"Stalker Horror" is a relatively simple sub-genre to explain: it's a horror game with significant elements of a "stalker" character hunting down the player. Amnesia: The Dark Descent (2010) revitalized the genre (and helped solidify the concept of Let's Plays on YouTube) and helped influence many future games, such as Alien: Isolation (2014), Outlast (2013), and (quite ironically) Amnesia: The Bunker (2023). But Amnesia: The Dark Descent is far from the original Stalker Horror game.

Resident Evil 2 (1998) was a financial hit for Capcom and solidified the Resident Evil franchise as a franchise. While this game dabbled in the Stalker Horror genre, the game focused more on interlaying two very different story modes into its brilliant A/B Story Set-up. Capcom once again managed to re-invent the wheel for its second game, and even managed to capture lightning in a bottle. But could they do it a third time in a row?

I'm not going to discuss the peculiar development history that is the game after Resident Evil 2. At one point it was supposed to be what became Resident Evil: Code Veronica, then that was made into a later game and Resident Evil 3 and Resident Evil: Survivor would be developed at roughly the same time, and there was a different version of Resident Evil 0 than the final release in 2002 alongside the remake of the inital game...

Needless to say many things were going on at the same time. What's important is that Nemesis was the next game to come out, and this game needed to either cement the triology as a triology or help it awkwardly fade away. Could Nemesis accomplish the task?

As you could probably guess by the title, Resident Evil 3: Nemesis would focus heavily on the titular Nemesis hunting down the remaining S.T.A.R.S. member after the events of Resident Evil (1999). But this game doesn't start by having this monster already attacking returning protagonist Jill Valentine. Instead, Jill ventures through the surprise zombie outbreak she just survived in the Spenser Mansion and has to navigate through with fellow S.T.A.R.S. office Brad towards the Police Station.

It's not until Jill finally makes it to the police station, a place familiar to her that was meant to symbolize safety and survival in Raccoon City, where this hulking mass of flesh jumps down from the heavens and kills her partner right in front of her eyes. And all he says is one word in a low, gravely voice: "S.T.A.R.S."

If you look up images of the Nemesis (specifically Nemsis T-Type), you'll actually find an image of Nemesis casually holding Jill's friend by the face. Looks painful to me.

This humanoid creature looks completely unlike any of the zombies or monsters Jill has faced so far, either in the Spenser Mansion or so far in Raccoon City. This thing can charge at her, grab her and throw her around, pull out some tentacle thing and whip it at her, and this creature will not stop until Jill and the rest of its targets have been eliminated. At this point, Jill has two points:

• Fight the Monster
• Escape the Monster

If you choose the first option, then congratulations: You have a boss fight. If you're playing as fast as I did replaying this game recently, it's only been about five minutes max since the game actually started. You might have a ton of handgun ammo, but you barely have any shotgun ammo, if any, and you certainly don't have many health items available to you. Good luck!

If you choose to escape or otherwise try to enter the police station without defeating the monster, then you... wow, you escaped. You can see the monster still trying to break into the police station, but you're safe for now. He'll be a problem when you leave the police station, right?

Then as you finish traversing the police station, regardless of whichever option you choose and regardless of if you beat the boss fight, he's back and ready for another boss fight. Either fight or flee.

The horror genre at the time was fairly simplistic, and Resident Evil itself as a franchise coined the phrase "Resident Evil clone," used similarly to referring to games as "Souls-like" or as "Metroidvanias": if the game resembled survival horror as Resident Evil established it, it was a Resident Evil clone (regardless of how similar the game actually resembled this particular franchise). While I'm not the biggest fan of the genre, it does give us a clean template to start from before expanding upon. Resident Evil clones generally consist of (at least to start):

• A Survival Horror genre game
• Some sort of monster or monster-esque enemy (zombies, vampires, plant monsters, whatever was in that Ring video game, etc.)
• Limited weapons, ammunition, and health items
• "Game Over"s sending you back to the main menu and forcing you to reload a save
• "Save Room"s that give players a location to save their game and potentially store items

For our purposes, we'll focus on that last point regarding save rooms. This name is a pun, a double entendre. While you can literally save your game in thee rooms, they also offer a location where the player can save themselves from danger. Throughout the first two Resident Evil games, we find a handful of these rooms where enemies are not allowed to spawn. It might be dangerous right outside these doors, but inside these doors is somewhere players can collect themselves and manage their materials before venturing out to survive again.

Save rooms reappear in Nemesis, thankfully, but with one special exception. While Jill is safe from normal enemies throughout the game, if she happens to duck into one of these rooms while Nemesis is hunting her down and stays in the room for too long...

If Nemesis came out closer to Amnesia: The Dark Descent, we'd very likely get webcam reactions to seeing that happen the first time.

Nemesis is already an enemy that continues to respawn and hunt Jill down, but now it's capable of taking away the player's only safe haven. Most areas in this game are also quite narrow, meaning actually avoiding the Nemesis is doable but very hard to accomplish without taking some damage from it in the process.

Nemesis appears roughly twelve times in a single playthrough, though some of those can be avoided entirely and only a few are outright mandatory. During first playthroughs, players will most likely avoid the Nemesis entirely and only face it for the three mandatory boss fights.

Sometimes players will also get lucky and accidentally knock out Nemesis during a Live Choice sequence. Twice during the game, players will be given a Live Choice sequence that will either help players avoid the fight entirely or instantly end the fight. If they end the fight, they will discover something peculiar: the Nemesis dropped an item, most likely the EAGLE Parts A. If the Nemesis was able to drop an item when they were defeated just now... does that mean Nemesis can normally drop items?

On subsequent playthroughs, when players are more prepared for Nemesis's shenanigans, they may find themselves more likely to face Nemesis and take on the additional fights. If they do complete these fights (with or without a mix of those Live Choice sequences), they will discover that Nemesis can be defeated and does drop special items, at least most of the time. While there's no obligation to face the beast, the game does reward players with tools that make survival during the Raccoon City outbreak significantly easier each time. In order,

(Keep in mind that not every fight drops one of these items; mandatory boss fights either drop nothing or drop a Key Item, and the rare fight where the player plays a character other than Jill don't count. Further, only one drop per fight; you cannot wait for Nemesis to wake up and refight it, even if it has full health.)

The game does create a massive creature that will continue to hunt you down no matter what you try. But if you understand how the game works and master its quirks, the game will reward you for your effort.

Even if you only want to fight Nemesis once optionally, one optional fight plus two Live Choice options if you're planning your route ahead of time will give you a faster handgun that will help clear waves when you want to preserve more powerful ammo and combineable First Aid Sprays will greatly increase your likelihood of survival.

In 2020, Capcom released a remake of this game titled Resident Evil 3. If you didn't already notice, the remake drops the subtitle "Nemesis" from the game. Ironically, the game takes a similar stance regarding Nemesis and significantly decreases its role in the story despite its presence in the original.

Many people hate on the remake, and I have no intention of beating a dead horse. But I do want to specifically talk about Nemesis's demotion in this game.

At the beginning of this post, I shared a few examples of more recent stalker horrors as of writing: 2013, 2014, and 2023. Ignoring that last one that came out after the remake came out, and any announcements of sequels that have been made since these games came out but have not come out yet (Alien Isolation 2), not many stalker horror games came out around this time.

Resident Evil 4 and 5 came out in 2005 and 2009, respectively, right before Amnesia: The Dark Descent came out. While Amnesia started to revitalize this specific sub-genre, Resident Evil had taken a new direction with its interpretation of horror into action horror in particular. Resident Evil 7 (2017) would later come out and experiment with unstoppable horrors stalking you randomly throughout the game, but the remakes of Resident Evil 2 and 3 moved even further in the direction of action horror and removed what made those original games unique (the A/B Story System and the Stalker System, respectively). Resident Evil Village would come out in 2020 and stray even further into action horror above all. It wouldn't be until 2026 when Resident Evil Requiem would attempt to experiment with a single major stalker enemy making the player sneak around trying to survive, and Requiem was designed to be a mix of two games juxtaposed with each other and the stalker elements of this game barely lasted.

Times change and public opinions sway along with it. While people praise games like Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, there's no way to know if that same type of game would have thrived today. This type of game is rarely attempted today because action horror games tend to do better overall compared to these games.

And that's okay. Even if games evolve and change over time, there's nothing stopping these older games that did something right from existing.

If times change again, maybe this type of horror will become popular again. We'll be getting Alien Isolation 2 soon (hopefully), the sequel to the game I'd call the best stalker horror game. Who knows what the future holds?

The only thing we can do now is reflect on what we already have, how it works, and what makes it work. And the original Resident Evil 3: Nemesis may have been the best stalker horror game that the era could have crafted.

This game currently can be purchased either physically from third party sellers, or online at GOG/Steam. Both sites also sell this title in a bundle with the other two original Resident Evil games, Resident Evil (1996) & Resident Evil 2 (1998). Neither of these links are affiliate links, I make no money off of purchasing the game from either store.

I did not reference EvilResource for this playthrough – I remembered the gameplay and routing of Resident Evil 3 a lot better than I did the original game – but it would still be a great source for anyone trying to plan their own routing. They also have a list of the live action choices to choose from.