Resident Evil 3 Remake Nightmare No Damage/No Coins/No Infinite Weapons Playthrough

A playthrough of RE3 Remake in Nightmare difficulty. I am not taking any damage and I am not using any coins or infinite weapons. I do use a few other shop items, specifically: the Samurai Edge handgun and the Hot Dogger knife, the bonus pouches, the extra Lockpick and Bolt Cutters and the Crafting Companion.

In Nightmare, the game generously gives you the Magnum from the beginning, as well as one extra inventory pouch The Samurai Edge handgun is stronger and more stable, so I do prefer it over the default one. The Hot Dogger is of course stronger than the standard knife, but most of all it has this impressive burning effect. I use the bonus pouches so as to have more space, since I take the bonus Lockpick and Bolt Cutters from the item box at the station, so as to not have to backtrack to every locked place with zombies and the Nemesis breathing down my neck (grenades are unable to stun the Nemesis in this mode, so I prefer to run and dodge while it's chasing me). The Crafting Companion may not be that necessary, but it is helpful when it comes to crafting Magnum and Grenade ammo.

Nightmare difficulty is many scales higher than Hardcore, and features several instances that are quite intense. You are called to find new strategies to come around certain sequences, as things are quite different in this mode. The final boss fight is unforgettable once you are done with it; it is pure brutality and far more difficult than the rest of the game. This alone is not an issue per se, but it becomes a serious one when it does not allow you any kind of improvisation. I don't mind a tough challenge, as long as there is a logic behind it; and a boss battle doesn't have to be inhumanly difficult in order to be challenging. Just think of Saddler, the boss in Resident Evil 4, or Laura, one of the bosses in The Evil Within. You can fight Saddler using a great variety of weapons and means, even take advantage of the environment or simply use your humble knife. Laura is extremely strong, aggressive and lethal, but again you can face her in several ways; and during one specific battle, you can trick her, trap her and freeze her, and keep doing this while evading her attacks until you are able to run away from her without even killing her. This is what I call inventive gameplay. Inventive from the part of the designers, but which also allows the players to be inventive and creative themselves. The fact that you can face Saddler and Laura in many different ways doesn't make the respective fights any easier. It just gives you time to think and challenge you to plan out your own strategy. But when a battle requires from you to just press one button in just the right time so as to not end up mush on the floor and demands from you to do this constantly, like the final Nemesis sequence does with the required Perfect Dodge, does not make that battle more challenging, it makes it tedious and from a point and on, it prevents you from enjoying the grand finale.

My playthrough is split in five parts; the list below describes the sections that I cover in each one:

Part 1: Uptown (Jill's apartment), Downtown (Underground and Market), Power Substation

Part 2: Back to the Underground, Sewers, Demolition Site & Boss Fight, Downtown Revisited via Kendo's Shop

Part 3: RPD (Carlos), Clocktower Plaza & Boss Fight

Part 4: Hospital (Carlos and Jill)

Part 5: Underground Storage, Nest Labs & Boss fights from Hell

 

Tell Me Why Playthrough

Tell Me Why is the latest episodic game by Dontnod, the team that created the Life Is Strange games. This time, the story revolves around two siblings, Alyson and Tyler Ronan, who grew up separated from each other for ten years (from ages 11 to 21) after Tyler was accused of murdering his mother in self-defence. The catch in the story is the fact that Tyler is a transgender boy, something that, back then, seems to have been what caused their mother's supposed attack against him resulting in her murder. When the siblings are reunited and return to their home town in order to sell their family house, they make discoveries that shed new light to the events of the past, and moreover we learn that things did not exactly happen like Alyson and Tyler said.

If you expect something along the lines of the Life Is Strange games, you may find elements that relate to them, but you may also feel slightly disappointed. There is a metaphysical element, but in a very light version, and the story, albeit quite interesting, somehow doesn't take advantage of its dynamic. It is difficult to go into further details without spoiling the plot, but let's just say that a shocking revelation which takes place close to the end, could have been better explored throughout the game, in connection specifically with one of the protagonists. When the game is not so new anymore, I will maybe write a review in my main blog, explaining all this in detail.

Regardless, the game is visually beautiful, particularly touching and emotional, with certain sequences that are guaranteed to bring tears to your eyes and which you will not easily forget. Probably a tiny bit overpriced, but I wouldn't say it is not worth its money. If it was a bit longer and if the developers had made even better use of their character material, it would have been a great game. The thing is that because Dontnod created something as magnificent as Life Is Strange 2, they set the standards to heights that are now very difficult - if not impossible - to reach with their subsequent games.

Resident Evil 3 Remake - Hardcore - No Damage / No Shop Items Playthrough

A playthrough of Resident Evil 3 Remake in Hardcore difficulty. I am using the default inventory (no shop items) and I am not taking any damage.

There are a lot of things that I like about the remake of Resident Evil 3, and a few that I'd rather do without. I love its atmosphere and overall design, which give out this compelling claustrophobic feel, and the fact that it is action-based, although I admit that I was looking forward to a revamped version of the Clock Tower, the Park or the Cemetery and the Clock Tower puzzles. And I do not like certain aspects of its gameplay that could have been great additions if they were implemented in a more player-friendly way.

More specifically, the game has a set of mechanics which, although in reality are more elaborate than those of Resident Evil 2 Remake, in practice they don't offer you more flexibility. I am talking about the Dodge and Perfect Dodge moves, two evasion techniques that are supposed to save your life when you are in a desperate position, or when you are low on ammo. The simple Dodge is fine, as you can execute it any time you want - whereas it will really save you or not is almost exclusively up to you and the zombie that is about to grab you. The Perfect Dodge, however, is a painful story. You have to practice again and again on your timing to make it successful, but even if you feel you can master it, you may not always make it work. What's worse, this move is essential in the higher difficulties (Hardcore, Nightmare and, especially, Inferno), where the enemies are much stronger and Nemesis in its "human" form can't be stopped with one grenade when stalking you in the city streets (except for in Hardcore).

Nightmare and Inferno feel like a different game, and a very nasty one for that matter, as their setup is not like that of the other difficulty levels. Items and weapons are found elsewhere, more enemies crowd narrow passages, different monsters appear in certain places; most of the times, you are forced to come up with new strategies as those that you have practiced do not work anymore. Hardcore, however, is set around the classic demanding high difficulty of the Resident Evil games; a challenge that you can take after having practiced your gameplay strategy in the lower levels. In this Hardcore run, I didn't use any shop items or perks, and because of this I was extra cautious: I saved a lot, never rushed ahead, took care of the enemies carefully, shooting the weaker ones with the handgun then knifing them to make sure they were dead for good. I kept my grenades in store for Nemesis, and wasn't stingy with my flame rounds in the sewers, therefore getting rid of the Gamma hunters much faster. If there was a way to simply avoid an enemy, I went for that option, and practiced perfect-dodging quite a bit. 

The final boss fight still was a pain, but thanks to all the practice throughout the rest of the game, I made it through with some successful Perfect Dodges. Nemesis may be huge, it may look intimidating, it may cover half the room while being able to devastate the other half with its enormous arms, but it has one major weakness: it cannot move. This may seem trivial when you consider its size, but just think of David and Goliath. Jill is able to run around as much as she wants, evade all attacks, even trick the monster by heading towards one direction, then quickly turning to go the other way while the monster is already attacking an empty space. Of course all this applies to Hardcore mainly, because Nightmare and Inferno are a different story.