Playtime: 6 Hours
Score: 4/10

The scariest part about this game is how mediocre it is. So this was the last of the RE Engine, Resident Evil games for me to play as I have wanted to play it for a while, but was never going to buy it with how short it is and the fact that they cut out so much content from the original. The game got added to game pass this month which is how I played it. So what did I think of it?

As you can probably tell from the score and my first written line, I didn't enjoy this at all. I put off playing this game for so long, even playing the RE4 Remake before playing this because it just seemed like a glorified DLC or stand alone expansion being sold to us at full price which just put me off from playing it, and I was right! Now to clarify, I never personally played the original game but I did watch my parents play it as a kid and and while I don't remember much of it, I do remember Nemesis and how he was just this unstoppable force of nature, with his iconic "STARSSSSSSSSSS" line. I don't need to have played the original to tell you how much they botched this remake.

Graphically and gameplay wise, this looks and plays almost exactly like RE2 remake pretty much to a fault. The original game from what I have researched was designed to be a spin off from the original RE2 and they did that again here, even down to you revisiting some of the same locations from the RE2 remake. It makes sense from a story perspective as much of this game takes place before RE2, but from a level design perspective it's really damn lazy because they don’t do anything to change up the location to make exploring it feel new really.

Gameplay wise, it's basically RE2's combat but with a dodge button and some more punchy weapons like an assault rifle. It plays fine for the most part but it just feels like this remake is borrowing too much from the other, better game. The combat has much more of an action focus and it's fine at doing that, but I feel like they needed to do more to make it feel good to play. RE2's combat was slower and more methodical because it was a more classic survival horror game, and not really meant for an action orientated title. If you think of something like the OG RE4 or Dead Space 2, those games do a good job of being action oriented and making the player feel powerful. Here it just feels clunky as all hell for that style of game. The enemy types are also just very limited (and recycled from RE2R) with their only being basic zombies, gammas, hunters and then Nemesis. Action games need more enemies than this. It just felt like I was going through the motions and focusing on taking out enemies quickly rather than using the full combat kit.

The horror is basically non-existent with what little there is with Nemesis, but he lost his luster pretty much almost immediately. You know what would have been scary? If Nemesis was an actual stalker enemy and not limited to just scripted events. Even going outside of the Resident Evil franchise, when I played a game like Alien Isolation, the tension that I felt whenever the xenomorph was nearby as I hid in lockers or under tables was iconic. That would have been great here since Nemesis is such an iconic horror game villain, but here he’s just an annoying monster who just never dies and keeps coming back constantly.

The story was okay but I honestly stopped caring after a while. Jill Valentine is a cool and iconic video game protag, but the characters around her are just bland in this game and the story is just the usual Resident Evil story, without any real surprises or tension filled moments. I know the series often has cheesy, B-movie plots for their games, but here it just felt like the boring kind and not the it’s so bad, it's good kind.

This is just the type of game that makes me cynical about the AAA game landscape, until I play a good one or a creative, passion project indie game that makes me feel better. RE3R is just a huge disappointment.

All Games I have Played and Reviewed Ranked - https://www.backloggd.com/u/JudgeDredd35/list/all-games-i-have-played-and-reviewed-ranked/
RE Engine Resident Evil Games Ranked - https://www.backloggd.com/u/JudgeDredd35/list/re-engine-resident-evil-games-ranked/

Time travel meets Jack Reacher.

I want to preface this by saying I played on PC Gamepass and it ran like absolute ass for some reason (Alan Wake 2 ran well on my set up for reference) so my judgment might be clouded. But even with that in mind, I think a lot of my problems aren't necessarily with the gameplay. Gunplay in this one can be really fun, and messing around with the time powers zipping around and using time powers is fun. But this suffers the fate of being an early eight generation game with a lot of ambition on its plate. Every interesting decision is really undermined by how undercooked everything is. When you aren't doing pretty decent third person shooter arena fights, you're going at a snails pace as characters in the game say "Hmmm, I wonder if theres an entrance round here."

The timeloop is well fleshed out, but its really hard to care about that when most of the characters are very one note, only elevated by mostly decent performances. With Aidan Gillen (I'm CIA) and Lance Reddick (Rest in Peace) picking up slack. Anytime they were on screen I perked up, but the writing in this one feels so flaccid in this one. Not helped by the fact that the optional written text/audio in emails and radio is mindnumbling long in this one. Anytime I bothered to read it felt like I was completely distracting from game flow. And that is to say nothing of the well-shot but ultimately very uninteresting television aspect of the series (of which it wouldn't load properly on PC Gamepass, this was a Microsoft funded project).

I think there are cool things in this game, but a lot of them can be found in other Remedy works before and after. Might be worth your time if you think it'd be up your alley, but I'm glad Remedy has made more interesting works after this one.