If you're a Resi fan and don't enjoy this game, I'm sorry to say, you have been filtered.
Arguably the most difficult, and definitely the longest of the classic entries, with enemies and obstacles that pose an actual challenge (the zombies rule in this game), Code Veronica is the perfect culmination of the series formulae.
Whereas 2 and 3 slowly began to shift more towards action, Code Veronica shuns this notion and returns the series to its true survival horror roots, with its maze-like level design, head scratching puzzles, gothic European architecture and a shit load of backtracking. Sure, it doesn't have the gorgeous pre-rendered backgrounds from the previous titles, but it more than makes up for this with its stylised early Y2K era graphics (which I'm a huge sucker for) and creative use of its new dynamic, moving camera system, allowing the devs to frame the environments using more interesting and creative angles to help fuel and drive the tension.
It also features the best cast of characters yet seen in a Resi title, with the mad Nazi crossdresser Alfred, the return of Wesker and (the adorable) Steve Burnside.
I don't fuck with people who don't like Steve btw.
Arguably the most difficult, and definitely the longest of the classic entries, with enemies and obstacles that pose an actual challenge (the zombies rule in this game), Code Veronica is the perfect culmination of the series formulae.
Whereas 2 and 3 slowly began to shift more towards action, Code Veronica shuns this notion and returns the series to its true survival horror roots, with its maze-like level design, head scratching puzzles, gothic European architecture and a shit load of backtracking. Sure, it doesn't have the gorgeous pre-rendered backgrounds from the previous titles, but it more than makes up for this with its stylised early Y2K era graphics (which I'm a huge sucker for) and creative use of its new dynamic, moving camera system, allowing the devs to frame the environments using more interesting and creative angles to help fuel and drive the tension.
It also features the best cast of characters yet seen in a Resi title, with the mad Nazi crossdresser Alfred, the return of Wesker and (the adorable) Steve Burnside.
I don't fuck with people who don't like Steve btw.
The 2002 remake of Resident Evil was my introduction to the series and the survival horror genre. Incredible game, one of those special titles that the moment you finish it you know you want more, so you start looking into other games in the series just to keep the high going. I didn't have a Playstation or PS2 at the time, and Resident Evil 2 and *3 wouldn't get ported to the Gamecube for a couple years, so my options were pretty limited. I did, however, have a Dreamcast...
This game has taken me almost 20 years to beat.
My first experience with Code Veronica wasn't a great one. While I had REmake under my belt, I was still not used to all the series idiosyncrasies yet. Comparatively, it is a much harder game, one where you can more easily back yourself into a corner with poor resource management. I botched two runs before putting the disc away. I had lost the high.
Years later, I gave the game another shot using the NullDC emulator. I was more experienced with the series and pretty confident I could actually beat it this time, and as I was mopping the floor with the final boss of disc 1, I found that for the first time I was actually having fun with Code Veronica. Of course, anyone who has tried to play this game on NullDC already knows how this story ends: a fun little bug prevents you from loading the second disc. With several hours of progress effectively meaning nothing, I stepped away from the game for a second time.
A few years ago I decided to make one final attempt at playing this game, this bastard, this white whale. And this time it was going to be different. This time I was using Dolphin and emulating the Gamecube version, god damnit. I ran through disc 1 no problem. Disc 2 was all uncharted territory, but I pushed ahead, inching closer and closer to that final battle against Wesker that had been teased well over a decade ago. And then, finally, I did it. The credits rolled and I was able to check Code Veronica off my list.
Aaaand... it's s'alright.
As far as "classic Resident Evil" goes, it's probably the weakest. Code Veronica is very by-the-numbers, both capable of satisfying that survival horror itch in a pinch but being so uninspired that I'm a lot less likely to revisit it compared to 2 or Nemesis. The story is a culmination of several plot threads woven through previous games, but it just feels tired. Claire spends much of her story babysitting manbaby and perennial whiner Steve Burnside and trying to escape Alfred Ashford's zombie infested island. These are easily two of the worst characters this series has ever produced. Alfred is a whole can of worms I don't want to get into, and while I have a certain affection for bad voice acting in video games, William Houston's portrayal of Steve is downright rancid. Things at least pick up in the second disc once Chris and Wesker arrive, but by that point a little fanservice is like finding an oasis in the desert.
Code Veronica is at its best when you're just focusing on solving its many puzzles and shooting zombies, and even then it's nowhere near as tight of an experience as REmake, which didn't come out that long after. Progression sometimes feels sloppy, even a little archaic, but it's fine for what it is. It's just MORE Resident Evil*, and I enjoy that, but it's also the series equivalent of running the last mile of a marathon, exhausted and desperate to be done.
Was this game worth spending almost 20 years trying to beat? No, probably not.
I have no follow up to that statement.
This game has taken me almost 20 years to beat.
My first experience with Code Veronica wasn't a great one. While I had REmake under my belt, I was still not used to all the series idiosyncrasies yet. Comparatively, it is a much harder game, one where you can more easily back yourself into a corner with poor resource management. I botched two runs before putting the disc away. I had lost the high.
Years later, I gave the game another shot using the NullDC emulator. I was more experienced with the series and pretty confident I could actually beat it this time, and as I was mopping the floor with the final boss of disc 1, I found that for the first time I was actually having fun with Code Veronica. Of course, anyone who has tried to play this game on NullDC already knows how this story ends: a fun little bug prevents you from loading the second disc. With several hours of progress effectively meaning nothing, I stepped away from the game for a second time.
A few years ago I decided to make one final attempt at playing this game, this bastard, this white whale. And this time it was going to be different. This time I was using Dolphin and emulating the Gamecube version, god damnit. I ran through disc 1 no problem. Disc 2 was all uncharted territory, but I pushed ahead, inching closer and closer to that final battle against Wesker that had been teased well over a decade ago. And then, finally, I did it. The credits rolled and I was able to check Code Veronica off my list.
Aaaand... it's s'alright.
As far as "classic Resident Evil" goes, it's probably the weakest. Code Veronica is very by-the-numbers, both capable of satisfying that survival horror itch in a pinch but being so uninspired that I'm a lot less likely to revisit it compared to 2 or Nemesis. The story is a culmination of several plot threads woven through previous games, but it just feels tired. Claire spends much of her story babysitting manbaby and perennial whiner Steve Burnside and trying to escape Alfred Ashford's zombie infested island. These are easily two of the worst characters this series has ever produced. Alfred is a whole can of worms I don't want to get into, and while I have a certain affection for bad voice acting in video games, William Houston's portrayal of Steve is downright rancid. Things at least pick up in the second disc once Chris and Wesker arrive, but by that point a little fanservice is like finding an oasis in the desert.
Code Veronica is at its best when you're just focusing on solving its many puzzles and shooting zombies, and even then it's nowhere near as tight of an experience as REmake, which didn't come out that long after. Progression sometimes feels sloppy, even a little archaic, but it's fine for what it is. It's just MORE Resident Evil*, and I enjoy that, but it's also the series equivalent of running the last mile of a marathon, exhausted and desperate to be done.
Was this game worth spending almost 20 years trying to beat? No, probably not.
I have no follow up to that statement.
The story aspect is really good, but other than that I did not enjoy this game. Very tedious gameplay, forgettable locations, poorly designed bosses. This game is difficult but for the wrong reasons. Enemies take too long to die, lots of backtracking, limited item space. You can argue that’s the point, and that’s fair. But it’s just not fun. I find this game to be a chore to play through, and yet I’d still say play this game for the story if you’re interested in Resident Evil lore. There are cool moments! If you can get past the mundane experience of the gameplay.
Was nice that there was a classic resi that I had just never played. Kind of bittersweet that I’ll never play a new resi that has those BLOOP pause menu sound effects again.
Esse game NECESSITA de um remake!!!
You can’t always knock it out of the park. Sometimes you just need to get it done and move on. Maybe you can’t even be bothered to really care about it. It can mean different things to different people, but to the Resident Evil team, it is Resident Evil: Code Veronica. That might be a bit generous. Had Code Veronica merely set out to provide a by-the-numbers entry, it might have made a better impression. Instead, in Code Veronica’s attempt to simply check all the boxes, the pencil it used kept punching holes in the paper.
The tired tropes and clunky gameplay of the bygone era of Resident Evil are all present, but the game falls down several more flights to ensure an unpleasant experience. In a game about zombies, giant worms, and super-powered people, Code Veronica still manages to break my suspension of disbelief. It rips nuance from its characters, as it places them in a story scenario that had no reason to exist. But even if these were the worst sins committed by Code Veronica, it would still be digestible. Code Veronica manages to mix boring, annoying, and offensive to create something that, simply put, is dumb and insulting. It was destined to be the nail in the franchise coffin. The game everyone would point to when asked where it all went wrong. Thank God for Resident Evil 4.
You can’t talk Code Veronica without addressing the loud and obnoxious elephant in the room, Steve. You just want to punch him. Dressed like a failed J-pop star, career teenager Steve meanders around the zombie-infested island, unconcerned about his own survival. He seems thrilled by the whole thing in fact. Never mind his parents are dead, Steve gets a cool gun. Our second hero’s priorities are a little disheveled. Steve’s whole schtick is that he doesn’t trust people. Something he whines with all the depth and sensitivity of an over-privileged high schooler. But Steve will contradict himself every chance he gets. After demonstrating his love of guns, akimbo style, Steve asserts to Claire “See, you can depend on me.” Steve then immediately complains, “You see, this thing (his gun) is much more reliable than any person.” Those two lines are in the same conversation by the way – sequentially. Then the game dares to turn on the somber music to signify that this attitude has some deeper meaning. Oh, poor tormented soul. Are you really tying to make us care for him, game? Really, Steve’s only purpose is to thirst after Claire but as creepy as possible. The game will dismiss his actions or treat them as some blooming love. But when Steve goes to kiss Claire while she sleeps, you realize the writers have no idea what a healthy relationship is supposed to look like. Claire and Steve separate often, as is required by the horror genre, but he will occasionally and accidently stumble into the scene to save Claire from some impending doom. In one of the game’s more unintentionally humorous scenes, Claire stares down the barrel of the villain’s rifle when Steve bursts through a door like the Kool-Aid man crashing a frat party, “what’s going on?” We haven’t seen Steve in a good hour before this. Did I mention he can fly a cargo plane? This is where the game really begins to test my disbelief. The best I can say of the guy is that he makes for one of the more unique boss fights later, but that is about it. Steve exemplifies everything that was wrong with Resident Evil’s design philosophy at the time - completely lacking in self-awareness while believing they were the coolest guy in the room.
Let’s talk about other ways the game insults us. Code Veronica has this habit of ramping up then blasting the shock and awe music for the most mundane of encounters. Right from the get-go, Code Veronica throws shambling zombies at you. They are standard at this point, and hardly worth getting worked up over. Suddenly, the music changes, gradually increasing the tension. It tells you something is coming - something big, bad, and horrifying then you turn the corner and – oh it’s another zombie. Just one zombie sometimes. Scary. It has all the impact of letting the air out of a balloon. Code Veronica does this more than a few times and in a few different ways, including with its door transitions. These are meant to hide loading screens, but occasionally the game flavors standard door opening with heart beats and hesitation. Slowly the knob turns. The heart beats intensify. Surely, a horrible sight awaits you beyond the door and - oh, it’s nothing. Literally just another room. The game insists that you be scared because it does not know how to produce the feeling naturally. Please clap. Beyond frights, Code Veronica further demands you believe the absurd.
One of the appeals of Claire was that she was normal. Sure, she is Chris’ brother, but survival horror depends on the fallibility of the would-be survivor. In the opening cutscene of Code Veronica, Claire has infiltrated a heavily guarded Umbrella corporate tower with all the subtly of a nuke. She dodges guards, weaves around the Vulcan cannon of an attack helicopter, then blows up an explosive barrel taking out 10 or so guards James Bond style. Somehow, after all this, she is captured by some random guy. Oh well, maybe Claire’s newfound abilities will prove useful on the island. Nope. All of Claire’s super spy training vanishes when you take control of her. Now, one zombie, barely aware of her presence, becomes a huge problem. Considering all that happened 10 minutes prior, I don’t believe any of this. Claire will then spend the back half of the game, sidelined by her brother. After everything she did, Claire doesn’t even get to fight the final boss or make any meaningful impact after the man arrives. RE2 remake was such a vast improvement to the character that its hard not look back and laugh.
A similar problem applies to our mustache twirling villain, Wesker, who makes his superhuman debut in this game. Wesker, high on bioweapon super juice can now run at super speeds, punch with the force of a steam engine, and jump tall buildings in a single bound, yet somehow normies Chris and Claire are problems for him. Well, they were supposed to be normies. The power creep is real and completely invalidates any horror the game is trying to impress upon you. Umbrella insider and S.T.A.R.S betrayer normal guy Albert Wesker was far more compelling than whatever this is. He helped establish that the real villains of the Resident Evil games weren’t the monsters, but greedy people. None of that matters now. Honestly, Wesker’s part was best concluded in RE1. He did not need to become a reoccurring villain, and Code Veronica were his first steps in the wrong direction.
Where the game really shows its age is in its handling of Alfred Ashford. This first act, male villain adopts the identity of his twin sister in dress and speech while wearing a wig. Code Veronica handles this as well as you might expect. Alfred embodies the depraved transsexual trope, supporting the social stigma of male femininity because only villains do that. The game chooses transvestism to illustrate Alfred’s mental illness. Never mind the fact that he murdered countless people, it’s the dress that’s the problem. And of the countless things Claire could insult Alfred with, she calls him “You cross-dressing freak.” I get that Code Veronica came out in the early 2000s and mindset wasn’t exactly uncommon at the time, but a franchise as popular as Resident Evil should be ahead of the curve instead making low blows.
To cap it all off, the game ends where it begins. Chris declares that it is time to take down Umbrella, just like he did in RE1. Like every protagonist has done just before the credits roll. At least other games built on the story. In RE2, we were introduced to new characters and how they became involved in the grander scheme. In RE3, we learn the fate of Racoon City, which would lead into the events of RE4. Here, Claire and Chris make a wrong turn at Albuquerque. Nothing of significance happens. Nothing new is learned. No character growth occurs. It is filler in every sense of the word. If you must experience it, watch a Youtube long play. It makes for good schlock without having to suffer through the game yourself.
The tired tropes and clunky gameplay of the bygone era of Resident Evil are all present, but the game falls down several more flights to ensure an unpleasant experience. In a game about zombies, giant worms, and super-powered people, Code Veronica still manages to break my suspension of disbelief. It rips nuance from its characters, as it places them in a story scenario that had no reason to exist. But even if these were the worst sins committed by Code Veronica, it would still be digestible. Code Veronica manages to mix boring, annoying, and offensive to create something that, simply put, is dumb and insulting. It was destined to be the nail in the franchise coffin. The game everyone would point to when asked where it all went wrong. Thank God for Resident Evil 4.
You can’t talk Code Veronica without addressing the loud and obnoxious elephant in the room, Steve. You just want to punch him. Dressed like a failed J-pop star, career teenager Steve meanders around the zombie-infested island, unconcerned about his own survival. He seems thrilled by the whole thing in fact. Never mind his parents are dead, Steve gets a cool gun. Our second hero’s priorities are a little disheveled. Steve’s whole schtick is that he doesn’t trust people. Something he whines with all the depth and sensitivity of an over-privileged high schooler. But Steve will contradict himself every chance he gets. After demonstrating his love of guns, akimbo style, Steve asserts to Claire “See, you can depend on me.” Steve then immediately complains, “You see, this thing (his gun) is much more reliable than any person.” Those two lines are in the same conversation by the way – sequentially. Then the game dares to turn on the somber music to signify that this attitude has some deeper meaning. Oh, poor tormented soul. Are you really tying to make us care for him, game? Really, Steve’s only purpose is to thirst after Claire but as creepy as possible. The game will dismiss his actions or treat them as some blooming love. But when Steve goes to kiss Claire while she sleeps, you realize the writers have no idea what a healthy relationship is supposed to look like. Claire and Steve separate often, as is required by the horror genre, but he will occasionally and accidently stumble into the scene to save Claire from some impending doom. In one of the game’s more unintentionally humorous scenes, Claire stares down the barrel of the villain’s rifle when Steve bursts through a door like the Kool-Aid man crashing a frat party, “what’s going on?” We haven’t seen Steve in a good hour before this. Did I mention he can fly a cargo plane? This is where the game really begins to test my disbelief. The best I can say of the guy is that he makes for one of the more unique boss fights later, but that is about it. Steve exemplifies everything that was wrong with Resident Evil’s design philosophy at the time - completely lacking in self-awareness while believing they were the coolest guy in the room.
Let’s talk about other ways the game insults us. Code Veronica has this habit of ramping up then blasting the shock and awe music for the most mundane of encounters. Right from the get-go, Code Veronica throws shambling zombies at you. They are standard at this point, and hardly worth getting worked up over. Suddenly, the music changes, gradually increasing the tension. It tells you something is coming - something big, bad, and horrifying then you turn the corner and – oh it’s another zombie. Just one zombie sometimes. Scary. It has all the impact of letting the air out of a balloon. Code Veronica does this more than a few times and in a few different ways, including with its door transitions. These are meant to hide loading screens, but occasionally the game flavors standard door opening with heart beats and hesitation. Slowly the knob turns. The heart beats intensify. Surely, a horrible sight awaits you beyond the door and - oh, it’s nothing. Literally just another room. The game insists that you be scared because it does not know how to produce the feeling naturally. Please clap. Beyond frights, Code Veronica further demands you believe the absurd.
One of the appeals of Claire was that she was normal. Sure, she is Chris’ brother, but survival horror depends on the fallibility of the would-be survivor. In the opening cutscene of Code Veronica, Claire has infiltrated a heavily guarded Umbrella corporate tower with all the subtly of a nuke. She dodges guards, weaves around the Vulcan cannon of an attack helicopter, then blows up an explosive barrel taking out 10 or so guards James Bond style. Somehow, after all this, she is captured by some random guy. Oh well, maybe Claire’s newfound abilities will prove useful on the island. Nope. All of Claire’s super spy training vanishes when you take control of her. Now, one zombie, barely aware of her presence, becomes a huge problem. Considering all that happened 10 minutes prior, I don’t believe any of this. Claire will then spend the back half of the game, sidelined by her brother. After everything she did, Claire doesn’t even get to fight the final boss or make any meaningful impact after the man arrives. RE2 remake was such a vast improvement to the character that its hard not look back and laugh.
A similar problem applies to our mustache twirling villain, Wesker, who makes his superhuman debut in this game. Wesker, high on bioweapon super juice can now run at super speeds, punch with the force of a steam engine, and jump tall buildings in a single bound, yet somehow normies Chris and Claire are problems for him. Well, they were supposed to be normies. The power creep is real and completely invalidates any horror the game is trying to impress upon you. Umbrella insider and S.T.A.R.S betrayer normal guy Albert Wesker was far more compelling than whatever this is. He helped establish that the real villains of the Resident Evil games weren’t the monsters, but greedy people. None of that matters now. Honestly, Wesker’s part was best concluded in RE1. He did not need to become a reoccurring villain, and Code Veronica were his first steps in the wrong direction.
Where the game really shows its age is in its handling of Alfred Ashford. This first act, male villain adopts the identity of his twin sister in dress and speech while wearing a wig. Code Veronica handles this as well as you might expect. Alfred embodies the depraved transsexual trope, supporting the social stigma of male femininity because only villains do that. The game chooses transvestism to illustrate Alfred’s mental illness. Never mind the fact that he murdered countless people, it’s the dress that’s the problem. And of the countless things Claire could insult Alfred with, she calls him “You cross-dressing freak.” I get that Code Veronica came out in the early 2000s and mindset wasn’t exactly uncommon at the time, but a franchise as popular as Resident Evil should be ahead of the curve instead making low blows.
To cap it all off, the game ends where it begins. Chris declares that it is time to take down Umbrella, just like he did in RE1. Like every protagonist has done just before the credits roll. At least other games built on the story. In RE2, we were introduced to new characters and how they became involved in the grander scheme. In RE3, we learn the fate of Racoon City, which would lead into the events of RE4. Here, Claire and Chris make a wrong turn at Albuquerque. Nothing of significance happens. Nothing new is learned. No character growth occurs. It is filler in every sense of the word. If you must experience it, watch a Youtube long play. It makes for good schlock without having to suffer through the game yourself.
I have no clue how many times I've been through this game, but I absolutely adore it. It's not the best Resident Evil title, but it's up there.
I'll always be biased towards the old-RE style. The fixed camera angles (actually more dynamic here), the tank controls, the slow and methodical puzzle-solving, and ammo conservation are all highlights for me, but I honestly understand why others don't like it.
I love the recurring franchise heroes, Claire and Chris, and the absolutely bizarre, outlandish, and hilarious villains, Alfred and Alexia.
The prison area is way more memorable than Antarctica or the research facility, but it never really stops being fun. The music is fantastic, forget about it. One of the best save room themes, the haunting musicbox melody, the shrieking strings when a bandersnatch (lol 😆) shows up.
If you don't know how to handle them, a couple of the bossfights can be ridiculously frustrating. Especially the Tyrant. For newcomers, that's gonna be a big wall.
If you're a fan of old school Resident Evil and somehow missed this one, jump on it nowwww. If you're looking for an experience more like 4 or Village, you're gonna be disappointed.
Capcom, remake this. Please?
I'll always be biased towards the old-RE style. The fixed camera angles (actually more dynamic here), the tank controls, the slow and methodical puzzle-solving, and ammo conservation are all highlights for me, but I honestly understand why others don't like it.
I love the recurring franchise heroes, Claire and Chris, and the absolutely bizarre, outlandish, and hilarious villains, Alfred and Alexia.
The prison area is way more memorable than Antarctica or the research facility, but it never really stops being fun. The music is fantastic, forget about it. One of the best save room themes, the haunting musicbox melody, the shrieking strings when a bandersnatch (lol 😆) shows up.
If you don't know how to handle them, a couple of the bossfights can be ridiculously frustrating. Especially the Tyrant. For newcomers, that's gonna be a big wall.
If you're a fan of old school Resident Evil and somehow missed this one, jump on it nowwww. If you're looking for an experience more like 4 or Village, you're gonna be disappointed.
Capcom, remake this. Please?
RE:CV is an interesting main line title that started as a Dreamcast exclusive and trickled its way to other systems eventually.
It introduced a couple innovations for the true and tried RE formula in the form of 3D characters and backgrounds, as well as dynamic camera angles with limited movement for certain areas/rooms of the game. The game villain(s) were certainly interesting and fit the wackiness of the RE series to a certain extent. Setting was interesting and it was fun to have the Redfield siblings as integral part of the story and setting.
One thing to note is that I felt this was more challenging than other RE classic games and will truly test the ability of the player to ration ammo and health items throughout the game (especially early to mid-game). All in all, RE:CV is a solid classic RE games but doesn't offer any major standout moments or gameplay features found in other games.
It introduced a couple innovations for the true and tried RE formula in the form of 3D characters and backgrounds, as well as dynamic camera angles with limited movement for certain areas/rooms of the game. The game villain(s) were certainly interesting and fit the wackiness of the RE series to a certain extent. Setting was interesting and it was fun to have the Redfield siblings as integral part of the story and setting.
One thing to note is that I felt this was more challenging than other RE classic games and will truly test the ability of the player to ration ammo and health items throughout the game (especially early to mid-game). All in all, RE:CV is a solid classic RE games but doesn't offer any major standout moments or gameplay features found in other games.
I’m always on the lookout for new survival horror games to play, but I put off Code Veronica for a long time. It was the most divisive entry in the franchise until Resident Evil 6, and to this day, it’s the black sheep of the mainline entries. When I finally started it up, I was a little confused by all this negativity. It’s still pretty moody, there are some fun puzzles, and the upgraded tech smoothed out the movement and camera control. All the boxes for a next-gen Resident Evil experience were ticked, so I was gearing up to be one Code Veronica’s ardent defenders, but the cracks slowly started to appear. The story begins well enough, but the characters you meet start getting a little… eccentric. One of the main villains, Alfred Ashford, might have the worst voice acting in the series, which is a legendarily high bar. Your companion character Steve doesn’t fare much better, and he has the disadvantage of being a depressed teenager. Even if a character like that is executed properly, he’s going to annoy a lot of people. The enemies you encounter later in the game are notoriously obnoxious, attacking you from above where you can’t shoot, or from long distances you can’t avoid. Just for the cherry on top, the campaign switches characters halfway through, and any weapons and items you’re carrying at the moment of the switch will be unavailable for the entire second half of the game. There’s a couple shorter character switches near the end too, so this happens multiple times. You’re never warned beforehand, and the limited save system means you’ll probably have to repeat a good amount of content or a difficult boss if you want to fix your file.
If you really think about those issues though, they really aren’t game breaking on a moment to moment basis. It’s not like the balance is broken, it’s not buggy, and if you know when the characters switch, there's no problem. That's why Code Veronica is divisive rather than reviled, if you know what you're doing, you can still have a good time with it. Resident Evil games are known for their replayability and speedrunning potential, so from that angle, I totally understand the people who defend it. However, if you’re playing this for the first time and not using a guide, it feels silly and a little unfair in a lot of ways. You could do worse with a survival horror game, but you could also do a lot better.
If you really think about those issues though, they really aren’t game breaking on a moment to moment basis. It’s not like the balance is broken, it’s not buggy, and if you know when the characters switch, there's no problem. That's why Code Veronica is divisive rather than reviled, if you know what you're doing, you can still have a good time with it. Resident Evil games are known for their replayability and speedrunning potential, so from that angle, I totally understand the people who defend it. However, if you’re playing this for the first time and not using a guide, it feels silly and a little unfair in a lot of ways. You could do worse with a survival horror game, but you could also do a lot better.
A classic survival horror to the core that I could finally experience thanks to the PS4 version. It's definitely one of the better entries in the series with great story and characters, and yeah, it's hard as hell (especially if you want to get an A rank), so be prepared. Also, be warned that it might take some time to get used to the controls.
As a kid I enjoyed this game but upon recent playthoughs I have issues.
Let’s start with the level design, it’s bland and uninteresting, lots of backtracking and I just hated that. The game isn’t bad, it’s just sub par compared to the trilogy.
Claire is obviously great and I like Albert Wesker in this, he’s bizarre and I love it. But the story which is hailed by some does nothing for me, it’s extremely weird for weirds sake and I find doesn’t translate well in practice.
I would still recommend this but don’t get your hopes up.
Let’s start with the level design, it’s bland and uninteresting, lots of backtracking and I just hated that. The game isn’t bad, it’s just sub par compared to the trilogy.
Claire is obviously great and I like Albert Wesker in this, he’s bizarre and I love it. But the story which is hailed by some does nothing for me, it’s extremely weird for weirds sake and I find doesn’t translate well in practice.
I would still recommend this but don’t get your hopes up.
Are British people really like this?
The return of the Redfields!
The true continuation of the series!
Albert motherfucking Wesker!
Incestual love bonding!
It’s Resident Evil on a new generation console!
Oh yeah. Like with my previous three RE reviews, I shall now pick apart Code Veronica. I get quite a kick out of writing reviews like they’re fucking anime visual novels because I have a clear passion towards the games that I love to play. That and I just like to make my reviews both informative and entertaining to read.
This is one the first RE games I played when I was younger. I played RE4, then this game, then RE5, then I would go back and play the original trilogy. I played this franchise in a very fucked up order. I was scared shitless of the PS1 games when I was younger, so I wouldn’t properly play the games myself until the PS2 generation. Probably wasn’t the best fuckin’ good idea to start with RE4, you can imagine the sleepless nights I had after playing that shit.
Going from RE4 to Code Veronica was fuckin’ jarring to me, because RE4 is a game that has a completely different direction taken, with more action sequences than any other game before it, and the whole third person shooter perspective was a first for a Resident Evil game. Code Veronica is one of the last games in the series to have the classic style of the PS1 games and it just makes me wish that we could get games like this again. For fuck sake, is there anyone out there willing to make old school games like Code Veronica again?
This is a weird fucking game to talk about. It’s one of the black sheep of the Resident Evil franchise. It clashes with a lot of ideas and it feels more like an experiment to see what would work for future games rather than a single concept that works really well. Would I say it’s underrated? Not really. Everyone I’ve ever spoken to about this game has had good things to say about it. It’s more like the game is often overlooked.
But, there is a huge but
There are some serious flaws with the game that can affect just how motivated the player is to get through it, or even play through it a 2nd time, and I’ll get into that. Some of these issues are so severe that it can affect the overall quality of the game.
[ 𝙎𝙏𝙊𝙍𝙔 ]
The story picks up three months after the events of RE2 and 3. After Claire Redfield escapes Raccoon City, she splits up from Leon and Sherry and goes on a solo mission to find her brother Chris, supposedly in Paris. She gets caught in one of Umbrella’s secret facilities and is captured. She is then taken and imprisoned on Rockford Island, which is actually another testing facility for Umbrella. Just like in Raccoon City, the T-Virus leaks out and it causes a zombie outbreak on the island. The first FMV scene in this game starts off with an action sequence that would make John Wick and Michael Bay fucking shit themselves.
Seriously, it’s so fucking over the top it reminds me of the laser room from Resident Evil 4. While this is still a Survival Horror game, it’s the first one to really start having these campy ridiculous action scenes very reminiscent of The Matrix. This game started taking an action approach even more so than Resident Evil 3 did.
So just like in RE2, Claire must escape the island and discover the fate of her missing brother. After breaking out of your degraded cage you quickly run into your… throat clear
Ahem.... AH AH AHEM!! cough
Your PARTNER for this game, who goes by the name of Steve Burnside. I may bash the shit out of Billy Cohen from RE0 but good lord Steve is just obnoxious. While he is a sympathetic character at times, everything that he says sounds like he is whining, it’s just the awful tone in his voice. The more he speaks the more it becomes insufferable. Not long after that you stumble in the mansion of the Ashford Twins, Alfred and Alexia. And let’s just say that they’re quite uh… into each other if you know what I mean by that.
Japan am I right?
So uh, besides that disturbing shit, the Ashfords are some of the best antagonists in the series. They are so fucking campy and over the top they bring that unintentional cheese the series is known for. Alfred Ashford blames Claire for the destruction of his home and facility and thus seeks revenge on her, when in reality it was actually Albert Wesker who is responsible.
If you’re playing this game for the first time you’re probably confused as to how he’s still alive. He died from the tyrant in RE1 right? Well it turns out before that happened, he injected himself with the Progenitor virus, and when he died, the virus brought him back to life. Not just that but the virus gave him supernatural powers, giving him incredible agility and superhuman strength.
The origin of the virus is kind of touched upon in Resident Evil 0, which is a prequel to RE1, but, the less said about RE0’s narrative the better..
Hence how Albert kicking the living shit out of Chris like a punching bag has become a staple in the series. Speaking of Chris, it turns out he finds out that Claire has been searching for him, so he sets off on a rescue mission to Rockford Island to find her. But by the time he gets there, Claire has already escaped the island with Steve. So now Chris has to find a way to get to Claire who has been stranded a second time because of Alexia, this time on a base in fucking Antartica. This game is just ridiculous. This is the first game in the series where things just start to go off the rails.
I do like the relationship between Chris and Claire. They do bond like real siblings. They protect and save each other when the danger is imminent. And despite what I said about Steve being utterly irritating to listen to, there were a couple moments in the game where they actually managed to make me feel sorry for him. There’s one scene late into the game which I won’t spoil, but that shit hit me in the feels fuckin’ hard. Nice work Capcom.
The story is full of ridiculous corny shit but it’s a very fun joyride. The payoff is worth the journey, but the main issue with the story however is the pacing of it. Once the game switches over to Chris the pace of the game comes to a complete halt and doesn’t pick up again until you get to the Antarctic base.
Not that Chris’s segment is flat out bad, but it involves a large amount of recycled content, and this can get pretty repetitive, because you visit and run through locations that you already played through as Claire. Not to mention Chris’s puzzles are harder than Claire’s, so if you hate difficult puzzles like I do, then this can be a real ball breaker.
The ending of the game with Chris and Wesker makes up for this, it’s one of the best scenes I’ve seen in an RE game. I laugh my ass off every single time I watch it. But after this, we don’t see Chris and Wesker again until RE5, and by then Chris has toughened up and learned to take his vitamins like a good boy. BROTHA!
But the best moment in the whole game in my opinion is when you reach a replica of the Spencer Mansion from RE1. I never knew what this place was before but after playing RE1 I was like “Ohhhh, so that’s what that mansion looking place was in Code Veronica!”
[ 𝙂𝘼𝙈𝙀𝙋𝙇𝘼𝙔 ]
This is one of the last games in the series to have the classic gameplay formula that made the franchise what it originally was. It still has tank controls, the 180 degree quick turn, the door loading screens, limited inventory space, limited saves, limited ammo and healing item pickups, and a third person camera but instead of fixed angles it instead moves around with the player.
However, like with the story, there are issues with the gameplay. It’s overall a very mixed bag for me. It still retains the survival roots, the risk/reward system with item conservation playing a huge part, but there are downgrades in terms of innovations. I already mentioned the whole pace breaker with Chris, but in terms of mechanics, it’s actually lacking the features that were present in RE3. Maybe this is due to the fact that this game only came out a year after RE3, so I imagine they didn’t have enough time to implement more gameplay mechanics.
There’s no more dodging mechanic, no ammo crafting with gunpowder, you can’t push zombies away like Jill could, there’s no more RNG to enemies and item placements, even just small things like having to push X to go up and down stairs again like in RE2. There are barely any new enemies to fight either. Most of the enemies you fight in this game are just rehashed from RE1 and 2. You can’t even get cosmetic skins to wear in a 2nd playthrough. But hey, at least you can still skip the cutscenes and blow up explosive barrels on enemies.
But there is the return of the Battle Mode from RE2 which is unlocked after beating the game. It’s just a gauntlet of killing enemies and progressing through each area until you reach the final boss as quickly as you can. Each playable character has their own set loadout but some are clearly better than others. It’s good fun. But the most interesting aspect of it is the First Person mode.
And this makes the game feel like a different one. It's one of the first times there is a First Person Perspective in an RE game, it's quite interesting seeing the game like this.
Speaking of new enemies, one of them is called a Bandersnatch. They’re able to smack you from across a room with their extendable arms. They can also stick to walls and vault over shit. To be honest, these things are a real pain in the ass to fight. They soak up a lot of ammo before they die, and they hit me 50% of the time. I try to just run past them as much as I can and only fight them if I really have to, because they’re just a waste of resources if anything. Hence if there’s a part where they show up I just say “FUCK IT” and just dash the fuck outta there. Seriously, even the Hunters are less of a bitch to deal with than the Bandersnatches.
And then there's the infamous moth corridor. Fuck this room. Seriously, fuck it. The main problem is that the moths fly around and they leave poison mist clouds in the air. But the room is so narrow that you can't run around it. It not only hurts you but it can also poison you.
The other issue is that the moth can unavoidably grapple you and lay an egg on you. And when it hatches a larva will come out and start biting you. And this also has a chance of poisoning you. But the thing is, the egg hatches at random. And you can't get it off. So there will be a chance you'll be running through an area in the middle of making progress but then the egg hatches and you get poisoned.
So you gotta either backtrack back to the Item Box to grab a blue herb, or use the stack of blue herbs in the same fucking room the moths are in. But then there's also the issue of using a blue herb only for the moths to poison you again immediately after you use it, so what the fuck, game.
And you're probably thinking "Why not just kill the moths?" If I could I wouldn't be complaining so much about them. You can kill the moths sure, but the problem is, they respawn. Yup, the moths respawn. So there is no point in fighting them. So every single time you go into this hallway, you just have to run straight for the door in the hopes that the moths don't lay an egg on you, or poison you with the mist clouds.
The developers put those herbs there because they must have known that this room sucked balls.
There is one new mechanic that wouldn’t be seen again until RE6 and that’s the ability to dual wield weapons. Well, kind of. There’s a pair of pistols that you can get very early in the game exclusively for Claire and it comes with quite a lot of ammo.
What’s cool is that you can actually aim at multiple targets. There’s a section in the game where Steve gets a pair of dual wielded sub machine guns and you actually get to play as him for a short while, and this shit is actually pretty fuckin’ fun, it actually makes me wish I could play as him more, not gonna lie. There’s just something about Claire dual wielding that just looks badass, you can see the evolution in her character after the shit she’s been through in Raccoon City.
There are however some serious roadblock moments in the game that can really affect players getting through the game. The first instance is the boss fight against a tyrant in the cargo plane. What absolutely fucking sucks about this part is that once you get on the plane, you cannot go back.
There’s a typewriter right next to the door where you engage it. However if you haven’t been conserving your items well enough, you can get into a position where you get stumped. Hopefully to God you found B.O.W. Gas Rounds for the grenade launcher and some explosive arrows for the bowgun and have saved them for this fight in particular.
Because Jesus Christ this fight is insane without them. The first issue is that the tyrant’s attacks are insanely difficult to dodge. He moves faster than Claire, so 80% of the time he’s gonna hit you. Sometimes he’ll knock you on the floor and you have to hurry and get up and move out of the way before he hits you again. And this tyrant isn’t a pushover, his attacks fucking hurt. This is one of those fights where Claire should have the ability to dodge.
Another issue is that you can only kill him by pushing him out of the emergency hatch by launching a metal container at him. However each attempt has a cooldown so you have to wait in between pushes. Another thing, you also have to inflict a certain amount of damage to the tyrant before he can be pushed out, otherwise you’re just wasting time.
But since there is no indication of how much damage you’re dealing, you’re not gonna know when exactly the fucker can be killed. So it’s just a fight that entirely revolves around trial and error, dying over and over and over again in the process. This shit fuckin' sucks, because I know friends who had to start the game over from the beginning or just stop playing entirely because they couldn’t get past this boss.
Another boss, the Nosferatu, is a boss you fight just before the game switches over to Chris, and this guy is no pushover either. His weakness is his exposed heart, and you get a sniper rifle just before the fight to assist in that, however the aiming is clunky, and you only get 7 shots. Even if you hit all 7 shots it’s not enough to kill him. You need more weapons. The AK is useful for this fight however if you missed it and you didn’t at least bring the knife with you, well then good luck trying to beat him now.
Also if you die, the checkpoint restarts just before the fight. But you can’t go back after you’ve picked up the sniper rifle. So you know what that means? You gotta reload your save file and play through again until you get to this point again and this time you’re prepared for it.
And yeah, I did just mention checkpoints in a game where dying actually sends you back to your last save. But this time, there is a checkpoint system but it’s incredibly vague on how it works. See, when you die, you can continue the game from your last save immediately instead of being booted back to the title screen and having to reload your save file.
But also, the game does get a few checkpoints at certain points. However the Nosferatu fight makes the checkpoint completely pointless. Because again, if you’re unprepared then you’re gonna have to reload your save file anyway.
These are just a couple examples of how player progression can be halted if you’re not aware of this shit beforehand. The game doesn’t warn you before you continue, so imagine all the people who jumped into this game blind and weren’t ready for this bullshit.
There's also a part in the game where Claire has to run away from a boss, but no matter what, the boss is gonna hit you. You NEED healing items to get past this, and this is just fucking stupid. I shouldn't have to use up precious healing items in such quick succession in a boss fight that isn't even meant to be fought.
You have to heal immediately after the first hit, because the second hit will kill you. At full health, a single hit will bring you down from Fine (Green) to Caution (Orange). You have to use mixed herbs or First Aid Sprays, because you just cannot take hits here.
There’s also the issue of how items transfer between Chris and Claire. The items you place in an Item Box are shared between characters. Let’s say I was playing as Claire and I put the Grenade Launcher in the Item Box and then the game switched over to Chris. That means Chris can grab the Grenade Launcher along with all the other items Claire left in the box. The problem with this as a new player is, unless you did the research beforehand, you’re not gonna know what items you’re gonna need for a certain section.
Let’s say I was playing as Chris, and I decided to put the shotgun in the Item Box, then the game switches over to Claire, then have Claire pick up the shotgun and any other items, but then at the end of the game it switches back to Chris again. If Claire had the shotgun and any other healing items on her, OOPS!!
Chris can’t use them for the rest of the game. I’m not joking. And don't forget that the Magnum is missable as well. When Chris gets to the Antarctic base there will be a room that is on fire. The Magnum is in there however you need the fire extinguisher to put out the flames.
But by this point the extinguisher is empty. There's a specific room you go into and there's a machine you have to interact with to fill up the extinguisher.
So if you happen to miss this, and then you give Claire the shotgun or the grenade launcher or any other powerful weapons or items, well then good luck trying to beat the final boss now.
And the other fucked up thing is, the game saves a checkpoint right before the final boss. So if you die, the game just restarts the checkpoint right before Chris activates the final countdown and fights Alexia.
So you know what that means? You gotta quit to the main menu, manually reload your save, and then you gotta play through Claire's section all over again.
God. Dammit.
So there are some serious issues you can create for yourself if you are not careful with your saves. I think this is why Capcom went back to a single playable character in RE4.
So yeah, the game is lacking gameplay features from the previous games, it has a few roadblock sections, and the item transferring gimmick is a problem as well. And while the game does give you a shitload of ammo at times, the game is very stingy with healing items. Even as a veteran player I still don’t have a whole lot of herbs by the end game. All of these issues makes Code Veronica the most difficult RE game in the series next to RE0.
This game is fucking hard. Unlike the previous games where the difficulty is warranted and forgiving at times, here it feels fucking brutal at times. But the difficulty just comes from the lack of polish in the gameplay. If it just had more development time it would have been ironed out, but as it stands, it’s a serious step down from the older games.
One last thing I should talk about are the weapons, and yet again, this is a step down. Remember how incredible the weapons sounded in RE3? Well in this game, almost all of the weapons have the same sound effects as the ones from RE2. The pistol, shotgun, grenade launcher, and the bowgun all sound exactly the same. Which is a disappointment but at least we got RE4 for that.
And speaking of the bowgun, the standard ammo sucks liquid ass sauce from a bendy straw just like in RE2, except somehow they’re even worse now. The bowgun shoots one bolt instead of three, so it actually takes longer to kill enemies.
And don’t even think about using it to kill enemies other than zombies or dogs, just fuckin’ forget about it. It’s way too weak. It takes at least 8 shots just to kill one zombie. Probably why they give you so much ammo for it.
There are good things about it however. It doesn’t need to be reloaded like a standard gun, and the explosive rounds you get for it are WAY better. They’re very good for bosses.
There are no more Freeze Rounds from RE3, so now it’s Acid, Flame, Explosive, and the B.O.W. Rounds which are insanely useful for the tyrant fight. The grenade launcher works the same as it did in the previous games. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it and that also goes for the shotgun.
Because of the robotic movements, the lack of nice beefy sound effects, and the fact that you can no longer blow off zombie heads and legs, shooting enemies feels nowhere near as good as it did in the older games. The lack of gore and good impact of my guns kinda defeats the purpose in my opinion.
[ 𝙋𝙍𝙀𝙎𝙀𝙉𝙏𝘼𝙏𝙄𝙊𝙉 𝘼𝙉𝘿 𝙎𝙊𝙐𝙉𝘿𝙏𝙍𝘼𝘾𝙆 ]
I fucking love this game’s artstyle. It’s a very nice mix between science fiction and goth. That small castle where the Ashford twins live looks like Dracula’s Castle and a Party City fucked and had a bastard child. It’s just full of creepy dolls, piles of books all over, and these guys must really have a fetish for insects, because the insect symbolism is fucking everywhere.
And something about the walls and floors just looks quite unsettling. This looks like a place Chernobog from Disney's Fantasia would live in. What’s new for this game is that instead of pre-rendered backgrounds, all of the locations are fully rendered in 3D. No more 1998 2D textures from the PS1 games. The power of the PissStation 2 allows for more detailed character models, higher quality FMV cutscenes, and better looking environments.
For the time this game does look good but you can really tell it is a 2001 game because there are still quite a handful of imperfections. For example the animations. I don’t know what happened here but the animations for the characters and zombies are jank as fuck. The movements for the zombies are really robotic now. The way they fall over just looks like something I would see in a Three Stooges short, it’s just really comical.
The way zombies fall down stairs when you shoot them just makes me piss myself laughing. It's like I just shot Homer Simpson it's so ridiculously dumb.
There are also moments in the cutscenes where the movements for the characters just look really off like they just don’t flow right. But obviously this is the first RE on a new console and again, short development time, but all of these flaws and imperfections makes me wonder how much better this game could have been had they just spent more time on it.
There is one amazing part about the presentation and it’s the soundtrack. Holy fuck I absolutely love the music in this game. A good chunk of the songs have opera singing in them and it just enhances the mood of the game tenfold. The tone from RE3 goes from bleakness and paranoia to straight up dread in Code Veronica.
The save room theme is the best save room theme in the whole series, period. And the final boss theme is one of the best songs I’ve ever heard in a Resident Evil game. And this may sound fucking weird if you don’t like opera music, but to me it’s very nostalgic because it reminds me a lot of the soundtrack to Parasite Eve. And I grew up with that game and the soundtrack in Parasite Eve is absolutely fucking orgasmic, it’s one of my all time favorites.
…
Fuck I wanna play Parasite Eve again now. Lmao.
And how about the music that plays during the Nosferatu fight? The shit is burned into my skull it's so intense and memorable.
[ 𝘽𝙀𝙎𝙏 𝙑𝙀𝙍𝙎𝙄𝙊𝙉? ]
This game has been released on the Dreamcast, PS2, GameCube, PS3, Xbox 360, and it’s even been ported to the PS4.
The Dreamcast version is the worst to play. Because it has worse lighting than later versions, the load times for opening up the inventory are slower, and Steve’s hair design looks worse to me as well. But the most drastic difference is that the Albert Wesker story arc isn’t expanded upon in the game. The PS2 version of the game improves upon all of this, same with the GameCube.
However the best version in my opinion is the HD Remaster for the PS3 and Xbox 360. The game runs at a nice 1080p resolution. The visuals and character models are sharper and cleaner, the load times are slightly faster, the menus look better, the FMV cutscenes are at a higher resolution, and there’s even a leaderboard feature where you can compete for completion times with other players and your friends.
But what sucks is that on the PS4 for some reason, the version of the game being sold on the PlayStation Store is not the HD Remaster, but instead an emulation of the PS2 release. Why is that? So if you wanna play the HD Remaster you’re gonna have to dust off that old PS3 or 360, or get a PS3 emulator on your PC. Otherwise, you’re just gonna have to stick to the PS2 version.
Thankfully it’s cheap as shit on PS4, or if you’re more old school like I am, physical PS2 copies are pretty goddamn cheap these days. I’ve seen copies being sold online for $15-25.
Xbox One is a different story, I think… Since the console is backwards compatible with Xbox 360 games, then you should be able to play the HD Remaster on that.
[ 𝙇𝘼𝙎𝙏 𝙏𝙃𝙊𝙐𝙂𝙃𝙏𝙎 ]
Despite all of the rampant and terrible flaws that I talk about here, Code Veronica is still a great game. I personally still love this game despite all the gripes I have with it. The game is just really nostalgic to me. The charm is so goddamn memorable that it holds its own compared to all the other games. But I did have to put the nostalgia to the side and look at the game with the critical monocle. Looking back at it again, yeah, this game hasn’t aged very well. It’s a very polarizing 8 hour experience, and it could have been trimmed down if either Chris wasn’t in the game, or if his section was much shorter.
It’s a very odd game, it reeks of a “next gen PS2 game” but it’s a game that should be experienced at least once. Obviously I’m not gonna be too hard on it because of how long this game came out after RE3. I mean hell, it was released on the Dreamcast before the PS2, and it’s even more incomplete there than on PS2.
This game gets 7 Jill Sandwiches out of 10.
The true continuation of the series!
Albert motherfucking Wesker!
Incestual love bonding!
It’s Resident Evil on a new generation console!
Oh yeah. Like with my previous three RE reviews, I shall now pick apart Code Veronica. I get quite a kick out of writing reviews like they’re fucking anime visual novels because I have a clear passion towards the games that I love to play. That and I just like to make my reviews both informative and entertaining to read.
This is one the first RE games I played when I was younger. I played RE4, then this game, then RE5, then I would go back and play the original trilogy. I played this franchise in a very fucked up order. I was scared shitless of the PS1 games when I was younger, so I wouldn’t properly play the games myself until the PS2 generation. Probably wasn’t the best fuckin’ good idea to start with RE4, you can imagine the sleepless nights I had after playing that shit.
Going from RE4 to Code Veronica was fuckin’ jarring to me, because RE4 is a game that has a completely different direction taken, with more action sequences than any other game before it, and the whole third person shooter perspective was a first for a Resident Evil game. Code Veronica is one of the last games in the series to have the classic style of the PS1 games and it just makes me wish that we could get games like this again. For fuck sake, is there anyone out there willing to make old school games like Code Veronica again?
This is a weird fucking game to talk about. It’s one of the black sheep of the Resident Evil franchise. It clashes with a lot of ideas and it feels more like an experiment to see what would work for future games rather than a single concept that works really well. Would I say it’s underrated? Not really. Everyone I’ve ever spoken to about this game has had good things to say about it. It’s more like the game is often overlooked.
But, there is a huge but
There are some serious flaws with the game that can affect just how motivated the player is to get through it, or even play through it a 2nd time, and I’ll get into that. Some of these issues are so severe that it can affect the overall quality of the game.
[ 𝙎𝙏𝙊𝙍𝙔 ]
The story picks up three months after the events of RE2 and 3. After Claire Redfield escapes Raccoon City, she splits up from Leon and Sherry and goes on a solo mission to find her brother Chris, supposedly in Paris. She gets caught in one of Umbrella’s secret facilities and is captured. She is then taken and imprisoned on Rockford Island, which is actually another testing facility for Umbrella. Just like in Raccoon City, the T-Virus leaks out and it causes a zombie outbreak on the island. The first FMV scene in this game starts off with an action sequence that would make John Wick and Michael Bay fucking shit themselves.
Seriously, it’s so fucking over the top it reminds me of the laser room from Resident Evil 4. While this is still a Survival Horror game, it’s the first one to really start having these campy ridiculous action scenes very reminiscent of The Matrix. This game started taking an action approach even more so than Resident Evil 3 did.
So just like in RE2, Claire must escape the island and discover the fate of her missing brother. After breaking out of your degraded cage you quickly run into your… throat clear
Ahem.... AH AH AHEM!! cough
Your PARTNER for this game, who goes by the name of Steve Burnside. I may bash the shit out of Billy Cohen from RE0 but good lord Steve is just obnoxious. While he is a sympathetic character at times, everything that he says sounds like he is whining, it’s just the awful tone in his voice. The more he speaks the more it becomes insufferable. Not long after that you stumble in the mansion of the Ashford Twins, Alfred and Alexia. And let’s just say that they’re quite uh… into each other if you know what I mean by that.
Japan am I right?
So uh, besides that disturbing shit, the Ashfords are some of the best antagonists in the series. They are so fucking campy and over the top they bring that unintentional cheese the series is known for. Alfred Ashford blames Claire for the destruction of his home and facility and thus seeks revenge on her, when in reality it was actually Albert Wesker who is responsible.
If you’re playing this game for the first time you’re probably confused as to how he’s still alive. He died from the tyrant in RE1 right? Well it turns out before that happened, he injected himself with the Progenitor virus, and when he died, the virus brought him back to life. Not just that but the virus gave him supernatural powers, giving him incredible agility and superhuman strength.
The origin of the virus is kind of touched upon in Resident Evil 0, which is a prequel to RE1, but, the less said about RE0’s narrative the better..
Hence how Albert kicking the living shit out of Chris like a punching bag has become a staple in the series. Speaking of Chris, it turns out he finds out that Claire has been searching for him, so he sets off on a rescue mission to Rockford Island to find her. But by the time he gets there, Claire has already escaped the island with Steve. So now Chris has to find a way to get to Claire who has been stranded a second time because of Alexia, this time on a base in fucking Antartica. This game is just ridiculous. This is the first game in the series where things just start to go off the rails.
I do like the relationship between Chris and Claire. They do bond like real siblings. They protect and save each other when the danger is imminent. And despite what I said about Steve being utterly irritating to listen to, there were a couple moments in the game where they actually managed to make me feel sorry for him. There’s one scene late into the game which I won’t spoil, but that shit hit me in the feels fuckin’ hard. Nice work Capcom.
The story is full of ridiculous corny shit but it’s a very fun joyride. The payoff is worth the journey, but the main issue with the story however is the pacing of it. Once the game switches over to Chris the pace of the game comes to a complete halt and doesn’t pick up again until you get to the Antarctic base.
Not that Chris’s segment is flat out bad, but it involves a large amount of recycled content, and this can get pretty repetitive, because you visit and run through locations that you already played through as Claire. Not to mention Chris’s puzzles are harder than Claire’s, so if you hate difficult puzzles like I do, then this can be a real ball breaker.
The ending of the game with Chris and Wesker makes up for this, it’s one of the best scenes I’ve seen in an RE game. I laugh my ass off every single time I watch it. But after this, we don’t see Chris and Wesker again until RE5, and by then Chris has toughened up and learned to take his vitamins like a good boy. BROTHA!
But the best moment in the whole game in my opinion is when you reach a replica of the Spencer Mansion from RE1. I never knew what this place was before but after playing RE1 I was like “Ohhhh, so that’s what that mansion looking place was in Code Veronica!”
[ 𝙂𝘼𝙈𝙀𝙋𝙇𝘼𝙔 ]
This is one of the last games in the series to have the classic gameplay formula that made the franchise what it originally was. It still has tank controls, the 180 degree quick turn, the door loading screens, limited inventory space, limited saves, limited ammo and healing item pickups, and a third person camera but instead of fixed angles it instead moves around with the player.
However, like with the story, there are issues with the gameplay. It’s overall a very mixed bag for me. It still retains the survival roots, the risk/reward system with item conservation playing a huge part, but there are downgrades in terms of innovations. I already mentioned the whole pace breaker with Chris, but in terms of mechanics, it’s actually lacking the features that were present in RE3. Maybe this is due to the fact that this game only came out a year after RE3, so I imagine they didn’t have enough time to implement more gameplay mechanics.
There’s no more dodging mechanic, no ammo crafting with gunpowder, you can’t push zombies away like Jill could, there’s no more RNG to enemies and item placements, even just small things like having to push X to go up and down stairs again like in RE2. There are barely any new enemies to fight either. Most of the enemies you fight in this game are just rehashed from RE1 and 2. You can’t even get cosmetic skins to wear in a 2nd playthrough. But hey, at least you can still skip the cutscenes and blow up explosive barrels on enemies.
But there is the return of the Battle Mode from RE2 which is unlocked after beating the game. It’s just a gauntlet of killing enemies and progressing through each area until you reach the final boss as quickly as you can. Each playable character has their own set loadout but some are clearly better than others. It’s good fun. But the most interesting aspect of it is the First Person mode.
And this makes the game feel like a different one. It's one of the first times there is a First Person Perspective in an RE game, it's quite interesting seeing the game like this.
Speaking of new enemies, one of them is called a Bandersnatch. They’re able to smack you from across a room with their extendable arms. They can also stick to walls and vault over shit. To be honest, these things are a real pain in the ass to fight. They soak up a lot of ammo before they die, and they hit me 50% of the time. I try to just run past them as much as I can and only fight them if I really have to, because they’re just a waste of resources if anything. Hence if there’s a part where they show up I just say “FUCK IT” and just dash the fuck outta there. Seriously, even the Hunters are less of a bitch to deal with than the Bandersnatches.
And then there's the infamous moth corridor. Fuck this room. Seriously, fuck it. The main problem is that the moths fly around and they leave poison mist clouds in the air. But the room is so narrow that you can't run around it. It not only hurts you but it can also poison you.
The other issue is that the moth can unavoidably grapple you and lay an egg on you. And when it hatches a larva will come out and start biting you. And this also has a chance of poisoning you. But the thing is, the egg hatches at random. And you can't get it off. So there will be a chance you'll be running through an area in the middle of making progress but then the egg hatches and you get poisoned.
So you gotta either backtrack back to the Item Box to grab a blue herb, or use the stack of blue herbs in the same fucking room the moths are in. But then there's also the issue of using a blue herb only for the moths to poison you again immediately after you use it, so what the fuck, game.
And you're probably thinking "Why not just kill the moths?" If I could I wouldn't be complaining so much about them. You can kill the moths sure, but the problem is, they respawn. Yup, the moths respawn. So there is no point in fighting them. So every single time you go into this hallway, you just have to run straight for the door in the hopes that the moths don't lay an egg on you, or poison you with the mist clouds.
The developers put those herbs there because they must have known that this room sucked balls.
There is one new mechanic that wouldn’t be seen again until RE6 and that’s the ability to dual wield weapons. Well, kind of. There’s a pair of pistols that you can get very early in the game exclusively for Claire and it comes with quite a lot of ammo.
What’s cool is that you can actually aim at multiple targets. There’s a section in the game where Steve gets a pair of dual wielded sub machine guns and you actually get to play as him for a short while, and this shit is actually pretty fuckin’ fun, it actually makes me wish I could play as him more, not gonna lie. There’s just something about Claire dual wielding that just looks badass, you can see the evolution in her character after the shit she’s been through in Raccoon City.
There are however some serious roadblock moments in the game that can really affect players getting through the game. The first instance is the boss fight against a tyrant in the cargo plane. What absolutely fucking sucks about this part is that once you get on the plane, you cannot go back.
There’s a typewriter right next to the door where you engage it. However if you haven’t been conserving your items well enough, you can get into a position where you get stumped. Hopefully to God you found B.O.W. Gas Rounds for the grenade launcher and some explosive arrows for the bowgun and have saved them for this fight in particular.
Because Jesus Christ this fight is insane without them. The first issue is that the tyrant’s attacks are insanely difficult to dodge. He moves faster than Claire, so 80% of the time he’s gonna hit you. Sometimes he’ll knock you on the floor and you have to hurry and get up and move out of the way before he hits you again. And this tyrant isn’t a pushover, his attacks fucking hurt. This is one of those fights where Claire should have the ability to dodge.
Another issue is that you can only kill him by pushing him out of the emergency hatch by launching a metal container at him. However each attempt has a cooldown so you have to wait in between pushes. Another thing, you also have to inflict a certain amount of damage to the tyrant before he can be pushed out, otherwise you’re just wasting time.
But since there is no indication of how much damage you’re dealing, you’re not gonna know when exactly the fucker can be killed. So it’s just a fight that entirely revolves around trial and error, dying over and over and over again in the process. This shit fuckin' sucks, because I know friends who had to start the game over from the beginning or just stop playing entirely because they couldn’t get past this boss.
Another boss, the Nosferatu, is a boss you fight just before the game switches over to Chris, and this guy is no pushover either. His weakness is his exposed heart, and you get a sniper rifle just before the fight to assist in that, however the aiming is clunky, and you only get 7 shots. Even if you hit all 7 shots it’s not enough to kill him. You need more weapons. The AK is useful for this fight however if you missed it and you didn’t at least bring the knife with you, well then good luck trying to beat him now.
Also if you die, the checkpoint restarts just before the fight. But you can’t go back after you’ve picked up the sniper rifle. So you know what that means? You gotta reload your save file and play through again until you get to this point again and this time you’re prepared for it.
And yeah, I did just mention checkpoints in a game where dying actually sends you back to your last save. But this time, there is a checkpoint system but it’s incredibly vague on how it works. See, when you die, you can continue the game from your last save immediately instead of being booted back to the title screen and having to reload your save file.
But also, the game does get a few checkpoints at certain points. However the Nosferatu fight makes the checkpoint completely pointless. Because again, if you’re unprepared then you’re gonna have to reload your save file anyway.
These are just a couple examples of how player progression can be halted if you’re not aware of this shit beforehand. The game doesn’t warn you before you continue, so imagine all the people who jumped into this game blind and weren’t ready for this bullshit.
There's also a part in the game where Claire has to run away from a boss, but no matter what, the boss is gonna hit you. You NEED healing items to get past this, and this is just fucking stupid. I shouldn't have to use up precious healing items in such quick succession in a boss fight that isn't even meant to be fought.
You have to heal immediately after the first hit, because the second hit will kill you. At full health, a single hit will bring you down from Fine (Green) to Caution (Orange). You have to use mixed herbs or First Aid Sprays, because you just cannot take hits here.
There’s also the issue of how items transfer between Chris and Claire. The items you place in an Item Box are shared between characters. Let’s say I was playing as Claire and I put the Grenade Launcher in the Item Box and then the game switched over to Chris. That means Chris can grab the Grenade Launcher along with all the other items Claire left in the box. The problem with this as a new player is, unless you did the research beforehand, you’re not gonna know what items you’re gonna need for a certain section.
Let’s say I was playing as Chris, and I decided to put the shotgun in the Item Box, then the game switches over to Claire, then have Claire pick up the shotgun and any other items, but then at the end of the game it switches back to Chris again. If Claire had the shotgun and any other healing items on her, OOPS!!
Chris can’t use them for the rest of the game. I’m not joking. And don't forget that the Magnum is missable as well. When Chris gets to the Antarctic base there will be a room that is on fire. The Magnum is in there however you need the fire extinguisher to put out the flames.
But by this point the extinguisher is empty. There's a specific room you go into and there's a machine you have to interact with to fill up the extinguisher.
So if you happen to miss this, and then you give Claire the shotgun or the grenade launcher or any other powerful weapons or items, well then good luck trying to beat the final boss now.
And the other fucked up thing is, the game saves a checkpoint right before the final boss. So if you die, the game just restarts the checkpoint right before Chris activates the final countdown and fights Alexia.
So you know what that means? You gotta quit to the main menu, manually reload your save, and then you gotta play through Claire's section all over again.
God. Dammit.
So there are some serious issues you can create for yourself if you are not careful with your saves. I think this is why Capcom went back to a single playable character in RE4.
So yeah, the game is lacking gameplay features from the previous games, it has a few roadblock sections, and the item transferring gimmick is a problem as well. And while the game does give you a shitload of ammo at times, the game is very stingy with healing items. Even as a veteran player I still don’t have a whole lot of herbs by the end game. All of these issues makes Code Veronica the most difficult RE game in the series next to RE0.
This game is fucking hard. Unlike the previous games where the difficulty is warranted and forgiving at times, here it feels fucking brutal at times. But the difficulty just comes from the lack of polish in the gameplay. If it just had more development time it would have been ironed out, but as it stands, it’s a serious step down from the older games.
One last thing I should talk about are the weapons, and yet again, this is a step down. Remember how incredible the weapons sounded in RE3? Well in this game, almost all of the weapons have the same sound effects as the ones from RE2. The pistol, shotgun, grenade launcher, and the bowgun all sound exactly the same. Which is a disappointment but at least we got RE4 for that.
And speaking of the bowgun, the standard ammo sucks liquid ass sauce from a bendy straw just like in RE2, except somehow they’re even worse now. The bowgun shoots one bolt instead of three, so it actually takes longer to kill enemies.
And don’t even think about using it to kill enemies other than zombies or dogs, just fuckin’ forget about it. It’s way too weak. It takes at least 8 shots just to kill one zombie. Probably why they give you so much ammo for it.
There are good things about it however. It doesn’t need to be reloaded like a standard gun, and the explosive rounds you get for it are WAY better. They’re very good for bosses.
There are no more Freeze Rounds from RE3, so now it’s Acid, Flame, Explosive, and the B.O.W. Rounds which are insanely useful for the tyrant fight. The grenade launcher works the same as it did in the previous games. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it and that also goes for the shotgun.
Because of the robotic movements, the lack of nice beefy sound effects, and the fact that you can no longer blow off zombie heads and legs, shooting enemies feels nowhere near as good as it did in the older games. The lack of gore and good impact of my guns kinda defeats the purpose in my opinion.
[ 𝙋𝙍𝙀𝙎𝙀𝙉𝙏𝘼𝙏𝙄𝙊𝙉 𝘼𝙉𝘿 𝙎𝙊𝙐𝙉𝘿𝙏𝙍𝘼𝘾𝙆 ]
I fucking love this game’s artstyle. It’s a very nice mix between science fiction and goth. That small castle where the Ashford twins live looks like Dracula’s Castle and a Party City fucked and had a bastard child. It’s just full of creepy dolls, piles of books all over, and these guys must really have a fetish for insects, because the insect symbolism is fucking everywhere.
And something about the walls and floors just looks quite unsettling. This looks like a place Chernobog from Disney's Fantasia would live in. What’s new for this game is that instead of pre-rendered backgrounds, all of the locations are fully rendered in 3D. No more 1998 2D textures from the PS1 games. The power of the PissStation 2 allows for more detailed character models, higher quality FMV cutscenes, and better looking environments.
For the time this game does look good but you can really tell it is a 2001 game because there are still quite a handful of imperfections. For example the animations. I don’t know what happened here but the animations for the characters and zombies are jank as fuck. The movements for the zombies are really robotic now. The way they fall over just looks like something I would see in a Three Stooges short, it’s just really comical.
The way zombies fall down stairs when you shoot them just makes me piss myself laughing. It's like I just shot Homer Simpson it's so ridiculously dumb.
There are also moments in the cutscenes where the movements for the characters just look really off like they just don’t flow right. But obviously this is the first RE on a new console and again, short development time, but all of these flaws and imperfections makes me wonder how much better this game could have been had they just spent more time on it.
There is one amazing part about the presentation and it’s the soundtrack. Holy fuck I absolutely love the music in this game. A good chunk of the songs have opera singing in them and it just enhances the mood of the game tenfold. The tone from RE3 goes from bleakness and paranoia to straight up dread in Code Veronica.
The save room theme is the best save room theme in the whole series, period. And the final boss theme is one of the best songs I’ve ever heard in a Resident Evil game. And this may sound fucking weird if you don’t like opera music, but to me it’s very nostalgic because it reminds me a lot of the soundtrack to Parasite Eve. And I grew up with that game and the soundtrack in Parasite Eve is absolutely fucking orgasmic, it’s one of my all time favorites.
…
Fuck I wanna play Parasite Eve again now. Lmao.
And how about the music that plays during the Nosferatu fight? The shit is burned into my skull it's so intense and memorable.
[ 𝘽𝙀𝙎𝙏 𝙑𝙀𝙍𝙎𝙄𝙊𝙉? ]
This game has been released on the Dreamcast, PS2, GameCube, PS3, Xbox 360, and it’s even been ported to the PS4.
The Dreamcast version is the worst to play. Because it has worse lighting than later versions, the load times for opening up the inventory are slower, and Steve’s hair design looks worse to me as well. But the most drastic difference is that the Albert Wesker story arc isn’t expanded upon in the game. The PS2 version of the game improves upon all of this, same with the GameCube.
However the best version in my opinion is the HD Remaster for the PS3 and Xbox 360. The game runs at a nice 1080p resolution. The visuals and character models are sharper and cleaner, the load times are slightly faster, the menus look better, the FMV cutscenes are at a higher resolution, and there’s even a leaderboard feature where you can compete for completion times with other players and your friends.
But what sucks is that on the PS4 for some reason, the version of the game being sold on the PlayStation Store is not the HD Remaster, but instead an emulation of the PS2 release. Why is that? So if you wanna play the HD Remaster you’re gonna have to dust off that old PS3 or 360, or get a PS3 emulator on your PC. Otherwise, you’re just gonna have to stick to the PS2 version.
Thankfully it’s cheap as shit on PS4, or if you’re more old school like I am, physical PS2 copies are pretty goddamn cheap these days. I’ve seen copies being sold online for $15-25.
Xbox One is a different story, I think… Since the console is backwards compatible with Xbox 360 games, then you should be able to play the HD Remaster on that.
[ 𝙇𝘼𝙎𝙏 𝙏𝙃𝙊𝙐𝙂𝙃𝙏𝙎 ]
Despite all of the rampant and terrible flaws that I talk about here, Code Veronica is still a great game. I personally still love this game despite all the gripes I have with it. The game is just really nostalgic to me. The charm is so goddamn memorable that it holds its own compared to all the other games. But I did have to put the nostalgia to the side and look at the game with the critical monocle. Looking back at it again, yeah, this game hasn’t aged very well. It’s a very polarizing 8 hour experience, and it could have been trimmed down if either Chris wasn’t in the game, or if his section was much shorter.
It’s a very odd game, it reeks of a “next gen PS2 game” but it’s a game that should be experienced at least once. Obviously I’m not gonna be too hard on it because of how long this game came out after RE3. I mean hell, it was released on the Dreamcast before the PS2, and it’s even more incomplete there than on PS2.
This game gets 7 Jill Sandwiches out of 10.
I feel so weird about this game but has gotta be the funniest game ever cause the 5 minutes of wesker screen time and him beating chris up 😭😭
Some of the best locales in the series, and a solid way to conclude the classic RE formula. A moment of relief and the majority of CV's ost is also by far the best in the series.
It's wild though cause I thought the actual plot was also pretty solid, great lore but AWFUL voice acting. It has its charm but like it annoys me when good scenes just sound awkward.
The split story was done well but god damn the item box issue with the second half could have ruined it for me, thankfully wasn't the case.
Gotta sit with this one for a bit.
Some of the best locales in the series, and a solid way to conclude the classic RE formula. A moment of relief and the majority of CV's ost is also by far the best in the series.
It's wild though cause I thought the actual plot was also pretty solid, great lore but AWFUL voice acting. It has its charm but like it annoys me when good scenes just sound awkward.
The split story was done well but god damn the item box issue with the second half could have ruined it for me, thankfully wasn't the case.
Gotta sit with this one for a bit.
my least favourite mainline RE game, absolutely fucking hated it and found the navigation and puzzles miserable, bosses especially can go fuck themselves
the second to last boss at least was kinda raw though and X exclusive Wesker scenes are great
the second to last boss at least was kinda raw though and X exclusive Wesker scenes are great
masterclass in how to screw up a time-tested gameplay formula that at this point probably should've been failproof for capcom
the overall pacing is bad - it's a 12 hour game that should only be around half its runtime
level design is wonky - you're either constantly backtracking from location to location or you're moving around an entire facility with no real way to get from point A to B concisely. it's an ordeal to grab one item needed for progression (in a game series about resource management and planning routes effectively!). comparing the maps in this to the RE1 mansion or the RE2 police station is such a stark contrast
for some reason the game gives you way too many bullets and resources? the way enemy placement is laid out encourages you to use them too. by the time you've explored a map once, you've killed all the zombies and then you're just running around empty corridors with no tension or need to plan ahead with your loadout - again, bad pacing. you can argue this can happen in the other classic REs but their level design guarantees youre not really visiting those same places over and over and over again. CV wants to be an action game but without all the mechanics to make that actually work
and even with that abundance of resources they never seem to be in the place where you actually need them - like, before boss fights?? i've seen more than one post here from people saying they had to restart the game completely because they ran out of healing items or explosive arrows or what have you (it all comes back to bad pacing...). to be fair - this can be mitigated by just rotating your saves but if it comes down to it that often that feels like bad game design on the devs' part
steve fucking sucks ass
the art direction overall isn't... great? it's softer and lends itself to being a lot less, idk, spooky, but i think there are individual parts of the game that are pretty cool - the victorian stylings of ashford residence, the cabin on the island, etc. and before it sunk in just how fucking long this game was, some of the backtracking felt almost comfy - like a walking sim pure vibes game.
and then i beat the tyrant on the plane and claire went to antarctica. and then after another hour the perspective shifts and theres a whole other half to the game. okay jesus christ
plot's bombastic and ridiculous but it's a different bombastic and ridiculous than other titles - and i do think a lot of it is genuinely really fun because of it. alexia and alfred are goofy weirdos, the first meeting with neo wesker is fun, it's INSANELY contrived in a way that works in its favor because of how goofy RE is as a series already so all the plot beats are just seeing how quirky the writers can get with it
this game would probably benefit from a remake like a lot of code veronica defenders say - but i don't see why capcom would feel the want or need to when the source material just isn't quite there. better to move on to revamping one of the best-selling games in the series in RE5 rather than a complete overhaul of a game that most folks don't really care about - and for good reason
the overall pacing is bad - it's a 12 hour game that should only be around half its runtime
level design is wonky - you're either constantly backtracking from location to location or you're moving around an entire facility with no real way to get from point A to B concisely. it's an ordeal to grab one item needed for progression (in a game series about resource management and planning routes effectively!). comparing the maps in this to the RE1 mansion or the RE2 police station is such a stark contrast
for some reason the game gives you way too many bullets and resources? the way enemy placement is laid out encourages you to use them too. by the time you've explored a map once, you've killed all the zombies and then you're just running around empty corridors with no tension or need to plan ahead with your loadout - again, bad pacing. you can argue this can happen in the other classic REs but their level design guarantees youre not really visiting those same places over and over and over again. CV wants to be an action game but without all the mechanics to make that actually work
and even with that abundance of resources they never seem to be in the place where you actually need them - like, before boss fights?? i've seen more than one post here from people saying they had to restart the game completely because they ran out of healing items or explosive arrows or what have you (it all comes back to bad pacing...). to be fair - this can be mitigated by just rotating your saves but if it comes down to it that often that feels like bad game design on the devs' part
steve fucking sucks ass
the art direction overall isn't... great? it's softer and lends itself to being a lot less, idk, spooky, but i think there are individual parts of the game that are pretty cool - the victorian stylings of ashford residence, the cabin on the island, etc. and before it sunk in just how fucking long this game was, some of the backtracking felt almost comfy - like a walking sim pure vibes game.
and then i beat the tyrant on the plane and claire went to antarctica. and then after another hour the perspective shifts and theres a whole other half to the game. okay jesus christ
plot's bombastic and ridiculous but it's a different bombastic and ridiculous than other titles - and i do think a lot of it is genuinely really fun because of it. alexia and alfred are goofy weirdos, the first meeting with neo wesker is fun, it's INSANELY contrived in a way that works in its favor because of how goofy RE is as a series already so all the plot beats are just seeing how quirky the writers can get with it
this game would probably benefit from a remake like a lot of code veronica defenders say - but i don't see why capcom would feel the want or need to when the source material just isn't quite there. better to move on to revamping one of the best-selling games in the series in RE5 rather than a complete overhaul of a game that most folks don't really care about - and for good reason
This game has everything going for it Great visuals , one of the best soundtracks in the series and an extremely cheesy story and characters just the way I like my RE games. So How could they possibly fuck it up? well it all goes downhill the second you actually start playing.
From an really annoying section to where you have to drop all your items to continue for a short while only to have to pick them up one by one to the game lasting waaaaaaaaaaaaay more than it should.
You fight a Tyrant on a plane and I seriously thought that was the end of the game it seemed fitting and I was gonna say "hey that wasn't bad at all" only to discover that I'm still at the fucking halfway point so that was a fun discovery.
Steve.
It commits the cardinal sin of being extremely boring to get through even with all the positives I listed and it takes real talent to make that happen so good work capcom.
As much as I really hate people who say "yeah I "played" it I just watched a playthough on youtube" in this case It would be really hard for me to say "No actually play the game it's way better than just watching it" Fuck off.
From an really annoying section to where you have to drop all your items to continue for a short while only to have to pick them up one by one to the game lasting waaaaaaaaaaaaay more than it should.
You fight a Tyrant on a plane and I seriously thought that was the end of the game it seemed fitting and I was gonna say "hey that wasn't bad at all" only to discover that I'm still at the fucking halfway point so that was a fun discovery.
Steve.
It commits the cardinal sin of being extremely boring to get through even with all the positives I listed and it takes real talent to make that happen so good work capcom.
As much as I really hate people who say "yeah I "played" it I just watched a playthough on youtube" in this case It would be really hard for me to say "No actually play the game it's way better than just watching it" Fuck off.
Let's just say I'm a ghost, coming back to haunt your... dear brother.
Greatest of all time. Zenith of the medium. Hallmark of media. Gold standard of storytelling. Apogee of creativity. Vertex of invention. Crest of ingenuity. Pinnacle of innovation. Epic of epics. Legend among legends. Peak fiction.
Greatest of all time. Zenith of the medium. Hallmark of media. Gold standard of storytelling. Apogee of creativity. Vertex of invention. Crest of ingenuity. Pinnacle of innovation. Epic of epics. Legend among legends. Peak fiction.
holy shit, it's truly difficult to know where to even start with this trainwreck. part of me wants to just say that this is uniformly bad and not even bother with a post-mortem, because it's shockingly bad in so many ways. so many things that previous games got right (game length, difficulty balance, boss design) this game fucks up in tremendous ways. i would honestly be less critical of CVX if it hadn't been a RE game and the dev team had been unproven. CVX as a first outing would be remarkable in some ways (mostly graphically), and i could forgive a lot of the flaws as being beginner mistakes or otherwise growing pains. but as the fourth main entry (sixth if you're counting gaiden and survivor, which a lot of people don't) to the RE series, this is just sloppy and embarrassing.
easiest thing to nail this game to the cross over is the unannounced character swaps. you absolutely NEED to know when these are coming because inventory isn't shared if it's not in the storebox, meaning you could end up having most of your ammo on claire right before you switch to chris. it's a frankly baffling decision to make it forcibly integrated instead of doing something like RE2 and strictly isolating them. the only benefits you could get from doing the former is that the world is shared, and that only really comes into play in what the player does with rodrigo. considering how easily you run into a "i saved myself at riovanes castle and can't beat wiegraf" situation with this game, it's not worth it by any stretch of the imagination. i think if the game went further in the "two different characters exploring the same area" direction, you could justify how easy it is to softlock yourself with whatever positives that brings. as it is now though, the game has claire and chris explore the same settings at completely different times, so there's no opportunity for "character a does something that indirectly affects character b" like in RE2. it's all so wonderfully pointless in execution.
as far as the survival horror aspects go, it's just really rough goings in this game. enemies are at their most obstructive and annoying here; this is the entry that we can say finally killed the art of dodging enemies. the game throws so much ammo at you that you're foolish if you don't use it. the enemies themselves are also rotted in design. bandersnatches reach across entire rooms to damage you and go through walls/obstacles while you can't. hunters do a stupid amount of damage, take far more before they fall, and some can poison you now. and bats. yes, bats. it feels petty to complain about bats, but the few times they show up, if you don't have the lighter, they are fucking miserable to contend with. i think they don't even do THAT much damage, but they're so unbelievably frustrating and avoiding them is so cumbersome that it's just a comedy of errors any time they show up. a complete shitshow.
and you know what? cool, that's fine. silent hill games make a habit out of depowering the player and making them feel vulnerable because of an overwhelming amount of enemies. that's totally viable and i respect that design philosophy. the problem lies in that CVX does not intentionally do this. CVX wants you to feel powerful by slamming you with an excessive amount of ammo while simultaneously swarming you with a grating amount of enemies. again, i'm fine if the goal is "you're overwhelmed and need to think outside the box to survive", but it's literally just that you're playing exterminator with an extra large set of pests to clean up. lovely. i think the growing emphasis on combat in the RE games was always going to naturally lead to a situation like this, but i was still able to feel tension and resource management in 2 and 3. here, i ended up with an embarrassment of riches in both healing and ammo by the end, and any time i saw an enemy, it wasn't "should i engage this?" but instead a "all right, another rat to exterminate".
i think that's the damning flaw of CVX: it's more aggravating than difficult. enemy management is never truly dangerous, and the game gives you a truly stupid amount of first aid sprays to assure you that you're never in a large amount of danger. but mitigating threats, solving puzzles, backtracking several rooms at any given time. . . it starts to wear on you. the game itself is just obscenely long for a classic RE game, and by the end i was in the 30s on save count and still had plenty of ink ribbons leftover. i say that not to point to any problem with ink ribbon distribution, but more to say that the game was accounting for me to save even more than thirty times. the devil's advocate argument is that the game's giving you more ink ribbons than necessary to account for the fact that you could miss some (in the way that RE1 felt tight on ink ribbons until you learned where all of them are), but my counter is that the ink ribbon locations are extremely obvious most of the time. hell, how many times do you get a "typewriter with ink ribbons right nearby" situation in this game? i'm not saying that i wanted them to make saving harder; i'm saying that this is symptomatic of CVX's larger problem of being too bloated and not paced nearly well enough.
CVX isn't a particularly scary game, nor is it an interesting one. some of the lore behind the ashfords is minorly intriguing, especially when you get the full picture between alexander and his two children. but alfred is a one-note character (a sometimes amusing one-note, to be fair), and alexia is just whatever. why can she summon huge tentacles out of nowhere and has pyromancy? eh whatever who cares. she feels like a house of the dead final boss transplanted into the RE universe and the contradiction glares like a sore thumb. then again, this was the entry that decided to turn wesker into a superhuman whatever the fuck. if it was amusing, it'd be camp (see: RE5). but here? it's just. . . droll. anything fun that could be had with the premise or setting isn't, and character drama is played dreadfully straight. steve in general is such a wet blanket of a character that i'm all but hooting and hollering he never came back in another game (besides darkside chronicles).
i need to go back to harping on the gameplay a bit. there are infinitely respawning hunters in this game. the steve boss fight itself is like. . . look i can't say it's the WORST boss fight i've played recently because a. it's less of a fight and more of a "get the hell out of there" moment with an egregiously overpowered entity of damage and b. i'm doing a bitter mode replay of NMH2 and man, capital f Fuck new destroyman. but it still is worth stating that the "steve is transformed and trying to kill you D:" encounter is probably the most exceptionally shitty thing i've seen in the series up to this point. this game has a lot of moments like that, honestly. that moth hallway in the antarctic base has the artistic merit of that one episode of black mirror that ends with a guy getting sent trollface as radiohead plays. there's so many shitty rooms/encounters in this game, and it's relatively pointless to sit here and list every single one. i'm beating a dead horse here, but i need to stress how acutely shitty this game was to play on a room-by-room basis. i would state positives if i could genuinely find them.
i don't know if mikami and his dev team subordinates were being pressured by capcom to make a bigger and epicer RE game to follow in 3's footsteps of being bigger and more action-heavy. it certainly feels that way, and the game has not stood the test of time in that regard. it feels very "of its time" in potentially the worst way humanly possible. i've always wondered why the game plays snippets of the opening intro of claire raiding the umbrella building before you're about to start the game. that opening CG is nothing like the rest of the game and like, i'm here, i bought the game, you don't need to sell me on this false product. that lack of self-awareness and understanding is emblematic of the game as a whole. i don't know what it's trying to be, and whatever its goals are, it failed to accomplish them. i had a pretty terrible time playing this game, i fail to recommend it to anyone but the most diehard of RE fans, and i'm still shocked that mikami could've headed a project this bad. i'm officially a witness to why people stopped giving a fuck about RE's overarching plot or RE at all. a game this bad would've fucked me off of the series for a bit too, guys.
to quote my good friend casey, this game is a behemoth of shit.
easiest thing to nail this game to the cross over is the unannounced character swaps. you absolutely NEED to know when these are coming because inventory isn't shared if it's not in the storebox, meaning you could end up having most of your ammo on claire right before you switch to chris. it's a frankly baffling decision to make it forcibly integrated instead of doing something like RE2 and strictly isolating them. the only benefits you could get from doing the former is that the world is shared, and that only really comes into play in what the player does with rodrigo. considering how easily you run into a "i saved myself at riovanes castle and can't beat wiegraf" situation with this game, it's not worth it by any stretch of the imagination. i think if the game went further in the "two different characters exploring the same area" direction, you could justify how easy it is to softlock yourself with whatever positives that brings. as it is now though, the game has claire and chris explore the same settings at completely different times, so there's no opportunity for "character a does something that indirectly affects character b" like in RE2. it's all so wonderfully pointless in execution.
as far as the survival horror aspects go, it's just really rough goings in this game. enemies are at their most obstructive and annoying here; this is the entry that we can say finally killed the art of dodging enemies. the game throws so much ammo at you that you're foolish if you don't use it. the enemies themselves are also rotted in design. bandersnatches reach across entire rooms to damage you and go through walls/obstacles while you can't. hunters do a stupid amount of damage, take far more before they fall, and some can poison you now. and bats. yes, bats. it feels petty to complain about bats, but the few times they show up, if you don't have the lighter, they are fucking miserable to contend with. i think they don't even do THAT much damage, but they're so unbelievably frustrating and avoiding them is so cumbersome that it's just a comedy of errors any time they show up. a complete shitshow.
and you know what? cool, that's fine. silent hill games make a habit out of depowering the player and making them feel vulnerable because of an overwhelming amount of enemies. that's totally viable and i respect that design philosophy. the problem lies in that CVX does not intentionally do this. CVX wants you to feel powerful by slamming you with an excessive amount of ammo while simultaneously swarming you with a grating amount of enemies. again, i'm fine if the goal is "you're overwhelmed and need to think outside the box to survive", but it's literally just that you're playing exterminator with an extra large set of pests to clean up. lovely. i think the growing emphasis on combat in the RE games was always going to naturally lead to a situation like this, but i was still able to feel tension and resource management in 2 and 3. here, i ended up with an embarrassment of riches in both healing and ammo by the end, and any time i saw an enemy, it wasn't "should i engage this?" but instead a "all right, another rat to exterminate".
i think that's the damning flaw of CVX: it's more aggravating than difficult. enemy management is never truly dangerous, and the game gives you a truly stupid amount of first aid sprays to assure you that you're never in a large amount of danger. but mitigating threats, solving puzzles, backtracking several rooms at any given time. . . it starts to wear on you. the game itself is just obscenely long for a classic RE game, and by the end i was in the 30s on save count and still had plenty of ink ribbons leftover. i say that not to point to any problem with ink ribbon distribution, but more to say that the game was accounting for me to save even more than thirty times. the devil's advocate argument is that the game's giving you more ink ribbons than necessary to account for the fact that you could miss some (in the way that RE1 felt tight on ink ribbons until you learned where all of them are), but my counter is that the ink ribbon locations are extremely obvious most of the time. hell, how many times do you get a "typewriter with ink ribbons right nearby" situation in this game? i'm not saying that i wanted them to make saving harder; i'm saying that this is symptomatic of CVX's larger problem of being too bloated and not paced nearly well enough.
CVX isn't a particularly scary game, nor is it an interesting one. some of the lore behind the ashfords is minorly intriguing, especially when you get the full picture between alexander and his two children. but alfred is a one-note character (a sometimes amusing one-note, to be fair), and alexia is just whatever. why can she summon huge tentacles out of nowhere and has pyromancy? eh whatever who cares. she feels like a house of the dead final boss transplanted into the RE universe and the contradiction glares like a sore thumb. then again, this was the entry that decided to turn wesker into a superhuman whatever the fuck. if it was amusing, it'd be camp (see: RE5). but here? it's just. . . droll. anything fun that could be had with the premise or setting isn't, and character drama is played dreadfully straight. steve in general is such a wet blanket of a character that i'm all but hooting and hollering he never came back in another game (besides darkside chronicles).
i need to go back to harping on the gameplay a bit. there are infinitely respawning hunters in this game. the steve boss fight itself is like. . . look i can't say it's the WORST boss fight i've played recently because a. it's less of a fight and more of a "get the hell out of there" moment with an egregiously overpowered entity of damage and b. i'm doing a bitter mode replay of NMH2 and man, capital f Fuck new destroyman. but it still is worth stating that the "steve is transformed and trying to kill you D:" encounter is probably the most exceptionally shitty thing i've seen in the series up to this point. this game has a lot of moments like that, honestly. that moth hallway in the antarctic base has the artistic merit of that one episode of black mirror that ends with a guy getting sent trollface as radiohead plays. there's so many shitty rooms/encounters in this game, and it's relatively pointless to sit here and list every single one. i'm beating a dead horse here, but i need to stress how acutely shitty this game was to play on a room-by-room basis. i would state positives if i could genuinely find them.
i don't know if mikami and his dev team subordinates were being pressured by capcom to make a bigger and epicer RE game to follow in 3's footsteps of being bigger and more action-heavy. it certainly feels that way, and the game has not stood the test of time in that regard. it feels very "of its time" in potentially the worst way humanly possible. i've always wondered why the game plays snippets of the opening intro of claire raiding the umbrella building before you're about to start the game. that opening CG is nothing like the rest of the game and like, i'm here, i bought the game, you don't need to sell me on this false product. that lack of self-awareness and understanding is emblematic of the game as a whole. i don't know what it's trying to be, and whatever its goals are, it failed to accomplish them. i had a pretty terrible time playing this game, i fail to recommend it to anyone but the most diehard of RE fans, and i'm still shocked that mikami could've headed a project this bad. i'm officially a witness to why people stopped giving a fuck about RE's overarching plot or RE at all. a game this bad would've fucked me off of the series for a bit too, guys.
to quote my good friend casey, this game is a behemoth of shit.
Probably the most incredible RE game i've played, the few characters that are in this are all so great, the puzzles very tricky (thx to my friends who guided me otherwise i would've finished the game in 40 hours) but also greatly rewarding, and this game is full of mindblowing little details that makes the charm of this one, best save room music, best Claire, best Steve, and also the best code
This review contains spoilers
Resident Evil made a jump to a new console generation, and omg, the backgrounds scroll as the characters move now! It's still the fixed camera angle though which imo hasn't been effective as a horror tactic since 2 at the latest.
This game, man. Part of me wants to call it the best Resident Evil game up to its release, because it acts as a great sequel to 2, paying off Claire's story in that game (whereas 3 was just kind of a standalone game that didn't do anything for the lore as a whole, or even Jill's individual story besides just...she survived another zombie invasion). This game is WAY more character focused in general, with 2 human enemies who have prominent roles, including the return of Wesker himself. The tyrants in these games have always been mutated humans, but this is the first game where we see a character we've known and cared about (maybe) turn in to one. Like, personally I wasn't a big fan of Steve, no thanks to his English voice, but having him be a monster, even just for a minute, was a great dramatic turn.
Alexia is in a similar position to Birkin in 2, we never personally knew her as a human, but we hear her backstory so much that there's still a human element to her. But like Birkin by the time she actually comes into the story, she's a mutant and has no personality or lines.
But I think my favourite monster in this game has to be Nosferatu. This is all thanks to his great introduction where he's foreshadowed through notes you can find, then you first see him from the grating in the floor. But when you first meet him for real, he's coming up the stairs - your only escape route - through a thick cloud of fog. It's such a great moment that imo far surpasses the final boss who is just another "turns in to a huge blob of flesh, ooo scary".
Anyway, despite all this, I can't call it my favourite because the gameplay just isn't that good. There's good individual locations in this game, but the way they're all put together just feels so messy. There's no hub areas like most past games (except maybe 3), combined with huge scale buildings like the training facility that have you backtracking all the damn time. Combine this with the fact puzzles in this game tend to be way more obtuse and it's just a frustrating first time experience.
I imagine this game is way better on repeat playthroughs.
This game, man. Part of me wants to call it the best Resident Evil game up to its release, because it acts as a great sequel to 2, paying off Claire's story in that game (whereas 3 was just kind of a standalone game that didn't do anything for the lore as a whole, or even Jill's individual story besides just...she survived another zombie invasion). This game is WAY more character focused in general, with 2 human enemies who have prominent roles, including the return of Wesker himself. The tyrants in these games have always been mutated humans, but this is the first game where we see a character we've known and cared about (maybe) turn in to one. Like, personally I wasn't a big fan of Steve, no thanks to his English voice, but having him be a monster, even just for a minute, was a great dramatic turn.
Alexia is in a similar position to Birkin in 2, we never personally knew her as a human, but we hear her backstory so much that there's still a human element to her. But like Birkin by the time she actually comes into the story, she's a mutant and has no personality or lines.
But I think my favourite monster in this game has to be Nosferatu. This is all thanks to his great introduction where he's foreshadowed through notes you can find, then you first see him from the grating in the floor. But when you first meet him for real, he's coming up the stairs - your only escape route - through a thick cloud of fog. It's such a great moment that imo far surpasses the final boss who is just another "turns in to a huge blob of flesh, ooo scary".
Anyway, despite all this, I can't call it my favourite because the gameplay just isn't that good. There's good individual locations in this game, but the way they're all put together just feels so messy. There's no hub areas like most past games (except maybe 3), combined with huge scale buildings like the training facility that have you backtracking all the damn time. Combine this with the fact puzzles in this game tend to be way more obtuse and it's just a frustrating first time experience.
I imagine this game is way better on repeat playthroughs.
being so Normal rn because i finally had the stars align and made it through the game without any of my normal issues. i had only used herbs to heal, saved once at the disc change, and not died which was on the road to an S rank. i only thought i was too slow.
as it turned out i made it just in time (4:18 while the requirement was 4:30) but i died in the most embarrassing way.
instead of dying at any of the normal chokepoints (Nosferatu, the fucking cinder block, etc.) i failed during a scripted bit before the last boss because what is Code Veronica without one shit design decision after another. <3
none of this would have been as bad if the game wasn't such a behemoth of shit to deal with (each disc is pushing past the length of the other classic style RE games on its own) but that just stacks on top of the other baffling decisions.
will probably come back and do the second disc to go for the S rank someday as long as my save never gets lost but i just can't be bothered now.
as it turned out i made it just in time (4:18 while the requirement was 4:30) but i died in the most embarrassing way.
instead of dying at any of the normal chokepoints (Nosferatu, the fucking cinder block, etc.) i failed during a scripted bit before the last boss because what is Code Veronica without one shit design decision after another. <3
none of this would have been as bad if the game wasn't such a behemoth of shit to deal with (each disc is pushing past the length of the other classic style RE games on its own) but that just stacks on top of the other baffling decisions.
will probably come back and do the second disc to go for the S rank someday as long as my save never gets lost but i just can't be bothered now.
If you're an RE fan it'd be pretty hard to not love this game, it has everything you look for in that classic RE formula. Ridiculously cheesy and over-the-top dialogue and action scenes, great level design that is fun to traverse, clever puzzles, tense atmosphere and solid shooting mechanics.
Plus this game turned Wesker into a Matrix villain and that alone gives it bonus points.
Plus this game turned Wesker into a Matrix villain and that alone gives it bonus points.
I can totally see the many flaws this game has.
However, it was once my favorite RE and it holds a special place in my heart, for sure.
However, it was once my favorite RE and it holds a special place in my heart, for sure.
Dubbed the original Resident Evil 3, this game you take control of Claire Redfield one of the protagonists from Resident Evil 2.
this was the first game of the series to take place outside of raccoon city, what this game does well is add an atmosphere not seen before with eerie sound effect and slow opening doors at certain points with a heartbeat sound effect to really add the tension.
What really lets this game Down is the over the top backtracking which gives you a real sense of ohh i was only here 5 minutes ago and makes you feel like you are doing the same thing over and over the game overall is a good resident evil when you get over that but this really dents the gameplay and enjoyment overall.
What this game does do well is the OST probably up there as one of the best resident Evil ost's the musical score in this game is amazing.
to add further damage to this score, Steve one of the side characters/support becomes so unbearable it makes you wish you could kill him off yourself add to the fact he has a tendancy to make a move on Claire while she's asleep.....
overall i would say give the game a go if you havent played it before because its worth giving a try, beyond that its not a resident evil i'd return to play too often. 3/5
this was the first game of the series to take place outside of raccoon city, what this game does well is add an atmosphere not seen before with eerie sound effect and slow opening doors at certain points with a heartbeat sound effect to really add the tension.
What really lets this game Down is the over the top backtracking which gives you a real sense of ohh i was only here 5 minutes ago and makes you feel like you are doing the same thing over and over the game overall is a good resident evil when you get over that but this really dents the gameplay and enjoyment overall.
What this game does do well is the OST probably up there as one of the best resident Evil ost's the musical score in this game is amazing.
to add further damage to this score, Steve one of the side characters/support becomes so unbearable it makes you wish you could kill him off yourself add to the fact he has a tendancy to make a move on Claire while she's asleep.....
overall i would say give the game a go if you havent played it before because its worth giving a try, beyond that its not a resident evil i'd return to play too often. 3/5
I fucking soft locked myself.
I don't think I'm one of those people that likes Code: Veronica.
It's a lot of little frustrations. For the first chunk of the game it just feels like there's a lack of healing items. I spent a full hour on red health before finding a single green herb.
The save rooms are in really out of the way locations, necessitating the most backtracking of any RE. At least they give you an obscene number of ink ribbons (seriously I had like, 30 stockpiled by the game's end).
I don't find the environments very visually interesting and some of the fixed camera angles are downright annoying, deliberately hiding enemies until you round a corner and they're in your face.
The puzzles are probably my least favorite part. RE3 showed what they could do with very natural feeling puzzles. Use a wrench on a busted pipe, get a battery from a broken car, etc. Code Veronica has puzzles like: "stab a sword into an iron maiden to open it, revealing a roll of sheet music you use on the piano to open a slot machine that contains a sapphire ant statue." I leaned on a guide way more than the other entries, mainly so I knew which items I would need to take with me so I didn't have to backtrack to the save rooms.
The bosses are really underwhelming or otherwise downright frustrating. The Tyrant on the plane is awful, and the last boss is mostly just an annoying speed bump.
What Veronica does have going for it is a really cool story. The Ashford Twins are a delightfully bizarre pair of antagonists and nouveau Wesker is a great ham. The new, John Woo inspired cutscenes give the game it's own distinct flavor and very clearly signal I've entered the more action-oriented phase of the franchise.
The failure of the story is that it includes Steve Burnside. Steve Burnside is a 3 meant to be a love interest for Claire who's a 9. Steve Burnside says every line like you're giving his nipple a good twist. Steve Burnside unironically owns Gamestop branded clothing. Steve Burnside only chews Spearmint gum because peppermint is too sharp for him. Steve Burnside once posted a 4chan thread listing all the reasons he and the Columbine shooters would have gotten along. Steve Burnside once had to be rushed to the hospital because he poked a beached jellyfish thinking "the sting can't hurt that bad." When you tell Steve Burnside to stop talking with his mouth full he sneers and sticks his food-laden tongue out. Steve Burnside gave the Snyder Cut 5 stars on principal. Steve Burnside destroyed his alienware laptop trying to mine bitcoin. All of Steve Burnside's gamecube controllers are made by madcatz.
It's a lot of little frustrations. For the first chunk of the game it just feels like there's a lack of healing items. I spent a full hour on red health before finding a single green herb.
The save rooms are in really out of the way locations, necessitating the most backtracking of any RE. At least they give you an obscene number of ink ribbons (seriously I had like, 30 stockpiled by the game's end).
I don't find the environments very visually interesting and some of the fixed camera angles are downright annoying, deliberately hiding enemies until you round a corner and they're in your face.
The puzzles are probably my least favorite part. RE3 showed what they could do with very natural feeling puzzles. Use a wrench on a busted pipe, get a battery from a broken car, etc. Code Veronica has puzzles like: "stab a sword into an iron maiden to open it, revealing a roll of sheet music you use on the piano to open a slot machine that contains a sapphire ant statue." I leaned on a guide way more than the other entries, mainly so I knew which items I would need to take with me so I didn't have to backtrack to the save rooms.
The bosses are really underwhelming or otherwise downright frustrating. The Tyrant on the plane is awful, and the last boss is mostly just an annoying speed bump.
What Veronica does have going for it is a really cool story. The Ashford Twins are a delightfully bizarre pair of antagonists and nouveau Wesker is a great ham. The new, John Woo inspired cutscenes give the game it's own distinct flavor and very clearly signal I've entered the more action-oriented phase of the franchise.
The failure of the story is that it includes Steve Burnside. Steve Burnside is a 3 meant to be a love interest for Claire who's a 9. Steve Burnside says every line like you're giving his nipple a good twist. Steve Burnside unironically owns Gamestop branded clothing. Steve Burnside only chews Spearmint gum because peppermint is too sharp for him. Steve Burnside once posted a 4chan thread listing all the reasons he and the Columbine shooters would have gotten along. Steve Burnside once had to be rushed to the hospital because he poked a beached jellyfish thinking "the sting can't hurt that bad." When you tell Steve Burnside to stop talking with his mouth full he sneers and sticks his food-laden tongue out. Steve Burnside gave the Snyder Cut 5 stars on principal. Steve Burnside destroyed his alienware laptop trying to mine bitcoin. All of Steve Burnside's gamecube controllers are made by madcatz.
Steve was straight tweakin in this one tf wrong w that fool gahtdamn bro just nut in a storage closet and get the fuck outta there
"🤓🤓☝️ de hecho Resident Evil murió en Code Veronica, el resto del 4 al 6 son solamente juegos de acción, de Resident Evil no tienen nada 🤓🤓☝️"
Doing a Knife Only Run on this game is hilariously fun.