Let me just start by saying that Resident Evil: Code Veronica is a great game that may have been released a bit ahead of its time. And in allowing me to explain that, let's go back in history to the early 2000s.
Capcom has just released RE3 for PlayStation, while another group is working on what is then considered a 'sidestory' for Sega called RE: Code Veronica. Despite that, the series producer has ambitious plans for it: he uses the development time and Dreamcast hardware to their fullest to deliver a game a year later that has some great innovations and fresh story ideas. So much so that this 'small project' is considered by many to be superior than the official threequel. It happens. The Lion King was supposed to be a little movie to keep Disney's 'team B' busy, while 'team A' would knock it out of the park with Pocahontas. However, history decided otherwise.
It's no secret that technological innovations can come in quick succession. Barely two years later, the same company and producer release a remake of the first game on the GameCube. It features nearly photorealistic graphics, genuine shocks, much improved voice acting and an amazingly creepy sound design. It was a technological leap that is almost mind-boggling. Within 6 years, the series had matured into a realistically looking interactive horror movie that made the previous four games almost look like an animé comic book by comparison.
RE:CV was released just prior to that revolution, right before I got hooked on the series with said remake which I thoroughly loved. l took it upon myself to play the rest of the series as well, and despite signs of ageing, there was enough to like in the earlier installments. Especially RE:CV made good use of a 3D-engine that allowed more camera movements instead of just static angles, and a bold new direction in story. But still, how would it have been had it debuted on the GameCube?
With a new direction comes a change in surroundings. Producer Shinji Mikami (always good for a major revolution within the series) decided to leave the familiar environment of Raccoon City, and injected the game with influences from European gothic horror. We end up in places that look like concentration camps, airfields and Antarctic research bases, which contrast pleasantly with lush palaces and private mansions in Louis XIV style. As with any good RE game, the surroundings almost become a character in their own right.
Most previous RE games weren't too heavy on narrative, with most of the story told through scattered files and the occassional cutscene. However, CV is a genuine operetta of plot, drama and scripted events, with a corporate power struggle, betrayal and a lot of family drama at the very heart of it. It features some familiar faces, old enemies, but it introduces one of RE's most notorious villains, Alfred Ashford. This maniac and his disgraced family tend to turn up at unexpected moments in the story to hunt you down, which provides the game with welcome moments of adrenalin-pumping tension whenever the traditional shocks or jump scares falter a bit. Diving into the mad history of the Ashfords fuels the entire story, where you get unexpected help from time to time, leading to a shocking third act that plays the emotions like a beautiful but tragic symphony.
The story alternates its focus between siblings Claire and Chris Redfield, which perfectly supports a nice change in gameplay. RE2 already experimented somewhat with a complementary A and B scenario, but in RE:CV, what happens in one storyline directly and indirectly affects the other. Great use is made of this in the location design: Claire may be able to access some areas and not others, but due to story progression and scripted events, the maps can be completely different in Chris' scenario, which makes the mandatory back-tracking a lot less tedious.
For the rest, not too much has changed. Zombies, Cerberus dogs and Hunters and are still the main enemy, with an occassional new creature (like those pesky yellow Bandersnatches) just begging to be put out of its misery by a blast from your shotgun. The horror game clichés are still pretty much adhered to: vital objects just "happen" to be in a corner of a room full of corpses that just "happen" to wake up when you grab it, and rooms that you've cleared are suddenly sprawling with undead life when you need to revisit them. Every now and then, there is a boss fight that forms a good challenge, but I only found the one in the back of the plane and the one in the finale to be genuinely memorable. Fortunately, the game's creepy score is top-notch, and one of the reasons why you're sometimes afraid to proceed.
As I said, this game is easily the best-looking of the first four RE games, but knowing that there was a graphical revolution just two years away, that makes CV paradoxically having aged a bit worse than the games that came before it. It is just too bad that this game couldn't also benefit from that amazing graphical overhaul that the remake got. If it had, it would have played and looked really amazing.
Although not my favorite installment in the series, I have to admit that this is one that stuck with me. I have played it at least three times to relive that descent into the Ashford family's madness, and I recently even downloaded and played it on the PS4, so I guess that makes it a memorable one, despite its limitations. And who knows? Now that RE2 and RE3 have gotten a full HD reimagination, we may expect something like that for RE: CV as well. I await it patiently...
