![]() Hip pouch expansions, once locked cleverly away in safes or requiring some pass code to get your hands on, are simply left lying around for you to pick up, one even sat right beside a typewriter with zero effort required on your part to earn it. This slapdash approach extends itself to how you discover upgrades and solve the handful of painfully trivial puzzles the game lays before you. Ammo is overabundant, strewn all about the place and we never once felt like we were anywhere near running low, going into every major encounter fully loaded and ready to destroy whatever awaited us. In terms of gameplay, everything here exudes a slapdash, haphazard attitude. Scripted chases constantly wrestle control away from the player and the proper 1v1 face-offs, the smattering of fights which see you finally go toe-to-toe with your enormous foe are the worst kind of boss battles – running around in circles pumping as many rounds of ammo as possible at the enemy until he switches to the next phase – at which point the game will explain to you exactly what you need to do now, lest you accidentally engage your own brain momentarily. Make no mistake, they look amazing, this is easily the best-looking entry in the series to date, but they're a messy and unsatisfying experience to play. However the big bad here is consigned to a handful of scenes that feel sloppy and tired. You'd be forgiven for having expected something more freeform as an adversary, something in the same vein as what you got from last year's relentless pursuer. The Nemesis, this game's answer to the Tyrant from Resi 2, is a disappointingly scripted beast. ![]() Then, just as you're settling into your rhythm, you're sucked right back out of it and into a cavalcade of scripted action sequences, tired boss battles and – besides a late sojourn through a hospital that manages to inject a little bit of tension – a bunch of locations and situations that feel pretty uninspired. There are locked doors here, fire-filled alleyways and a subway system to get back up and running- a handful of satisfyingly traditional Resident Evil problems to be solved as you slip in and around streets that are heavily populated by the shambling undead. Given relative freedom to explore the beautifully-realised and expanded streets of Raccoon City you get a chance to investigate and wander through your iconic surroundings. Gone is the slow-burn creeping tension of tip-toeing your way through hugely atmospheric locations, replaced here by an obnoxiously bright and noisy blast of the sort of action-centric Resi hijinks that saw the series lose its way for so long.Īfter an opening sequence that very briefly introduces us to a troubled Jill Valentine before caving the walls of her apartment in and flinging us through a heavily scripted chase sequence against the Nemesis, Resident Evil 3 settles down into what turns out to be its strongest act. What's here at times feels like a quick cash-in, a straight to TV follow-up to Resi 2's beautifully-crafted main feature – a rework that strips out entire locations from the original game, removes puzzling pretty much entirely and hurls its players headlong through a short, tightly-confined and heavily-scripted campaign that comes crashing to an unreasonably abrupt ending. With much weaker source material to work from – there ain't no Raccoon City Police Department here – this one was always likely to be an uphill struggle for Capcom – however, we definitely didn't expect it to disappoint us to this extent. Perhaps it was somewhat foolish to expect that a Resident Evil 3 remake, no matter how radical, could manage to reach the heady heights of last year's sublime Resident Evil 2.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |