But this game is always driving you forward, faster, never letting you linger in a place too long, never allowing you to struggle with a puzzle or risk getting lost. Fighting these zombies does feel good, and the small mazes have their satisfaction. In iterating on all the successes of last year's Resident Evil 2, it is just as slick and playable as that game was, bolstered by beautifully moody settings and music.
That's not to say this new Resident Evil 3 isn't entertaining.
Using the same story and setting as its predecessor-an escape from zombie-infested Raccoon City, starring returning series heroine Jill Valentine and a hapless private security contractor for the evil Umbrella Corporation named Carlos who ends up being the right man in the wrong place-it pushes the design of the previous remake in a faster, more linear, more exciting direction. Resident Evil 3, then, feels like an attempt to bridge the gap between the new vision of Resident Evil 2 and what would come next in the form of Resident Evil 4. The Resident Evil 2 remake used this style to create a game that was much slower and more horror-focused than Resident Evil 4-zombies went down slow, did a lot of damage, and existed in an elaborate labyrinthine setting instead of a more linear series of levels and setpieces. This is in contrast to the original games, which were much more limited, relying on top-down fixed camera angles and characters that controlled like tanks. Like RE4, these games have a third-person, over-the-shoulder camera, where the player manually aims their weapons and explores environments freely. The new Resident Evil 3, following up on last year's fantastic Resident Evil 2 remake, modernizes the setting and story of Nemesis into a design as influenced by the games that came after it-particularly Resident Evil 4-as the games they're ostensibly remaking.