Resident Evil: Code Veronica X on PS4
3 Months After The Raccoon City Incident..
Since the revival of the Resident Evil series, the franchise celebrated a huge win for its twentieth year with last years Resident Evil 7, celebrated in another release of DLC material including End Of Zoe, and Not A Hero. While Resident Evil won back the fans that went astray after their jump to more shooter style games in 4-6, 7 took the risk of first person controls and less enemies and more puzzles- sending their more action shoot em to The Umbrella Chronicles spin off.
Resident Evil: Code Veronica X is a special sort of port native to the PlayStation 2 and Dreamcast area that is a half step in the story between the events of the Resident Evil Story, taking place three months after the events of Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3, when Raccoon City was eventually nuked to avoid the spread of the T Virus infection. In the events of Code Veronica, Claire Redfield is taken to an island with another survivor whom she must team up with named Steve as they work to outwit their captor Alfred Ashford, heir to one of the founders of the Umbrella Corporation. The second part of the narrative allows players to be Chris Redfield who is meanwhile in Antarctica after our old nemesis Albert Wesker. It comes about that several people have been exposed to the new T Veronica virus which proves to be inherently unstable.
True to the cannon of the previous games, Code Veronica fills in a lot of the meantime between Raccoon City and where we start seeing Leon take over as the main protagonist in 4, and members of STARS disband to other agencies such as the BSAA.
Code Veronica has some of the most interesting story in the Resident Evil series when it steps aside from the Raccoon City incident and the events of the Spencer Mansion showing the truly global hold that Umbrella Corporation and their affiliates have in games to come.
The Redfield siblings fill in the gaps of how far spread the Umbrella Corporations reach expands between the events of Resident Evil 2 and 3 up until the events of Resident Evil 4.
The Redfields VS The Ashfords
I don't have a good reason that I never played Resident Evil: Code Veronica in its hay day. When the original three games came out for PlayStation, I had the the PS, and eventually the PS2, but due to a friend that that knew how to install a mod chip, I was able to play burned copies of newly rented games as soon as I owned a CD burner. With backwards compatibility,I played the heck out of the first three games, and for some reason Code Veronica, was one of those titles that I planned to get a burned copy of and sit down and play one day but when I needed a quick fix I would do a speed run of the Spencer Mansion or tear down the streets of Raccoon City in 3 and hide out from Nemesis, just because I connected more with my Resident Evil crush Jill Valentine more than any of the other characters. I just really connected with Jill, and maybe it was that I didn't give Claire a fair go that I only played 2 a handful of times.
If that is what drew me away from wanting to play this seemingly "in the meantime adventure of the Redfields", I'm not sure and I am sorry for it as the story is rather intriguing especially concerning the Ashford twins and almost parallel to that of Lisa Trevor, worked into the Remaster of Resident Evil. the experimentation that even founders of Umbrella were willing to do on themselves was frightening.
The Ashford Twins are astounding in what happens to them under the effects of the T Veronica virus. While their business is life itself, Umbrella sees no harm in experimentation on their own family and the twins are experimented on early in life by their father and grandfather who worked as virologists for Umbrella. Alexia Ashford froze herself to slow the deterioration of the T Veronica virus, meanwhile Alfred simply took over his sister's personality as the virus ate at him and made him more and more unstable. Eventually Alfred is killed and Alexia is awoken at the end of the game.
Newer Consoles And Tank Controls
I would love to see a remastered version of Resident Evil: Code Veronica X after getting to finally play though the entire game on the PlayStation 4. However, anyone that has ever played old games through PlayStation Now, or bought old titles where the controls were brought back up to current standards, playing through Code Veronica using only the directional pad and old tank controls was like trying to unlearn everything I know about modern gaming.
I kept wanting to do things I don't even think about now in gaming like pan the camera angle or, not assign everything the same action button, or use the triggers and bumpers, and analog sticks like I have been trained to do or every game past my gaming infancy so I spent the first hour of the game trying to unlearn everything I have come to expect and put myself back in the position of how I played a Resident Evil title in 1999. Trying to aim around a corner was a nightmare and I more often than not got an enemy to chase me so the camera angle was straight on.
I went back to my old favorite tactic of the early games dodging as many enemies as I could but for some reason Code Veronica doesn't give Claire as much maneuverability as I felt as I had with Chris or even playing an earlier title as Jill. I am trying to remember in 2 if Claire has been just as clunky trying to doge or if this was something I projected on her as she was just a civilian and they were STARS.
As I never played through the first version of Code Veronica before this port to PS4, I am unsure if the lack of herbs, bullets, and places to save as the Claire section endlessly backtracks between the prison and palace, a lot more than what Chris seems to have to go through. Don't get me wrong that items were always sparse when it came to the earlier games, but I had to pull up an IGN walk-through to see if I was just missing items on Claire's campaign due to the fixed camera angles and how dark the screen was or if they just weren't there.
I understand that her sections of the game at the beginning were smaller locations but with her lack of really being able to dodge effectively and the space between getting her the first gun and ammo between the exit of the prison where I first met Steven, and then having to do the entire outside, the submarine, the palace, the second location of the palace where Alfred was shooting at me with only finding three more herbs along the way, I spent most of the game with my health in the crimson and by the time I limped to descending the stairs to the first save room in about forty minutes of the game, it took a good ten tries to make it as my last check point kept restarting me in the palace which was the was only save and would force me to keep doing nearly an hour or game over and over and over. I don't really remember that being a problem in any of the other early games.
As we wait for the remake of Resident Evil 2, and how I hope for Nemesis as well, I would welcome an update to Code Veronica as well for the PlayStation 4 generation. This is a great game and my only complaints are that there was no configuration to change to modern controls.
