Been awhile? Refresh your memory on why the hell I’m doing this here

RE 2 and 3 proceed Code: Veronica, read my thoughts on those games here

Resident Evil Code: Veronica (X) is the first RE game that I have come across that I really didn’t know what to expect when I began playing it. For the most part, the first few Resident Evil games seem to be known quantities within the video game world. You expect the tank controls, the infamous between room animations, cheesy dialogue and stories (even though that really only pertains to the original game), Chris, Jill, Leon, etc. And despite my fandom with the series years and years earlier, Code: Veronica seemed to be the one that I knew little to nothing about. (Now that I’ve beaten the game it is hard to remember what I “knew” before…) I’m pretty sure I heard it took place on Antarctica…. And honestly that is probably it. So because of this I was kind of excited to start the game. Sure in the build up to doing this I picked up on more things that are in it such as both Claire and Chris are the main protagonists, Wesker is involved somehow, twins are the bad guys and there may or may not have been some incest between them. CVX honestly was the first real RE experience where I wasn’t sure what the next story beat was going to be, and that made it incredibly exciting.

And for the most part, I enjoyed the (as the game said but had to be counting ideal time) 9+ hours I spent with the game. I did have some major issues with the gameplay (which I will get to later) but I would like to start off with the positives of the game. I was immediately impressed with how good and clear the visuals were. I played the game on the PS3, which if someone would like to enlighten me on how much they improved the game, I was impressed with what is now a 14-year-old game. I might argue that the 3D environments weren’t as atmospheric as the PS1 games and the static (but effective) backgrounds, but that being my only complaint is a huge bonus to at least the work they put into the game. I wish they cleaned up some of those CG cutscenes as they were incredibly blurry but now I’m just gripping just for the hell of it. And with the graphics, the gameplay was also absolutely approachable. Honestly, this was my 5^th RE game over the past two months, and I was already perfectly fine with the old tank controls, so I wasn’t expecting to be terrible or find it frustrating but for what it’s worth the game was a lot of fun to play (except for boss fights which we will talk about later). If anything it’s the advancements and chances that RE3 took not appearing in the gameplay is the disappointing part, but they were both developed at the same time so I can’t complain too much.

Now let’s get to the story. The trend I have seen with these games is that they tend to be back heavy with story, and to its credit CVX seemed to be the first attempt to right that. This leads to a more direct knowledge of what I should be doing next or where I should be headed rather than the previous games which for at least the first half of each game (excluding 0 which pretty much everything came back to me in some way or another) was a lot of wondering and putting puzzles together. Both strategies have their strengths and weaknesses, maybe when this endeavor I’ll go more into my thoughts but for right now I preferred the direct approach. Back on topic, all the characters were fun and engaging. Sure Steve had an annoying voice and seemed extremely childish (and Claire falling for him still doesn’t make sense, IT SHOULD BE YOU AND LEON CLAIRE!!!!), he was a fun character a played his part well. Wesker returning was fun and creates a bridge from 1 to 5 that I didn’t have when I played 5 back in 2009. Alfred’s reveal that he is crazy/split personality and was the one portraying his sister for the first half+ of the game was fun and honestly a chance at story telling that they hadn’t taken in the previous games. 2 was the perfection of the story and style of the first game, 3 is the one where they took chances with combat and gameplay, I’m willing to state that CVX is the story telling experiment and most of it hit for me and made it an incredibly enjoyable experience. It actually makes me excited to return to 4 in a few games as I can see a lot of parallels between CV and 4. As mentioned earlier, I don’t know how much my enjoyment is the fact that I knew very little about the game going in and thus everything was new and fresh, and I’m willing to bet that it did have a huge effect but it’s not effecting my mood in the slightest, I enjoyed the journey and really that’s what matters to me the most.

Alright, let’s talk about those boss battles, the time has come. Outside of the worm, every fight was frustrating and annoying in ways that hadn’t happened in the series up until this point, for me. This is where I would say that the RE3 combat style would’ve been nice but off the top of my head the only fight that would require the dodge would be the tyrant fight on the plane, every other one involved obnoxious poison, annoying enemies or situation that absolutely took enjoyment out of the fights. Oh I should use the sniper on Nosferatu? Well that’s impossible with the incredibly thick fog and his random spraying of poison all over the place. Wait the magnum isn’t effective against Alexia’s queen, pod, ass-annoying form? Isn’t the magnum supposed to be the end all be all weapon outside of the rocket launcher? Is that lunging attack from the tyrant IMPOSSIBLE to avoid? Or is that just me? The other games had tough bosses, but I never had to try more than once or twice to figure them out. CVX has several bosses that easily took 30+ minutes to figure out, and personally that kills, KILLS precious momentum for me when it comes to games. If your final boss is that tough, fine, cool, understandable, but most of the bosses throughout the game I had this issue, and sorry that can’t be on me that many times. For every boss that I mentioned, I had to go to the internet to see if I just wasn’t getting the concept or if I was just not understanding what I was supposed to, that’s bad game design and sad to see that in an HD version they wouldn’t at least try a fix those parts that seem incredibly broken. God if they only gave you more room to run around in the Alexia second form I might not have even gone this far but that was what broken me and showed this glaring issue to me in its full glory. Alright I’m done, I can’t go on, I have turned to negative on a game that for the most part I fully enjoyed outside of a few bits and pieces. For anyone who might play this for the first time, SAVE ONE B.O.W. GERNADE FOR AT LEAST THE TYRANT FIGHT ON THE PLANE AND ALEXIA POD/QUEEN MUTATION, something I wish I didn’t waste all 3 on the first tyrant encounter, someone should’ve explained what they hell those things were.

Gallery

Well that’s about all the rantings I had. I’m sad it took so long to beat the game, I originally started on June 8^th, but a bunch of stuff came up and kept delaying me playing the game over and over again. Overall I really did enjoy the game and out of the 5 RE games that I have played, I sadly have to put 0 as my least favorite out of all of them. If you read my (pre and post 0) blogs you know that I have a bunch of nostalgia for that game, but it honestly is the one I have enjoyed the least so far compared to the rest. CVX was a fun ride, ultimately I don’t know if I would ever play it again unless they did a full on REmake for it.

Side note: I’ve had a hard time trying to find what was specifically added to CVX that wasn’t in the original version, if anyone could explain specifically that would be most appreciated.

Now it’s onto the rail-shooters the Umbrella Chronicles and the Darkside Chronicles. I currently plan to play them both consecutively and then do a blog with both of them unless I’m absolutely floored with the material/experience of one of them that I need to write a blog immediately. Going to say that probably doesn’t happen but you never know. I also hope to recruit the wife to play these with me (they have 2 player mode don’t they?), but between you and me, I bet she bails every time I try and play with her.

On to…

EDIT 6/27/15: Fuck those railshooters. They are unplayable (shockingly) on easy with a controller. I'm not going to buy a PS Move or get the wii versions so I'm removing them from my series playthrough. Maybe some day when I get a motion controller but god that was a frustrating hour I gave the games a chance.

ACTUALLY moving on to....or read my thoughts about how great RE4 is here