I'm a massive Resident Evil fan. I loved the hell out of the RE2 remake, thought they kept it 90% faithful but the stuff they changed made sense for a modern take on an old classic. That said, Resident Evil 3 is my favorite in the entire franchise for a number of reasons. Despite RE3 taking the blame for kicking the RE series into action, I thought it was a nice mixture of horror, drama and action that traumatized me as a kid and continues to entertain me as an adult. I have almost the whole script memorized, I know how to speedrun it, I loved the Mercenaries mode which had you strategically race through the city on a 10-minute timer that gets longer for every enemy kill, every dodge, and every civilian rescued, with 4 characters to play as that have different weapon arsenals.

I knew RE3 wouldn't have Mercenaries mode and is instead implementing the "Resistance" game which is an online multiplayer game capitalizing off of the "Dead By Daylight" trend that everyone and their mother is trying to cash in on (including the makers of Outlast, Red Barrels, announcing their new game will be multiplayer). Capcom would make everyone very happy if they just remastered Resident Evil Outbreak but apparently they'd rather just recycle assets from RE2 and call it a day.

Preface aside, here's my review: the game isn't bad, but it's extremely mediocre.

The entire intro in the remake is different from the original, and it's all a downgrade. Instead of Jill fighting through an urban wasteland crawling with what feels like a hundred zombies, meeting up with her teammate Brad, hearing him warn about Nemesis "coming for us" as he ominously puts it, watching him get slaughtered by Nemesis in front of the RPD before choosing to either fight Nemesis or run inside the building, we instead get an intro with Jill slowly touring her entire apartment (with some exposition in the form of documents for whatever reason) before experiencing a nightmare about her turning into a zombie. She wakes up, gets a phone call from Brad sounding alarmed, and immediately the wall blasts open and Nemesis appears with his face covered by a plastic bag and attempts to kill Jill. No buildup, no tension, just WHOAH FIRE EXPLOSIONS RUN AWAY FROM THE BIG MONSTER IN THESE INCREDIBLY EASY SCRIPTED SEQUENCES THAT HAVE YOU HOLDING FORWARD TO GET AWAY. Then you encounter Brad who JUST SO HAPPENS to be passing by the alleyway you're emerging from (and is now suddenly cracking jokes and sounds very relaxed considering he was flipping out just moments prior over the phone) and you run into a nearby cafe to get away from the zombies. The zombies break through, bite Brad, and he pulls the cliche'd "I'm infected and we both know I'm done for so I'll buy you some time and hold them off knowing I'm gonna die anyway" schtick as Jill runs into a nearby alleyway. Brad was on-screen for all of 3 minutes before they killed him off to advance the plot. Okay.

She picks up a handgun from a nearby zombie and says "Sorry." Jill makes it a regular gag to apologize to corpses for taking their stuff. It's just kind of annoying and she does it multiple times.

Then she runs into a room and meets Dario Rosso, a writer/poet in the original game who had red hair and looked like a chubby dude in his 30's, but this game decided to make him about 70 and balding. Dario Rosso in the original is a super unimportant character, but his vocal performance is superb and he was someone that always impressed me in the beginning of the game. He screams at you at the top of his lungs, mourns the VERY RECENT death of his daughter, and then locks himself in a storage container and says he'd rather starve to death than be eaten by "one of those undead monsters." This Dario Rosso mocks Jill, when she says "I'm a police officer and I'm here to help," he laughs and says "Oh yeah, you're doing a bang-up job." His vocal delivery sounds annoyed and sarcastic, which compared to the original VA sounding on the brink of losing his mind, is a downgrade that let me know immediately this game was going to be mediocre. They also cut the bit of dialogue where he mentions he "lost his daughter out there" because the game is in an INSANE hurry to move the plot along and apparently one of my favorite characters just needs to get out of Jill's way so she can get to the shooting.

The characters in this game are super obnoxious. Jill is always talking to herself and making goofy observations, saying the obligatory "♥♥♥♥" and "♥♥♥♥" and "♥♥♥♥ THAT WAS SO GROSS," and when she's approached by people she barely knows and are trying to cooperate with her she just speaks to them sarcastically and it really paints her as a c*nt considering she was so focused and stoic in RE1 and RE5. She picks up a Magnum and comments "Guaranteed to give you a headache." Just stop, oh my god.

Carlos is a Hispanic Umbrella Mercenary who comes to Jill's aid, but the most he said in the way of flirtaciousness was "All the foxy ladies love my accent!" and for the rest of the game he was extremely serious and dedicated to protecting Jill and his platoon. In the remake, he's a white guy (no noticeable accent or dialect) with dark skin and curly black hair who constantly, CONSTANTLY cracks jokes. A door won't open? He says "Open sesame." He tells Jill he won't die and leave her in a "Cold, cruel, Carlos-less world." He calls Jill "Supercop" numerous times. Even when Jill is in critical condition he's making inappropriate jokes. A tertiary character waiting for Jill to wake up from a medically-induced coma says to her "Morning, sleepyhead!" as soon as she wakes up. Ugh.

Carlos' commanding officer, Mikhail, was on death's door in the original game. He was laying down in the subway car, bleeding profusely, hallucinating and having war flashbacks, saying "Fire... FIRE!!! Stay... together!" and he was completely useless as he laid there struggling to stay conscious. In the remake, he's only slightly wounded, sitting up, walking around, cracking jokes about the remaining civilians, referring to them as the "soon-to-be undead."

Nikolai, who is the villain, is also just ridiculously over-the-top in terms of his nefariousness. In the original it was played subtly, he was a competent soldier and leader and he was made out to be a pragmatic leader. Now he just mugs, smirks, and winks at Jill as he makes no effort whatsoever to hide his ruthlessness. It's like I'm watching a children's cartoon.

Also they cut the entire Clocktower section from the game and just skip straight to the hospital. That was my favorite locale from the PS1 version and it's just gone now. Cool.

Also you've probably heard from the press but yes, this game is incredibly short. I beat the RE2 remake in like 20 hours I'm pretty sure, and I'm 5 hours in and already at the end of the game. I've seen playthroughs beat it in 4 hours max. Just embarrassing. Capcom is one of my favorite companies but they absolutely shoveled this out and cut so many corners that it's depressing to know I was incredibly excited for this.

And if you enjoy the game, good. I'm happy people are enjoying it. As far as action games go, it's not the worst thing on the planet, but compared to the original upon which it's based, it's woefully wasted potential. For 60 dollars (and tax) I expected a lot more than 4-5 hours of playtime. Just stop dismissing criticism as "TEH HATERZ" when we have pages upon pages of valid criticisms. I was okay with the changes in the RE2 remake as it felt like it was an improvement over the original. The changes in this game compared to the original are an objective downgrade. The people who will defend this game are clueless to its' original origins and just want to consoom big blockbuster action game for their funny LetsPlay/Twitch audience.

tl;dr an okay action game but it completely bastardizes the original. Only buy if you're okay paying $60 for 4-5 hours of gameplay with no replayability.