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The scariest bits of Resident Evil 3
Resi 3 has been out a couple of months now, but it's still pretty spooky.
Resident Evil has long set the bar for the horror genre, and we were excited – and perhaps a little relieved – to discover that 2020’s Resident Evil 3 is just as terrifying as the 1996 original, window dogs and all. Here, we celebrate, in the most spoiler-tastic way possible, Resident Evil 3’s ability to shock, surprise, and terrify. New trousers, please.
The opening
The infection takes hold of Jill
© Capcom
We’re not going to re-tell the whole story of RE3 scene by scene, although if we’re going through why the game is scary we might as well. The opening is an abject lesson in terrifying gamers as well as being technically brilliant: the light splitting through the blinds, the rain lashing down on the windows and the glitching, reception-less TV set struggling to connect to the outside world. The way the obsessively curated evidence of evil corporation Umbrella’s wrongdoing flutters in the breeze generated by the desk fan – otherworldly doesn’t begin to cover it.
Then, as Jill looks in the mirror, the infection takes hold and she takes the only way out in a horrifying dream sequence.
Keep in mind this all happens five minutes after slipping the disc into your console. Why are we doing this to ourselves, again?
The soundtrack
RE3 Graphics - Pure Fire
© Capcom
There is much to love about RE3 – the level design is frequently brilliant, the zombies are horrendous and the graphics – whether ultra-realistic flames that will have you patting yourself down to put them out, beautiful surface reflections and textures that give your enemies’ pustules a theoretically tactile quality. We say theoretically because WHAT IS THAT THING GET IT OFF GET IT OFF.
But it’s the soundtrack that makes RE3 more disturbing than finding a half-eaten Petits Filous in the footwell of a warm car. The musical score is perfect, all tinkling pianos, booming bass and ambient chords that would be just as home in an episode of Chernobyl.
There are a few standout moments. Take Brad dashing around the Racoon City Hospital as Jill languishes downstairs. There actually isn’t much of a musical soundtrack here – just dashes of scratchy violin and the soles of your boots slapping across the wipe-clean floor. It’s a less-is-more approach that will have you wishing you could curl up for a bit in a storage crate.
Or how about Brad exploring the abandoned police headquarters? Listen carefully: the sound of squealing pipes, creaking floorboards and dripping water all add up to an aural soundstage that’s as stressful as it is perfect. What was that? Were those footsteps? Am I about to be eviscerated by the undead? Yes.
The electrical substation
Turn the light on!
© Capcom
Creeping around the electrical substation – you’re getting the power back on to the subway, in case your PTSD-addled brain lost track of things – starts poorly, with a giant spider laying a set of eggs into your gullet and you heaving them back up like a student during Freshers’ week, and promptly gets worse, descending you into an underground lair wrapped in mutant viscera and populated by giant spiders (Drain Deimos, in the name of Attenborough-like accuracy) that come at you from all angles. Some of the zombie coating on the walls pulsates, so it’s never quite clear what will deal you damage, and the torchlight illumination only makes things worse – you’ll frequently waste ammunition shooting at flickering shadows.
It starts brilliantly, though – “Ugh, it smells like…,” says Jill. When a game can abuse your senses via a medium it can’t even deliver, you know you’re on the hook. Just like Jill.
How to survive: keep moving. You'll only get a mouth full of spider eggs if they pounce on you, so with dodge-rolls and a zig-zag movements, you will be able to keep your face spider-free. For a while.
The Nemesis Parasites
Resident Evil's scariest zombies yet
© Capcom
RE3 has some awesome baddies. The zombies are probably the freakiest – after all, up until yesterday they were just like you and me – but they lumber about and telegraph their presence with their clomping footsteps. That means it’s the Nemesis Parasite zombies that will hold a special place on our therapists’ sofa for years to come. Essentially the Headcrabs from Half-Life, these hectic half-spider, half – what, exactly? – shamble around the place like regular zombies, but unlike RE3’s standard residents, offer a ranged attack via a whiplash tentacle that can get you from across the room. Get too close and the parasite will transfer from its host head to yours via a death animation that can only be the product of a truly disturbed mind.
How to beat it: The orange part of the Nemesis Parasite is the weak spot. You'll have to shoot the zombie a few times to get the parasite to reveal its weak spot, and then put a few rounds into the orange blob to see it off.
The Sewer
The fear, disgust and panic of the sewer
© Capcom
To be honest – the jump scares in RE3 are rarely the game’s most terrifying bits. Sure, some of them land nicely – Nemesis leaping through a wall towards the end of the game then slowly dragging you towards your doom is a stand-out moment – but it’s the games’ ambience, lighting and sound that make it such a heart-thumping experience.
Still, the age-old approach of abruptly interrupting a cautious splosh through a damp tunnel with a hungry hell-beast works pretty well, and so your first encounter with the hungry, irritable and ever-so gross Hunter Gamma is a worthy addition to the list. The sewer is very much a frying pan/fire situation as, having escaped Nemesis, you’re trying to reach the surface. It’s a good example of something RE3 does brilliantly – smoothly ramping the pace of the action from frenetic chase sequences down to creepy explore-athons in dreadful environments. The first time you meet a Hunter Gamma – as it slithers from an outlet pipe and plops into a river of effluvia – RE3 conjures up its trademark tang of fear, disgust, panic and confusion as you try to sprint back the way you came. The Hunter Gamma is one of a handful of RE3 residents that can kill you with a single strike, so keep your distance and wait until it opens its mouth before discharging whatever your most powerful weapon is into it.
The pace
Enemies creep towards camera
© Capcom
Not a specific part of the game, more a design decision taken by a creative team more violent than a deranged dentist. If you could move around RE3 at the same speed as you do in, say, Doom Eternal, you could get through it pretty fast, and blitzing through the scary bits would be the best way of getting it over. But because sprinting barely moves you faster than walking – plus your inability to hurdle most obstacles or indeed jump at all – RE3 dictates the pace you play. Its preferred pace? Slow, deliberate – some would say masochistic – in a way that forces your fear-addled brain to truly wash itself in a bath of cortisol while you luxuriate in RE3’s perfectly lit, tight-cornered world of fear. The best thing to do is surrender to it, play at the game’s pace and remember that a world locked down by a terrifying virus is only a figment of your imagination.
The camera angles
Approaching from all angles
© Capcom
This is ridiculous. We’re off to play Animal Crossing.
