When I started down the road of playing the nascent entries in the Resident Evil series last year, I wasn’t sure what I was going to make of the oft-maligned ‘tank controls’ or how easy of a time I’d have adjusting given their presence in gaming has largely been forgotten in the 21st century, even by the aforementioned franchise. To my surprise, I found the original Resident Evil (and later, the 1998 sequel) gave a compelling argument for how this kind of input benefits a tense, brooding atmosphere by limiting the ease at which the player can move through the environment and respond to immediate threats. I think both games largely hold up very well and I was all too eager to jump into the third entry, Nemesis, after becoming well acquainted with the titular character through his appearance in the asymmetrical horror game Dead by Daylight.

Unfortunately, I think Resident Evil 3: Nemesis begins to show where the breaking points are for ‘tank controls’ and that is in its move towards an increasingly action-driven pacing that is cause for frustration more often than the desired nerves of a survival horror experience. Prior games in the series would lean on a scarcity of resources as just one of the ways to put pressure on the player, forcing you to make decisions based on how much health/ammo supplies you can afford to expend. RE3, however, showers you with numerous resources right out of the gate (even on the higher difficulty option) and balances this out by also increasing the number of enemies tenfold. What this results in is a far greater sum of encounters where the player is forced to violently fight their way past foes, simultaneously desensitising you to the horror and further exposing the weaknesses of the control scheme. Though some additions have been made to the movement options at your disposal (namely a new dodge mechanic) these ultimately only complicate matters by increasing the room for error during combat. I can’t count the number of instances where I accidentally had Jill perform a dodge roll into an area where my camera/aim was completely obscured.

This is also where the main attraction of the game, that being the constant looming threat of the Nemesis, collides with systems that can’t support the dynamic style of play it should result in. While I did think the inclusion of a boss monster that would pursue Jill area-to-area was genuinely novel, too often the choice of whether to engage Nemesis was decided on the basis of how much of an annoyance the fight would be. Instead, Nemesis becomes somewhat of a non-entity until specific sequences where you are forced to fight him. Despite appearing in most every game in the franchise I don’t think the boss fights are ever Resident Evil’s strong suit, and here they are especially troublesome given the aforementioned conflicts with the control scheme. Having said that, the handful of moments where the narrative will diverge due to a choice coinciding with the appearance of Nemesis were a welcome surprise that meant my own playthrough differed in some interesting ways to that of my partner’s. It was another instance of a novel concept that demonstrated an interest on Capcom’s part to experiment with what Resident Evil could be.

If nothing else, I think the experience proved to be an interesting time capsule harkening back to a period in the series’ history where the identity of Resident Evil was going through a metamorphosis. Though I can’t bring myself to loathe the game in spite of how frustrating I found it at times, I have to say I am relieved that this will be the last entry I’m playing on the PS1 given the aspirations the series had for a greater action/shooter bent on the survival horror genre moving forward. In that sense I am quite curious to see Capcom push this angle to its own breaking point before retreating back to something resembling classic Resident Evil during these past few years.