty from RE2’s normal mode too drastically. Jill begins her trek out of the city with a pistol carrying a modest sum of ammunition as Leon did, and she must collect the formidable firearms as the game progresses. On the flip side, easy mode is so facile that it's hilariously condescending. The player is automatically blessed with a submachine gun, a first-aid pack, an infinite number of ink ribbons, and a whole other bunch of goodies. The developers forgot to include a bib and highchair for anyone playing on this difficulty, but perhaps they couldn’t have fit those in the finite inventory. I kid, of course, but my sincere issue with the unbalanced choice of difficulty here is that a normal difficulty is the solid base of any game’s intentions. Whenever I play or replay a game for a review, I always pick the normal (if difficulty options are offered) option, even if it’s a game I’ve played religiously and am exceptionally skilled at. Without this option, I cannot ascertain what the game is truly attempting to prove with its gameplay, which is why the normal mode is unimpeachable while the other options aren’t.
What is seriously included in the player’s inventory as a housewarming gift are two tutorial journals that detail every single new aspect that the developers have implemented for RE3. If they felt it necessary to implore the player to read a manual’s worth of text to prepare them for their playthrough, you know the great lengths they went to keep the franchise's familiar formula from stagnating. The result of their efforts is new mechanics and attributes that substantially change the fabric of Resident Evil’s gameplay, and I’m not entirely sure that it’s for the better. For starters, the player might notice what looks like a grinder contraption straight out of shop class in their inventory. One of the journals states that this is the Reloading Tool which is used to craft ammunition with three different types of gunpowder coinciding with the handgun, shotgun, and grenade launcher. One might raise a concern that this new utility mixer will take up valuable space in Jill’s inventory, a stationary position due to ammo pickups regressing into their unprocessed forms. Fortunately, the usual packs of bullets are still located abound on the Raccoon City streets, so carrying around the damn thing at all times won’t be necessary. However, it still comes recommended if Jill has a square of inventory space to spare because the high-caliber ammo the Reloading Tool can craft is highly effective. The journal tells Jill to keenly look for sizable red objects in the foreground, for shooting them with one bullet will cause a fiery explosion that could potentially blow a swarming pack of zombies to kingdom come, a nifty method of ammo conservation. The explosive barrels will definitely spark a “eureka!” moment for the player, for their prevalence as auxiliary offenses in first-person shooters makes their inclusion here a borderline cliche. The bombs that cling to the wall, on the other hand, confused me for health stations for a second, so I guess familiarity is important. Arguably the most significant alteration to the gameplay is the addition of the dodging mechanic. If timed correctly when unarmed or holding a gun, Jill will duck, jump, or roll out of harm’s way. A skill-based way to better mitigate potential damage seems like a helpful inclusion except for the fact that the timing window on the dodge is incredibly strict when done intentionally and surprisingly swift whenever executed on accident. That, and the type of dodge maneuver Jill performs is seemingly random, which can result in Jill backing herself into a wall and leaving herself far more vulnerable than before. I appreciate that these interesting mechanics drive a discernible wedge between RE3 and the previous game. Still, their awkward and somewhat unnecessary presence is somewhat of an indication that the Resident Evil foundation had already been honed to perfection in the previous game and all these new implementations do is complicate things. However, RE3 does feature a number of quality-of-life improvements that I genuinely appreciate, such as making the items more conspicuous in the foreground, a button designated to pull up the map, and a maneuver that swiftly turns Jill around instead of robotically turning her body like a mannequin on a pedestal.
The Raccoon City setting is something that should’ve been reworked entirely as opposed to being augmented like the game’s mechanics. I fully realize that the game’s events run parallel to those of Leon and Claire from the previous game, so placing Jill in the same predicament makes sense. Still, I fail to comprehend why Capcom thought the Raccoon City epidemic needed an additional point-of-view when the events had been exhausted after two almost identical campaigns. As it stands, RE3’s depiction of this doomed city is a reversal of how RE2 coordinated it. The city streets where Leon rushed through to reach the police station are now the primary place of excavation to escape the unremitting madness. Jill also revisits the police station briefly, albeit a truncated version of the precinct with new impenetrable barriers to signify that this takes place in the aftermath of Leon/Claire’s campaigns. Not only does the game fail to refresh the rehashed environments from the previous game, but treating the city streets that were once rightfully a straightaway trek the same as an exquisitely floored establishment is the most fundamental flaw with RE3’s direction. Sure, the worlds of Metroidvania games, the 2D cousin of the survival horror genre that shares the same sense of utility-gated progression, tend to be a collective of areas that vary in topography and thresholds of claustrophobia. With this logic, a Resident Evil map could flourish with the same design philosophy, but RE3 proves that this can’t be the case. The Raccoon City roads simply can’t transcend their initial workings as a linear series of paths no matter how many back alleys and piles of wreckage are impedeing Jill from crossing over the boundaries that the developers have placed. The richly labyrinthian constructions with their multiple stories that have served the series well in the past have been flattened to the ground floor, seeping across the broad radius of a metropolitan area. The breadth of a cityscape makes the backtracking of a survival horror game incredibly tedious, marching to and fro for a marathon’s length of retreaded steps to reach one objective. Any floor of an establishment from the previous two games, no matter how lofty, was never more than a few sets of hallways with several branching rooms as one would realistically expect from an architectural standpoint. I criticized the police precinct setting when it was still a centerpiece in RE2 for exuding too much of a domestic atmosphere for a horror game, but at least it was modeled just as exquisitely as the Spencer Mansion. The developers even had to separate the city into two “uptown” and “downtown” districts with two distinct maps, admissible proof that a linearly designed, sweeping environment does not gel with the survival horror genre.
It is not until the second half of the game where Jill crashes the railcar she’s using to flee the Raccoon City scene that the game provides the player with some truly impeccable survival horror settings. The clocktower is the kind of enclosed, gothic construction that I was craving as a potential successor to the Spencer Mansion, enhancing the dark, eerie atmosphere akin to the first game’s iconic stomping grounds with that desperately needed graphical maturation. The neighboring cemetery park is a competently restrained outdoor area compared to the urban streets of the city, and the underground laboratory efficiently refurbishes what is now a series motif. To heighten my feeling of engagement and admiration with these latter-half areas, they also include puzzles that are bonafide brain teasers, something that the second game was lacking.
Of course, the definitive difference and unique signifier to RE3 is the character on the right side of the full title’s colon. Before entering the gate of the police station, the gameplay will be interrupted with a cutscene of Jill’s S.T.A.R.S. ally, Brad Vickers, getting horribly and forcibly impaled by some fleshy tentacle of a colossal monster wearing a trenchcoat. Once Nemesis, the monster in question, refocuses his attention on Jill after decimating his previous victim, he’ll acutely stalk her like a lion does to a wildebeest for the duration of the game. Upon hearing the premise of an intimidatingly invulnerable tank of an enemy pursuing the female protagonist, one might wonder why Mr. X’s skin has been melted to a Freddy Krueger crisp because the previous game already toyed with the idea of placing a hostile, formidable figure with seemingly impenetrable defenses on the field for the player to contend with. In RE3, if one couldn’t infer his top-billing from the title, Nemesis has a larger presence here than the former superhuman stalker ever did. Nemesis is a T-Virus Terminator that will trounce any target he sets his sights on. On top of his hulking body that is as durable as Kevlar, Nemesis charges at Jill like a raging bull even in the tightest of corridors, as if he’s Frankenstien’s monster composed out of the corpses of the NFL’s finest linebackers. If Nemesis is unable to reach Jill and fling her around like a ragdoll, he’s strapped with a rocket launcher that he will not hesitate to use even in the tightest of indoor corridors to assure that Jill’s ass is grass. Not every encounter will involve the choice-based prompt either, so I suggest running like hell and forgetting about the potential rewards he might drop if you manage to subdue him. All of the evidential context surrounding Nemesis should make him a player’s worst nightmare, but there is something about his determination and overpowered attributes that conjure up feelings of irritation and frustration rather than fear. Nemesis popping in unexpectedly to give Jill a thrashing felt more like encountering your school bully in the hallways and making me groan with painful anticipation. There needs to be an aura of creepy subtlety to elicit a scare factor with this type of villain, something Mr. X already accomplished splendidly.
However, what is terrifying is the fact that Jill will be forced to fight this burnt-looking behemoth twice. His final fight in the laboratory should be prepared for like any other final boss, but the other one occurring at the clocktower beforehand is a traumatic experience. The front lawn of the tall tower is the arena when dueling Nemesis, and Jill will be cramped up against the surrounding walls and the burning debris of a helicopter while she is limping from an unavoidable status effect given to her during the cutscene that introduces this fight, giving Nemesis ample opportunity to have his way with Jill more so than in any standard encounter with him. Get ready to exhaust all ammunition and master the finicky dodge maneuver, because this is what is expected from the player for this fight. Also, pray a few times just to be safe. After being taken to the cleaners far too many times by Nemesis, I could not revert to my last save and explore the clocktower meticulously for any missing items, for the cutscene locks Jill to the top of the tower. This kind of action-intensive fight is not suitable for a survival horror game with tank controls and limited supplies. This encounter seriously made me consider restarting the game on easy difficulty and or abandoning the game entirely. So congratulations Nemesis, you are the newest inductee to the exclusive club of video game bosses that have made me whine like an upset puppy and raise my blood pressure from furiously screaming obscenities. Don’t pat yourself on the back with a sense of pride: if I had some sort of statuette of Nemesis, I’d imbue it with voodoo magic and shoot it point-blank with a revolver and burn the remnants.
Surprisingly enough, or maybe not so much if one reads deeply into Resident Evil’s linear notes, Nemesis is not the main antagonist of the game of his namesake. The apex of villainy across the Resident Evil series is and has always been the Umbrella Corporation that caused this entire mess. In fact, Nemesis was created by Umbrella as a countermeasure to eradicate all members of S.T.A.R.S that might blow the whistle on their involvement with the zombie pandemic, hence why all Nemesis can gravelly utter is the name of the organization. But Nemesis isn’t the only Umbrella associate out on the prowl tonight in Raccoon City. Jill will meet three members of an armed Umbrella task force assigned to dispose of anything infected by the T-Virus and rescue any remaining civilians. Jill is right to be untrusting of anyone who bears the symbol of her mortal enemy, but she must work alongside these guys due to running low on options for lucid human interactions to aid in her escape mission. It turns out that only one of the three men is an unscrupulous bastard, and that’s their leader Nikolai. This Soviet army veteran treats the whole T-virus epidemic as a front for business, willing to exterminate all that keep him from financially benefiting from it including some of his own men. Shoot this guy down with a bazooka when given the opportunity. Speaking of which, the other two Umbrella mercenaries are so disgusted at Nikolai’s callousness that they defect to aiding Jill instead. Carlos, one of the men who becomes the game’s secondary protagonist, takes a temporary role as a playable character in a hospital section where he retrieves a vaccine for an infected Jill. We see less of the other noble mercenary, Mikhail, on account of his grievous wounds, but sacrificing himself to save Jill on the cable car is certainly a noteworthy action of decency, right? Besides Wesker, these three men give the Umbrella corporation a face to attach with, and the reference we obtain from the mixed bag of interactions and intentions between them illustrates a complex moral quandary for what was previously an enigmatically evil force in the franchise. Perhaps the same complications of duty versus dogma can parallel real-life factions with bad reputations.
If I’ve played any third game of any franchise beforehand, and I certainly have, then my experience with Resident Evil 3: Nemesis should come as no surprise. The unification of Resident Evil’s tropes and mechanics seen in RE2 made it a tough act to follow, which can be said for most sophomore sequels for a number of franchises. Still, quelling the sensation of yearning from fans after they’ve played the peak of the series by rounding it out with a third game is always a requisite, even if these last hurrahs tend to overflow the foundation with additional attributes. Most of the additional attributes that RE3 wove into the fabric of the franchise are flawed at best and infuriating at worst, and I wish I could avoid the bad ones as deliberately as the unyielding monster at the center of the game. The best aspects of RE3 that make it a worthy entry are improving on the elements already in the franchise that Resident Evil 2 lacked, such as challenging puzzles in eerie environments instead of all the window dressing they figured would make a substantial difference. With a few noteworthy gripes withstanding, Resident Evil 3: Nemesis is still an effective note to end the franchise’s reign as the champion of survival horror on the original PlayStation.
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