Rude Review
Resident Evil: Code Veronica X
Developers: Capcom, Nextech and Sega
Publisher: Capcom
Director: Hiroki Kato
Producer: Shinji Makami
Release Date: February 3rd, 2000
Genre: Survival Horror
Hello guys and girls and welcome to my second Rude Review!
This one will be focused upon a classic Resident Evil game in my opinion, one
game that scared me witless in my younger years and even to this day still
provides a proper challenge to play giving that survival horror isn’t exactly
my strong point! Let’s delve right into some gameplay of one of my childhood
games.
The introduction video has some very cool action, the run
from the helicopter (copied in the second Resident Evil film) and then the slow
drop and catch of the gun to kill almost everyone just makes you feel like
you’re taking over a boss-like character.
Ah, and here goes for a brief description of the menu screen. The menu
screen is made up of 4 different sections, ‘Exit’, ‘File’, ‘Map’ and ‘Item’. All
are pretty self-explanatory. You begin
with 8 equipment slots plus a ‘standard’ slot (usually your lighter). You check your health condition in the menu
alongside your inventory, your condition ranging from “fine” (green) to
“caution” (yellow and orange, orange being more severe) to “danger” (red) and
also poisoned (purple). The inventory management system, being able to check,
combine and discard items is one of value in a survival horror, as is having
limited equipment slots to put the player under pressure. The sheer terror you
feel when you look at your full inventory and know you need everything in there
but have no ammo left is overwhelming.
The way you monitor your health as well is also well implemented, adding
to the theme of survival horror. The controls do feel slightly awkward and
clumsy when playing, but the option to quick 180 degree turn to evade zombies
does give you an edge in combat (if only I had known about that when playing…)
and the annoying feature of not being able to move and shoot does make combat
much more difficult, perhaps this is a good thing as combat may be too easy if
you could evade zombies and shoot at the same time but it does lead to some
frustrating moments.
After playing the game for the most part of the day I
believe I have enough to finish off my review, otherwise it would end up into a
running commentary of me playing the game!
The in-game cinematic’s for Resident Evil: Code Veronica
X were simply put quite stunning in relative comparison to PS2 games back in
the day. The characters and background looked smooth, movement was fast and
tense, detail was in each and every character and the transition from gameplay
to cinematic was fluent. Now in my opinion, one of the key features that added
to the ‘scary’ of Resident Evil was the animations when you exited/entered a
door and walked down/up stair’s. The slow, steady, first-person walk down the
stairs not knowing what was waiting for you down below or through into the next
room was enough to scare me through and through when I was younger, actually
making me fear-quit (I’m sure I just made that up?) the game at points. Code Veronica doesn’t disappoint in this
aspect, however I will admit that in recent installations this aspect seems to
have been lost to favour a more fast-styled gameplay, one of which I don’t
approve for a classical Resident Evil game. You shouldn’t be kicking doors in,
you should be slowly creeping through them in-case there’s a horde of zombies
waiting on the other side, just for the sheer terror and tension you feel as
the door opens and you step through into darkness (those who have played the
early Resident Evil games can relate to what I’m saying). Now, the controls… How awkward are they to
use? I mean seriously? It’s okay if you have plenty of room… and aren’t near
death… and aren’t surrounded by zombies… and aren’t being chased by dogs… and
don’t have to manoeuvre through obstacles… yeah if you don’t have all of that,
the controls are great! Oh wait, this is a Resident Evil game. Crap. Yeah, the
controls will screw you over plenty of times when playing this game, in most
cases you don’t even need to kill the zombies you see, you can run right past
them (something which will be discussed later on) and totally avoid them. Trouble is, when you do that the zombies make
a wild lunge and cover like twice the distance they normally would walking and
usually catch you, taking a little nice bite-sized chunk back with them. The controls aren’t good for dodging and
weaving through zombie and god-forbid dogs and other enemy types in the game, but
then again this is Resident Evil, the controls are designed to make you hate
yourself, and your life, when playing this game series. One thing that I noticed when playing through
the game earlier on was just how nice the setting was, the prison was dark and
gloomy and rotten, adding on the zombies floating about and maniac dogs tearing
away at you the setting for the beginning of the game is quite immense. Then you reach the mansion and boy, does it
feel different! Posh, upper-class, and in a way safer. They did a good job with
the settings in this game, each setting has its own personal feel to it which
makes the player, me, very happy. You
know what frustrates me in Resident Evil? Y’know when you shoot a zombie, it
falls and you’re all like “Oh hey I’ve killed that guy now who’s ne-OH MY
FREAKING GOD HE’S CHEWING MY ANKLE!” yeah.
So very frustrating to ‘kill’ a zombie only for them to surprise
nomnomnom on you! It does add a false sense of security aspect to the game,
making you feel safe from one enemy then your sense of security is totally
stabbed in the back. Well, maybe not stabbed, but bitten maybe. It ties into the theme of survival horror in
a very fitting, yet frustrating, way.
Okay speaking of things that annoy me about this game…
Zombie re-spawning. I mean, seriously?
Where is the logic in that? You clear a room full of zombies, exit, re-enter,
and it’s suddenly full of zombies again.
The last time I checked zombies couldn’t open doors or climb through
windows or scale buildings, so what is the explanation for this? It doesn’t
even fit into the survival horror aspect because it’s just a total waste of
your ammunition. It doesn’t happen for
every zombie infested area, but when I played through earlier I came across two
areas where zombies simply re-spawned. Very frustrating, very illogical and a
disappointing feature. At least it
wasn’t in EVERY area of the game. The
puzzles in this game do make you (well, at least me, but then again I’d be
lying if I said I was the brightest of the bunch) think, ponder and frustrate
yourself due to the amount of walking from place to place and consideration of
item management. Very good aspect of the
game, requiring your inventory to have ‘x’ amount of spaces free for key plot
items. Simply having too much in your
inventory, could screw you right over.
Now onto the audio, more specifically the noises enemy’s make when you
are in the same area as them. The
creeping of the zombies, their moan for fresh blood and flesh, the running of
the dogs and their blood-thirsty growls, if you hear any of these things when
walking into an area you’re first though and only thought should be; “Sh*t.”
You then have to run through your entire inventory, ammo check, health items
check etc etc to determine whether or not you can risk the ammo by taking them
on or risk just doing the old run and dodge on them. The audio for the zombies was done very well,
and does a good job of making the player panic at the sound of it. As said before
that each setting gives off its own personal feeling to the player, the music
for each area also does the same. The
music is very fitting, creepy when needs to be and peaceful/relax full when
needs to be while also being able to make you scream in your head “GO GO GO!!”
I felt that the music was spot on for this game and a worthy mention. Another thing which was a success for the
game, I believe, was the save system.
The classical use of Ink Ribbons and Typewriters, scattered throughout
the game to save was a very clever and smart way to do things. Understandable how this couldn’t continue on
the further instalments such as Resident Evil 5 though, as the classical
Resident Evil began to fade. The threat
of running out of Ink Ribbons and being unable to save at a crucial point was
enough to make even the boldest of players to think twice about how much they
save, making the game even harder.
Hating to begin my next paragraph on a low-point, but the
voice acting for this game was utterly terrible. Okay at the beginning, but then as the game
goes on the voice-acting just gets so sh*tty it’s unbelievable. Cringe worthy voice-acting brings this game
down a notch in my eyes, as it’s hardly something you can ignore. Earlier on I
mentioned how it was sometimes better just to run through a horde of zombies
rather than mow ‘em down. Knowing when
to conserve your ammo is crucial in this game, in-fact crucial in any survival
horror and Code Veronica is no different.
If you take the time to shoot every single zombie you see, not even
counting the times you may miss a shot or shoot into the floor when finishing
them off, you’re going to burn through a lot of ammunition. Sometimes, discretion is the better part of
valour as you run like a wimp through the zombies screeching “Not it, not it!”
following this strategy I eventually ended up with 100+ handgun bullets, and
trust me this was soon reduced to roughly about 85 after one fight with roughly
3 or 4 zombies. Conservation of ammo is
crucial in this game if you want to survive, and the player knows this making
them panic when they have to shoot, worrying whether or not shooting now will
kill them later, or shooting now will save them. One
nice little implemented feature was the heartbeat during the door/stairs
animations, giving you a right feeling of creepiness, especially when you’re
injured and the heartbeat accelerates accordingly, attention to detail makes
Ruderz a very happy gamer. Just to
re-iterate – HORRIBLE voice acting. The
addition of side-packs, making your inventory size greater is a very useful
feature in this game. That’s two more
herbs, or two more slots to hold key plot items. I without the side-packs this game would be
nigh-on impossible.
This game, regardless of its age of 11 years nearly 12
now, still feels great to play. It still
has that classic Resident Evil feel that, without naming games, some recent
Resident Evil games seems to lack… You seem to hardly do any damage however,
the pistol takes roughly five shots to down a zombie, then perhaps 2 or 3 to
finish them off. 5 if they are a crawling zombie. That’s 8 bullets per zombie which can burn
through your ammo pretty quickly. The
guns, I feel, should have been made more powerful. I actually prefer the aiming system in recent
Resident Evil instalments to the ones in the earlier games, in Code Veronica
it’s almost impossible to get headshots unless they are right up close in
biting range as when you look up while aiming, you look UP, as in, praying to
god you survive UP and usually miss their head by miles. Aiming system could use a lot of improvement
in this game. When playing through this
game I was on a bridge, dodged past a zombie (like a boss) but he did a magic
lunge and caught me (not like a boss).
Button mashing to throw him off, when my character did throw him off he
went flying off the side of the bridge! Something I had no idea you could do in
this game, and now that you can do it it’s just that little bit more awesome to
see flying zombies being thrown over the side of a bridge for being just that
little bit too greedy for the flesh! The item box system, boxes in ‘Safe Rooms’
where you can store excess items is a good feature. I thought that if you stored items in one box
it wouldn’t transfer over to the next and you’d have to go traipsing back to
the original box to retrieve your items… Turns out I was wrong, surprise
surprise. I’m glad I was wrong though,
because that’s one less complaint about this game and one more compliment. There really is some awesome cut-scenes in
this game, and if you’re a fan of proper storytelling and good plotlines, then
this is one game you should try out! In-fact I’mma go out on a limb and say the
entire Resident Evil series. Apart from maybe Resident Evil 4. But let’s not
talk about ze 4. There is a nice use of switching between characters in this
game, keeps the player on their toes while also switching things up a
little. My final thing to say about this
game is that the character models for zombies and enemies are class – properly designed
to look mean and tough and scary and damn do they do their job.
Well there it is boys and girls, another Rude Review from
yours truly, Ruderz. Obviously I could
have potentially said more, but my reviewing style would have led it to being a
running commentary as I played through the game (which is basically what the
last three/four paragraphs were).
Overall, this game is definitely not the worst Resident Evil game in the
series but perhaps not quite the best.
Some features do let it down but overall gameplay is smooth, tense and
creepy and the game has an amazing storyline to follow. This is Ruderz and thank you for reading, the
Rude Review of Resident Evil: Code Veronica X.
Gameplay: 3/5
Graphics: 4/5
Soundtrack: 5/5
Storyline: 5/5
