Resident Evil 3: Nemesis

Understandably backlogress has slowed since our fantastic final day of June, what with the long beautiful weekend that was meant to be spent outside- I spent my 4th of July at Lake Winnipesaukee with friends and because of this I read no books and played no games. But today I finished off the fifth of seven total Resident Evil games- Resident Evil 3: Nemesis. You might remember that last two REs I reviewed- Resident Evil, which was alright, and Resident Evil 2, which I loved. The hilariously bad voice-acting and static cameras return for this one, as well as the poor controls- protagonist Jill Valentine controls more like a truck than a person. But I'll be honest, at this point I'm used to it and it's really not bothering me. The first half of Resident Evil 3 takes place just one day before RE2, and the second half takes place just days after, and this made for some interesting plot points- some of the unexplained events in 2 are really just the consequences of Jill's actions in 3. There are minor changes in gameplay here- the ability to easily change your vertical aim is the most welcome, as this was a pain in previous installments. Resident Evil 3 also introduced a nice new threat, the aforementioned Nemesis- a superpowered invincible monster who can show up at random and kick your ass. Seriously, it was necessary to kill this guy on like 5 separate occasions and each time was more difficult than any boss encounter from RE1 or 2. Overall though the changes really didn't do enough to make Resident Evil 3 stand out from the pack at all- it was fun, but will likely be quickly forgotten. Hopefully my last two games in the franchise, prequel Resident Evil Zero and spin-off Code: Veronica introduce something fresh into the franchise.