Resident Evil 3 – Unstoppable Tyrant

Well that didn’t take very long, here I am back in Raccoon City battling zombies and another giant Tyrant stalker that was quite predictable but still badass.

Some players said I should just skip this game because of its short duration but I always try to keep an open mind so I gave it a go, and I actually am quite enraged at WordPress right now because when I started writing this, I got all the way to the halfway mark and it was stuck autosaving my work and could not retrieve it, fucking hell, don’t make me start over like this again!

The T-virus is still spreading throughout Raccoon City in this game and its events are supposed to take place before RE2 but I think they eventually overlap. The opening cinematic gives the game a strong start so while the infected zombies are terrorizing the city, Umbrella has constructed another monstrous Tyrant known as Nemesis to hunt down and eliminate all the members of the police department’s Special Tactics and Rescue Service (S.T.A.R.S) and Jill Valentine, the main protagonist is one of the targets.

Jill can’t wait to leave this city and Nemesis ambushes her before she can even catch her breath so yeah, we’re thrown right into the action. Jill narrowly escapes and runs into Carlos, a member of Umbrella Biohazard Countermeasure Service which I suppose is responsible for trying to contain any of Umbrella’s work if it gets out of control. As Jill makes alliances, there’s more to the people than she thought she was working with.

A lot of things feel quite rushed in the story like how long it took me to get through each part of the city, or maybe it’s due to me having more experience with these games, I know where to go and what to expect.

Not much has changed in gameplay, same old conserve inventory, craft, run if you need to, and solve puzzles, but I do like how Jill can dodge enemy attacks, and if done correctly, she seems more agile. I haven’t tried this with Carlos in his segments of the game.

One thing that feels incomplete is if a zombie grabs me, I am prompted to press A to shake them off before they bite and this doesn’t work so it feels like Capcom just didn’t finish implementing this feature or my timing was just always off. The enemies on the other hand aside from zombies that never stay down, there’s those giant toads with gaping mouths that bring up memories of the baby in Donna’s house: still the most terrifying thing I’ve seen in a horror game, but other than that, there isn’t much that is original so dealing with Nemesis throughout the game is the highlight.

Jill is a good character, some people easily give this game a perfect score because they’re in love with her. I find her to be quite headstrong and professional. She’s played by Nicole Tompkins a.k.a. Daniela Dimitrescu so it was nice to see her again. She’s got a bit of charisma too which I like.

Carlos is an average soldier with charm, and it sounds like he likes Jill as the game progresses but never acts on it. While Nicholai, well, I don’t need to use Google to know that’s Neil Newbon behind the character. He sounds just like my Karl Heisenberg! Too bad he’s just another bad guy with his own agenda. There aren’t as many characters in this game as I thought, so yeah, pretty brief.

Since this game is quite short and some scenes feel rushed, it was difficult for me to pick moments that stood out for me. Many things flew by like it didn’t take me long to get the train going and elude Nemesis but it still felt iconic to me as it set in motion some more backstory.

So get off my train you shitbird! After that happened the only part of Carlos’s segments that I enjoyed was when he goes to the police station and witnessed Marvin being attacked, then I got to go to a few familiar places inside.

Another great part was when Nicholai took the vaccine and dropped Jill into a pit to battled the mutated Nemesis. Carlos was also helpful in calling out where the monster was hiding if he jumped onto one of the tanks!

Actually, I love every encounter I had with Nemesis in this game, even if his parts pursuing Jill seemed linear to me. He kept saying “S.T.A.R.S” in his pursuit, chasing me first no weapons, flamethrower, and rocket launcher before mutating for two more epic battles.

I feel like the battle in his final form went by too quickly as it only took two shots of the big rail gun to finally destroy him for good. It could have been in stages like Heisenberg’s battle was. That would have made for a great finale before catching up to Nicholai.

I don’t know much about Nicholai’s motives other than he wants to get paid, but it’s clear that he is not with Umbrella and there’s no indication that he escapes the city. I want to assume he’s dead but I maybe wrong.

However, Nemesis is the real star of this game as the other antagonist with his iconic look and encounters. There’s more than one of him, and he was deployed by Umbrella out of vengeance with only one goal in mind. As badass as he was, he didn’t seem scary to me that resulted in dreams like with Mr. X. Oh wait, I shouldn’t jinx it.

It feels like there are some missing pieces to the plot and the game felt more of action than horror. Not that that’s a bad thing, maybe I set my expectations too high. RE7 was pure horror and RE2 and Village had a good balance of horror and action.

This game was good, but it could have been much better. If I play it again someday, I would do it for Nemesis the most because like I said, he is the star to me.

👽Emily