Retro Review: RESIDENT EVIL 3: NEMESIS (PSX)

There is actually a bit of a story behind this review. It’s not long but you can skip the next paragraph and get straight to the review if you want.

RE3 is the first game in the franchise I ever played. It must have been around ten years ago or maybe longer, my brothers and I were given a pirated copy of the game and we would sit out in the back room taking turns at playing through it. We ended up getting to the final part of the game and so we saved it. The next time we turned on our Playstation to finish it, my older brother and I noticed that the save file was mysteriously missing. It seems out younger brother had deleted it to make some room for one of his own games. We were pretty pissed. Then some time later in an unrelated argument I picked up the closest thing to me and threw it across the room. It turned out to be the disc for RE3 and my throw had scratched it. It never worked again. For some reason we never got around to getting another copy and so we never finished the game. Since then I’ve played almost every RE game that has been released but I never did end up getting another copy of NEMESIS. Then a couple of weeks ago I noticed that it had been uploaded to the Playstation Network and so I downloaded it and finally finished it after all these years. So the point of this story is that it took me more than 10 years to finish this damn game. Now onto the review!

RESIDENT EVIL 3 is one of the better games in the franchise. Not the best but I definitely prefer it over the newer releases like the hugely overrated RE4 and the totally craptastic RE5. At least RE3 had actual zombies in it. The premise is pretty simple and basically the same as it was in the previous two games.  Raccoon City is the centre of a zombie outbreak thanks to the evil Umbrella Corporation and our protagonist is stuck in the middle of it all. Survival and escape are your goals, but to do so you will need to traverse the city killing zombies and solving puzzles along the way. And speaking of the protagonist, RE3 introduced a new lead character in the form of Jill Valentine, a member of the police’s special forces squad S.T.A.R.S. She begins her journey alone but soon meets up with Carlos, a mercenary working for Umbrella. They decide to join forces. Well kind of. Carlos doesn’t actually do much, he keeps talking about working together but then all of a sudden he’ll run off and leave you on your own. It’s probably for the best though because AI partners in RE haven’t proven to be very helpful at all. Later in the game you do get to play as Carlos although it doesn’t really add anything new to the game.

Another new addition to the series is the Nemesis creature, a massive mutated freak with a rocket launcher who stalks you for the entire game. The atmosphere can actually get pretty tense thanks in part to the Nemesis and also to a kind of Pavlov’s dogs effect that the game has on the player. During the Nemesis’ appearances a certain type of dramatic music plays, but sometimes the very same music plays without the creature making an appearance. It’s actually a really clever way to increase the tension and it really works. It doesn’t help that the Nemesis can easily beat the absolute crap out of you either, and the fact that he is a quick bastard means that when he shows up you just want to get the fuck away from him.

RE3 also incorporates split decisions into the gameplay. At key points in the game you will be forced to choose between two options, and you have to choose quickly or else the game chooses for you. These choices can alter the story a little and can also have an effect on which ending you get but they really have no serious consequences. There are no wrong choices which makes the split decisions seem a little pointless to me. It is a novel idea but I think the game could have done without them.

RE3 has two difficulty settings, Easy and Hard. Easy is too fucking easy and even Hard is a little too soft in my opinion. The difficulty choice does change a few things in the game for example the items you start off with, the items you find in certain locations, how many items you can carry at a time, the number of bullets it takes to down a zombie etc. If you choose the Hard setting however you can also pick up special items dropped by the Nemesis each time you defeat him. Hard will also limit your ability to save whereas Easy will give you unlimited saves.

There are a good range of weapons in the game, from the humble knife to handguns, shotguns, an assault rifle, grenade launcher and the rocket launcher if you are lucky enough to find it. The different types of gunpowder scattered throughout the game can be combined and used to make different types of ammo, and of course there are the red, blue and green herbs for healing.

RESIDENT EVIL 3 is not a long game. It can easily be finished in under 6 hours, although it does have a certain level of replayability. It takes things into consideration such as the time it takes you to complete and the amount of times you save and then gives you a grade at the end. Depending on which grade you get you can unlock extra costumes which can be changed during your next play-through. Another thing you unlock upon completion of the game is the Mercenaries mode. This allows you to choose from a few different characters and undertake a kind of time trial. You need to make your way through the city from point A to point B before the timer reaches zero. You can pick up extra time by killing zombies or dodging them etc and at the end you will be awarded with an amount of money depending on how well you did. These credits can then be used to unlock special weapons with unlimited ammo which can then be used in the main game.

To summarize I have to say that RE3 is a good solid game, not great but not bad either. Due to its age it suffers from badly dated graphics and some clunky controls but it makes up for that in plenty of other ways. The atmosphere is amazing and it seems like every element has been engineered to increase the tension, from the haunting moans coming from the distance to the encounters with the Nemesis creature, the split decisions and even the loading screens. Like the other RE games it involves a lot of puzzles, none of which are hard but plenty of which are strange and questionable (who the fuck would hide a battery inside a statue?) and you will find yourself doing a lot of running back and forth especially when you realize that you left a key item in your item box way back in a save room. Although the game’s length is fairly short, the unlockable extras and Mercenaries mode do allow for a bit of replayability and when you finally get enough credits to unlock the Gatling gun with unlimited ammo it is a hell of a lot of fun blasting zombies with that thing. Definitely a must play for RE fans.