The classic on PC: The Resident Evil 3 (1999) experience on Steam
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4249120/Resident_Evil_3_Nemesis_1999/
I got the game on Steam for about R$30.00, and the proposal here is pure nostalgia: it is exactly the same title from back then. Do not expect graphical improvements or native 16:9 support. It is the good old Resident Evil we used to play on consoles, now available directly on PC.
On the technical side, the experience was flawless: booting and gameplay ran perfectly, without stuttering, bugs, or any compatibility issues. However, a warning for trophy hunters: if you value Steam achievements or expect new features, this port falls short, delivering only the base original game experience.
Figure 1 - When you start on Steam, a basic configuration appears.
Start of the game menu, music, etc.
What I liked most is that right at the start, those things we used to unlock back then, like outfits and weapons, are already unlocked by default. I no longer have the willingness to do everything from scratch to unlock them. I already started with a Rifle, Magnum, a good Shotgun, and infinite saves.
The game menu, when the music plays, is really cool. It reminds me of the same quality as CS 1.6: a striking and simple song with a theme that makes total sense. And when you click Start, a guy with a firm voice shouts "Resident Evil". This reminds me a lot of that era of games like Mortal Kombat, where companies used deep voices with memorable catchphrases.
But I think the great differential of the apocalyptic atmosphere is the absence of a soundtrack at times. What really shines are the murmurs of zombies, footsteps, doors opening, and the sound of wind. It's a cold and sad atmosphere of pure survival. (You could even joke that Avril Lavigne wrote "I'm With You" because of Raccoon City.)
Feeling the game mechanics
The first sensation I had was the terror of the mechanics. The game doesn't let you aim with the mouse or look around. When you walk to a certain point, the camera angle and background change suddenly. To make matters worse, right at the start there are zombies in front and behind you, so you need to adapt quickly to avoid dying. This causes fear of advancing into a scene that might have a zombie waiting, so I shoot between scenes to clear it without seeing what's there.
But soon I realized that X aimed and Space fired. I blasted the zombies and moved on.
Raccoon City
This city has a really cool design. Some games from that era had very distinctive designs, for example Age of Empires II had well-drawn characters and well-designed buildings like monuments, and Raccoon City has a very suspenseful atmosphere, with a story behind how they made those images in a studio.
Background music and feeling of safety and seriousness (game atmosphere).
There is a simple piano song when you are in the safe room. Simplicity lost in the immense dynamics of today's games. Imagine 1998 PC with 8MB video and 128MB hard drive, limitations brought that simplicity to create this feeling in the game, and it generated a sense of safety.
Then I meet Nemesis
Basically, there's a zombie that doesn't die, walks with a bazooka, runs faster than us, delivers blows that knock you down, and uses a tentacle to impale you. Even at 32 years old, I admit I get scared.
Figure 2 - Nemesis killing STARS officer.
Puzzles
The puzzles were the hardest part. In the year 2000, we needed to use a dictionary and ask family members to help read magazines and letters scattered throughout the game to try to decipher things. Many of them had no logic at all, don't make sense, and I believe they never did.
For example, the three clocks puzzle is simply illogical, makes no sense at all. I even found a YouTube tutorial where even the guy who figured it out can't explain how it works, nor can ChatGPT, which completely hallucinated the answer. Back then, I must have gotten through it by pure trial and error after being stuck on it for a month.
Figure 3 - Stupid puzzle
Some things made me realize how technology has changed
Computer with CRT monitor and typewriter (in 1998 not everyone had a computer), also there were no digital panels, everything was analog panels.
Figure 5 - Old computer
Figure 6 - Typewriter.
Figure 7 - Analog Technology
It's funny that games from that era looked good on CRT monitors and TVs, because the native resolution was 640x480, 800x600 etc. This was something I explored well in CS:GO as I used an 180hz CRT monitor at 800x600, because I liked that resolution and it looks horrible on a full HD monitor, but perfect on CRT monitors.
Figure 8 - Beautiful graphics on a CRT monitor that matches the game's native resolution.
The game had things ahead of its time
While playing, I noticed that you didn't need to organize the inventory like in many games I've played, for example Rust; they already created an automatic way to organize it.
At the end of the game, there is a mode called The Mercenaries where there is full gamification and you can explore new weapons and various combat aspects, and many games end when you finish them. Now imagine developing this in an era where ChatGPT didn't exist, AI didn't exist, not even Google existed, kudos to the Japanese developers at Capcom. Also, gaming chairs didn't exist, computers with multiple monitor support didn't exist, everything was more limited, and yet these people managed to create such cool and memorable things.
Figure 9 - The Mercenaries
Another thing was the images and texts that told stories narrated by various characters we don't see or who have already died, enhancing the experience of seeing a city in apocalypse gradually fading away.
There were curious things like unique implementations
I found it interesting because the maps in Resident Evil 3 Nemesis were like house floor plans; you actually orient yourself that way. Since there's no arrow indicating where to go, you need to look at the room, identify which room it is, and check the map. Unlike today's games where you have very elaborate maps with help mechanisms, probably these features were not yet widespread in the industry; there must have been many implementations until they reached what they wanted.
Figure 10 and 11 - Game floor plan and a house floor plan.
If WhatsApp existed back then, people would be sending videos of the zombies—there would be no point in blowing up all of Raccoon City.
In the lore, Raccoon City is blown up to cover up the incident, but nowadays, a single WhatsApp video would have exposed Umbrella's entire operation.
In my opinion, the last Resident Evil was 3, conclusion.
Even at 32 years old, I still felt the same thing I felt back then: a sense of terror, walking through the streets trying to solve puzzles in an apocalyptic atmosphere with few weapons and ammunition, trying to survive Nemesis whispering "STARS members..." Back then, it was even more horrifying trying to solve puzzles in English with a dictionary in hand, without Google or ChatGPT. How crazy to imagine I did that at 8 or 10 years old.
Figure 10 - My first computer I used to play (MS-DOS & Windows 95)
Today, playing the new Resident Evil games, I don't even come close to the feeling I had in Resident Evil 3. But I confess, in the game Outlast, I felt much more fear than in any Resident Evil! Especially because of the vulnerability feeling, which is much greater since you don't even have a weapon or the right to react.
In Resident Evil 1, 2, and 3, I felt a deep seriousness. You could see the apocalypse happening with enormous immersion and suspense. Just remembering the silence and the sound of doors opening gives me chills. But from Resident Evil 4 onwards, I felt the series moving much more towards action than suspense and horror, becoming much more dynamic (especially because the capacity of computers and consoles increased).
Then came Resident Evil 8. When I saw that story about vampires and werewolves in a game that became famous for zombies, suspense, and a pharmaceutical vibe of viruses and experiments, that was the last straw. That's where I imagined the future of Resident Evil would be something ridiculous like:
I wonder why old things were so good, like 80s music and even some games. I suspect it's because of the simplicity arising from the lack of technology.
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