It’s a move I used regularly and compulsively, and it proved as important to the minute-to-minute combat as Jill’s handgun. Jill has a quick step move that allows her to sidestep an incoming attack, and when timed just right it earns you a slight slow-motion effect to help you escape. “Fortunately, Jill is a lot nimbler on her feet than Leon Kennedy or Claire Redfield, which gives Resident Evil 3 a more frantic, action-oriented feel than its predecessor (though it’s not all-out-action like Resident Evil 5 or 6, don’t worry).
Thankfully, the Resident Evil 2 Remake map screen returns, dutifully logging exactly where you saw that locked safe and highlighting if you’ve missed any items after exploring a room. When I say “easy,” I don’t mean “safe,” though, because that corpse on the floor in that building you were in 30 minutes ago, for example, may not be a corpse any longer. Areas house problems to solve or clues that lead you to other areas and then back again a fire obstructs one route, for example, and must be extinguished with the help of a part hidden in a nearby building – a building which also houses a weapon that can't be accessed without the use of a tool that's located past the area obstructed by fire.These tasks might sound video-gamey (and they are), but solving them is never a chore thanks to elegant, interlocking level design that makes backtracking easy. No enemy is thrown in for the sake of it, no room is there ‘just because’ at the very least, every room has useful items or a secret. “Like its predecessor, and indeed, every decent Resident Evil game before it, every part of Resident Evil 3’s world feels deliberately put together. Of course, nothing goes to plan, and Jill finds herself in a wonderfully labyrinthine, zombie-studded playground where she – and your nerves – must also contend with the threat of an invulnerable monster called Nemesis.
The endearingly practical Jill Valentine – last seen in the original Resident Evil and its Director’s Cut – is called upon by a roguish Umbrella Corp mercenary by the name of Carlos Oliviera to help save the remaining inhabitants of a demolished Raccoon City from the carnage spawned by the T-Virus outbreak. See our Resident Evil: Resistance review for the multiplayer side of the package.Resident Evil 3 takes place nearly concurrently with the events of the equally accomplished Resident Evil 2, and follows different characters. Note: This review exclusively covers the single-player campaign of Resident Evil 3. My undying enthusiasm for it speaks volumes of the polish seen in this remake, and the finesse with which it manages to tread the tightrope between a confident modern horror and a tonal callback to the original Resident Evil trilogy. Not because I felt like I missed anything the first time around – I was as fastidious as developer Capcom encouraged me to be – but because my journey through Raccoon City was so consistently packed with tense monster moments and breakneck-paced fun, and it was so challenging throughout its six-odd hours, that I wanted to jump in and do it all over again with sharper skills and knowledge. As the credits rolled on Resident Evil 3’s campaign, I immediately started playing it over again.