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After the previous few years in development hell, Capcom has definitely gotten back its groove with the release of Devil May Cry 5 and Resident Evil 2 Remake. Now, the company opens its 2020 schedule with a free demo for the upcoming Resident Evil 3 Remake, showing off the first sequences of the upcoming title.
1 – Premise
The demo opens with protagonist Jill Valentine meeting the mercenaries in the Umbrella response team as they are trying to escape from Raccoon City. After a brief exchange with fellow survivor Carlos Oliveira, players would get to explore the zombie-infested city, with a mission to get the subway services back online. This is where the demo ends – while it’s short, players get launched right into the action instead of having to dawdle in cutscenes.
2 – World design
Resident Evil 3 Remake has definitely stayed faithful to the original while improving on the combat and game mechanics inherited from Resident Evil 2 Remake. Everything is filled to the brim with details – instead of the hallway-like streets in the original, you would get a lot more room to move around while combating the undead. The new focus on details actually makes the city feels real, with places that were once lived in, instead of just being a disaster zone.
3 – Control schemes
Players would find themselves facing the undead very early on, armed only with a pistol. Capcom has implemented an element of realism in aiming – the crosshair would close in only when the protagonist standing still. This, in turn, encourage players to be patient and precise, as panicking would make the shot miss and waste a bullet. Overall, the combats are way tenser than the original, because you have much fewer resources and the zombies are much tougher now.
About new mechanics in this game, well, the developer has probably realized having to stand still for a while to shoot makes the game much harder. Because of that, they have added a new advanced evade move so that Jill could overcome this handicap easier. Expect this to be essential in boss fights.
4 – Puzzles and collectibles
Item placements reward exploration from players – providing you with just enough resources to go by if you do not explore every nook and cranny on the map. Similar to previous Resident Evil Titles, there are a lot of collectibles hidden in various areas on the map. Players would often get a reward upon collecting all of them.
About Puzzles, the part of Raccoon City that players can access in the Demo has quite a few of them – while the puzzles were not overly complex (with most involving finding the correct item to unlock), the perpetual threat of zombies makes the experience super tense. One highlight was Jill’s acquisition of the shotgun – she has to get through quite a few zombies in a nearby store to grab the bolt cutters to unlock it.
5 – Nemesis encounter
The demo ended with the player’s first encounter with Nemesis, the towering bioweapon that is going to be a constant threat throughout the full game. The monster in RE 3 Remake is a lot tougher than his original appearance in RE 3 – a shotgun shell could only stagger it temporarily. The Nemesis’s grab is super long and apparently, it can also jump – you would have to time your dodge carefully to be able to escape.
The demo would take about 30 minutes or more to complete, depends on how thorough you are with exploring. Some speedrunners have managed to finish the thing in 3 minutes.
Resident Evil 3 Remake will be released in 2 weeks, on April 3. To download the demo on Steam, please follow this link.