'Resident Evil 3' Demo Is Dropping Later This Week, Capcom Confirms

We might be stuck inside worried about a virus that's spreading across the world at an alarming rate, but at least we have video games to take our minds off of the bad news. And Capcom knows exactly what we need right now. The company has confirmed the release date for a demo of Resident Evil 3 - a game all about a virus that... spreads across a city at an alarming rate... oh. Oh dear.

Ah well, if you don't mind playing something that hits extremely close to home right now, the playable demo for the upcoming Resident Evil 3 remake is coming to PS4, Xbox One, and Steam this Friday, March 19th. Capcom has also announced that the single-player demo will be followed later this month by an open beta for Resident Evil Resistance. The asymmetrical multiplayer title will be included with Resident Evil 3 when the game launches on April 3rd.

It probably won't come as much of a surprise to most of you that Resident Evil 3 is getting a demo. Last year's excellent Resident Evil 2 remake offered a similar playable teaser a few weeks before full release.

If the new demo is anything like the previous one, I suspect it'll be a timed "one-shot" experience in which you get 30 minutes to play through a segment of the game. Once the 30 minutes is up, that's your lot. Unless you want to make a bunch of new accounts that is, which is absolutely what people did to play through the Resident Evil 2 demo as many times as possible.

Capcom first announced the demo back in February, but this is the first we're hearing of a release date. Given that most of us are currently stuck inside our homes waiting for the all-clear, I'm hoping Capcom does us all a solid and does away with the whole one-shot timer, instead letting us explore the Resident Evil 3 demo as many times as we want, at our own pace. I doubt it though.

We recently had the chance to go hands-on with Resident Evil 3 at an event, back when travelling to London wasn't considered an extreme sport. During our few hours with the game, we came away really impressed with its fast-paced action, terrifying Nemesis, and buckets of the gore. Nemesis, in particular, is brilliant - and by that I mean he's terrifying and awful and I hate him. But I still can't wait to face him again.