Resident Evil 3: Nemesis (PSX)

There's one new weapon included in RE3 that shoots explosive projectiles which seem to somewhat irritate all the monsters in the general area. This weapon can be identified by its remarkable ineffectiveness and by the fact that it's a weird shaped plastic thingy. I think there may have been a few other new things in the game too, but that would've involved some actual work on Capcom's part so don't quote me on that. There was a zoomable map that might've proven very useful to those dumbasses in the Blair Witch Project but will just seem pretty pointless to the rest of us, and a new "ammo system" where you can make your own ammo. This was a great addition because I was extremely happy to see the old, outdated premise of finding pre-manufactured ammo laying around the streets replaced with the hyper-realism of making your own ammo by combining your reloading tool with some "gun powder A".

Only the best hospitals have light puzzles on their equipment.

It must be very comforting to all those failed auditioners for the voice of the Taco Bell dog to know that they can still get a job at Capcom. Believe it or not, RE3 actually surpasses the standard for bad voice-overs set by the original Resident Evil, and the fact that someone actually got paid for the "voice acting" in this game only serves to further undermine our economic concept of "money for goods and services". Especially awful are the voice actors for "the mercenaries" who effortlessly switch between Scottish, German, Mexican, and Norwegian accents in mid-sentence. No foreign dialect is safe from these guys. The actual dialogue for the characters is a little better, thankfully. Here's one of my favorite lines from the game:

Jill: (sees a guy with half of his chest ripped off) "Is someone wounded back there?"

Then there's this little verbal exchange between Jill and Carlos. It didn't sound right to me but I suppose that if anyone would know about this subject it'd be the folks who made this game:

Jill: "Yeah, it's been rough, but we can rest now."

Carlos: "No! There's no rest for the wicked!"

RE3 was made in Japan but it is supposed to take place in "a normal Midwestern U.S. town". Evidently, "town" is Japanese for "a bunch of interconnecting alleys separated every 10 feet by metal doors". Entering any sort of building (store, hospital, city park, etc.) in Raccoon City involves going through a door located in an alleyway. You will come across an occasional "street blocked off by a flaming car wreck and a three-foot tall barricade that Jill can't climb over for some inexplicable reason" but overall, this game has enough long, pointless hallways to fill several dozen Erik maps.

I also noticed a lot of light puzzles in the game which I thought was a great idea. It's about time Capcom realized that no one plays Resident Evil games because of the zombies and graphic violence, they play em' cause they wanna solve light puzzles! All 15,437 of the aforementioned puzzles can be found throughout the game in gas stations, hospitals, sewage treatment plants, and other places where you'd normally expect to find puzzles. I'm not exactly sure what the explanation for this is but, if you ask me, the whole thing is pretty disturbing. Maybe one of the level designers had some kind of light puzzle fetish, or maybe in Japan operating medical equipment, gas station machinery, and basic household appliances actually involves solving repetitive puzzles. No wonder my VCR player still flashes "12:00".

I'm not really sure why anyone would want to play this game. The gameplay is much worse than the two previous Resident Evils and the level design rivals the original Pitfall 2600 in terms of sheer linearness. I guess it might be kinda scary to anyone who's never seen a Capcom game before, but other than that it has no redeeming qualities. I wouldn't recommend you get Resident Evil 3:Nemesis unless you really like being chased down narrow, maze-like corridors by some big, lumbering jerk in a trenchcoat, in which case you should get it. Or actually you might just consider taking a trip to Wal-Mart.

Each category in the rating system is based out of a possible -10 score (-10 being the worst). The overall score is based out of a possible -50 score (-50 being the worst).

– Jed (@notoriousamoeba)