Resident Evil 3 Remake Review Feat. Athlon 200GE

When it comes to an outbreak, it’s best to work with what you have instead of trying to go outside for god knows what. Hopefully though, it’s a necessity if you do plan to go out. But whatever the case, again it’s about working with what we have, and what we have right now is an Athlon 200GE system for our home theater. And that’s what we’re reviewing Resident Evil 3 Remake on. LowSpecGamer be proud.

When it comes to an outbreak, it’s best to work with what you have instead of trying to go outside for god knows what. Hopefully though, it’s a necessity if you do plan to go out. But whatever the case, again it’s about working with what we have, and what we have right now is an Athlon 200GE system for our home theater. And that’s what we’re reviewing Resident Evil 3 Remake on. LowSpecGamer be proud.

Rush in, with guns blazing.

Resident Evil 3 Remake thrusts you into the zombie-infested urban streets of Raccoon City. As Jill “Master of Unlocking” “Jill Sandwich” Valentine, you attempt to desperately survive the wrath of Nemesis. 

On to the review!

Those familiar with Resident Evil 2 Remake’s narrow rooms and corridors, and hell of a shortage of bullets in the labyrinthine Raccoon Police Department (who in their right mind would think building a police department on a closed down museum was a good idea?) will find Resident Evil 3 Remake an actionized sequel.

There's that ongoing debate on who you hate more. This guy or Micah Bell.

Resident Evil 3 Remake puts you in the heart of the action. There’s very little breather here. You’ll find yourself railed in the storytelling. It’s an actionized sequel that focuses on the thrill of survival rather than invoking the fear of desolation throughout the scenario. 

Unlike Resident Evil 2 Remake where you'll spend a lot of hours exploring every nook and cranny of RPD and backtracking for god knows how long with Mr. X constantly trying to stop you dead, Resident Evil 3 wants you to charge in with guns blazing. With a new dodging mechanic that gives you an opening to attack, Nemesis becomes cakewalk (provided that you kept your nerves calm and your dodge button always ready). Think Breath of the Wild's Flurry Rush and that's basically it with guns. There's virtually little to no risk at all in missing those dodges, but timing it to perfection feels so rewarding.

We could chalk it up experience after Jill’s first encounter at the nightmare in the Arklay Mansion. This is a bit of a misstep for us since we’ve all been expecting a focus on horror rather than the action.

You get to roam around the corridors of R.P.D.... for a couple of minutes.

Resident Evil built its franchise on intricate puzzles and gripping elements of suspense. The focus of Resident Evil 3 Remake however feels like it’s leaning more on the narrative rather than the immersion to horror. Sure, there are a few puzzles here and there, but nothing as complex as the ones present in Resident Evil 2 Remake. 

Furthermore, you won't have to deal with ammo scarcity. There were instances were X monsters are weak to X ammunition and it's scattered accross nearby areas. And most of the time, you'll stock up on ammunition due to the limitations of your inventory space, which will often leave you saving up all the juicy stuff and hopefully not use them until necessary. We never found good use for a lot of our saved up ammunitions and it ultimatelty ends up wasted during end game. 

“S.T.A.R.S.”

 

More menacing.

You can’t have Resident Evil 3 Remake without the big bad of the game that is Nemesis. Who doesn't rememberthe sheer terror upon hearing that. Resident Evil 3 Remake doesn’t give you event choices like the original did, but you do have the option to take on Nemesis whenever it appears to hunt you down. Choosing to do so will yield certain rewarding items, but not so much in the entirety of the chase. 

Oh? You're approaching me?

While Nemesis pretty much is a menacing adversary in the remake, we can’t help setting up comparisons of the thrills against Resident Evil 2’s Mr. X. This is in part of each game’s structure. Resident Evil 2 has no shortage of puzzles and a whole lot of backtracking, while Resident Evil 3 Remake rails you into its narrative that it feels like you’re playing a movie. 

Nemesis can be scary at times, especially at the beginning for the most part, but the only downfall in this is things don't get as frantic with it compared to Mr. X where the only breather you'll get are on save points or you'll want to lay waste to his life points with most if not all of your bullets that would seem pointless at times due to the lack of rewards.

Beauty that reaches for the moon

As we've mentioned in the beginning, this pandemic had as stuck with only our HTPC, an Athlon 200GE machine with Radeon Vega 3 Graphics and 4GB of RAM. Sure, we had to literally tone everything possible down to a minimum on a 720P resolution just to get decent playable framerates, and we did achieve it.

We could meme this.

CAPCOM's RE Engine is a thing of beauty. It's well optimized that Resident Evil 3 Remake still runs even on this machine. We had our Dualshock 4 hooked up to the HTPC just so we could play, and while the framerate is was running on and the control scheme were somewhat of a drawback, the core experience is still there.

So long, RC.

 

For what it is, Resident Evil 3 Remake is a fleshed out reimagining of the original that gives its players gripping thrills every chance it can. However, if your expectations come from its predecessor that made for a stellar remake through its arsenal of puzzles, body horror and freshness factor, you may find Resident Evil 3 Remake lacking, especially with CAPCOM's streak of bringing back the franchise back to its roots of horror.

To note, all images are screenshots taken in-game with our on-hand system at the time we reviewed Resident Evil 3 Remake.

Huge thanks to AMD for providing us the game key.

Update: Resident Evil 3 Benchmark on the system reviewed, compared to our actual test bench and other graphics cards to follow after ECQ is over. Stay safe, everyone!