I’ve never played a Resident Evil game to its conclusion. RE7 freaked me out too much in its opening hours, and until recently, none of the remade RE games really spoke to me at all. With Resident Evil 3, I get a chance to experience some of what folks love in this series, in a game that – at least according to other critics – has more than a couple flaws.
I guess I’m supposed to make noises about how playing this game in the midst of a real pandemic is supposed to be Meaningful, or something, but for the last couple of days, the only thing I can really muster a thought about is that everyone – and I do mean everyone – who puffed their chest out saying they’d survive a zombie plague almost certainly would not. Nobody, at least nobody down in my neck of the woods, can practice social distancing to save their damn life. So it is in Raccoon City, where everyone has turned into a zombie except for a few first responders. Jill Valentine, a suspended STARS operative who has been holed up in an apartment in the city’s downtown area, is looking for a means of escape. She has been having nightmares about turning into a zombie lately, and you get to see this dream.
Again, I guess the Smart™ thing to do would be to make a connection between Jill’s anxiety of being infected and finally turned by the T-virus and our collective fears of being infected by COVID-19. I dunno, though. It kind of feels tacky? Like, out here in the world, getting sick with coronavirus won’t turn anyone into a zombie. At best, you lose your sense of smell, and at worst you’re simply dead. It’s as mundane a horror as you can get and comparing the flashy spectacle of a Resident Evil game to that, no matter how many moments may strike true to our new experiences as professional social distancers, self-isolators and quarantine queens, kind of just seems fucked up. The best thing anyone can say about this game’s release as it pertains to the present crisis is that it will keep you the fuck indoors for a while, because I KNOW everyone’s ignoring shelter-in-place rules, I SEE the Walmart parking lots, you fucks.
Anyway, a colleague of yours calls you and frantically warns you to get out of your apartment, which prompts Nemesis to come barreling through the wall like the goddamn Kool-Aid man. After a cutscene full of scrambling, you’re pushed into your first siloed hallway escape scene, and it reminds me a lot of Alan Wake. In fact, there’s a whole bunch of this game that straight-up feels like a part of Remedy Entertainment’s oeuvre while maintaining its own vibe. I’m given to understand this happens a lot, so maybe it will get old for me after go-around number seven or eight.
Our buddy gets got by some regular zombies, giving us some time to get to the roof of a nearby parking garage. We might have gotten to escape, but Nemesis shoots his tentacle at the copter, bringing it down. Jill gets in a car and runs Nemesis down, pushing him off the roof and undoubtedly breaking a few of her ribs at least, and he’s finally brought down (for now) by Carlos, our hunky… Umbrella black ops agent. He takes you down to the subway, where his team is trying to get a train moving so survivors can be evacuated. You agree to help.
And that’s where I’m currently at, more or less. OH – I found the chain-cutter and the shotgun, also.
My impression is not that this is a scary game, to be honest, but that the player is meant to be at a disadvantage most of the time. Your aim with a handgun is dogshit, but honestly that makes way more sense to me – given that Jill literally drove a car off a three- or four-story roof – than a situation like Control, where a random civilian stumbles into a locked-down government facility and one-shots dudes with Mjolnir in gun form for the whole game.
You’re not supposed to feel frightened so much as beset upon at every turn, I guess. Zombies aren’t guaranteed to die from a headshot; Nemesis can’t die at all. The challenges you face in the environment, from puzzles to waypoints, aren’t marked well at all, and (at least so far) you can only hold onto eight things, two slots of which are automatically taken over by your gun and your knife.
I really don’t know if the game gets better or worse from here. I’ve heard it’s pretty short; I also heard, from gaming’s resident fucking goblins, that Jill “isn’t right” because her outfit doesn’t feature her in fucking go-go boots and a tight rubber skirt anymore. Whatever. It’s a fucking global crisis; who’s she supposed to be dressing up for anyway?