Last escape – Resident Evil 3: Nemesis

**Resident Evil 3: Nemesis** (Capcom, PlayStation, 2000)

In Japan, this game was released as Biohazard 3: Last Escape, and here “last escape” are the final words spoken by returning main character Jill Valentine in the intro. It wasn’t the last, of course. There would be more escapes. Series don’t tend to end at a point of such success, but to carry on out the other side. There wasn’t even any attempt to kill it off, leaving a zombie series, Last Revelation style. But Resident Evil 3 was the last numbered Resident Evil sequel in this style, and there is a clear reason for that.

In both Japan and Britain at the respective times it released, the Dreamcast had already kicked off the next console generation and the PlayStation 2 was less than a year away. Investment into coming up with new ideas was drawn away to the possibilities offered by new technology. Until then, it was a time for continuations and expansions. Metal Gear Solid and Driver were the last revolutionary games on the original PlayStation to hit big enough for me to encounter in this story, with the PlayStation’s final couple of years packed with sequels. Resident Evil 3 was a stopgap created when Capcom abandoned a more ambitious PlayStation sequel set on a cruise ship, after PlayStation 2 announcements made clear it would be ready too late in the PS1’s lifecycle.

Resident Evil 3 runs on the same engine as its predecessors and fits into a familiar formula. It’s still controlled in third person with detailed, pre-rendered backgrounds and camera angles set up for claustrophobic effect. Jill can now dodge and do a quick 180 degree turn, but she still controls in a pretty unwieldy way, the better to make escaping from zombies a terrifying ordeal, and to make blasting their heads off with a shotgun a bloody sweet relief.

You can combine items to make ammo and other things in some basic crafting mechanisms, but the puzzles are along the same basic and sometimes confusing lines. It keeps the old full-screen animation of each door you open, a way of trying to prompt dread and anticipation which sits oddly with the fact that most of its horror comes in nasty things bursting through windows and barricades and similar, rather than anything revealed on entering a room.

The plot takes place parallel to Resident Evil 2, and there are lots of references to be found. Reviews at the time tended to present it as something for players of the previous games and it’s easy to see why, although the plot is easy enough to follow regardless. With the expansion to roaming more of Raccoon City, it was more my absolutely terrible sense of direction which held me back than anything else, with dark winding streets and frequent camera angle changes more of a nightmare than any undead menace. Although one key attraction for Resident Evil 3 comes close.

The Nemesis of the title is Resident Evil 3’s chief novelty, an ugly oversized enemy who can’t be easily beaten and follows you around. The most terrifying aspect is that Nemesis is so counter-intuitively fast as well as bulky, capable of keeping up with you at full speed. As a way of reintroducing a level of fear and uncertainty it’s a clever twist, if not necessarily one to carry a whole game by itself or attract newcomers.

And that’s where Resident Evil 3 lands in the end. For players who loved the previous games and their zombie movie horror and inventory-juggling, this was exciting enough to be desperate to get their hands on. For anyone new, much less so. But attracting them could wait. This was meant as a way of preventing fans having to wait years for another installment, and there were enough of them for that to work out well. Not the last escape, but a satisfying closing of a chapter.