Against The Grain - Resident Evil Code: Veronica Retrospective
YouTubers hate this game, I fight back
Resident Evil Code: Veronica is the black sheep of the classic survival-horror entries in the RE series.
If you open YouTube at this moment 80% of the video essays and reviews you’ll find will be negative or at least have the reviewer declaring that the game is ‘deeply flawed’ or ‘not their favourite.’ Furthermore, it was (for a time) exclusive to a console that was on shelves for less than 2 years in the West and in constant shortage in Japan.
The one that nobody’s played, the one with a dodgy PS2 port, the one that’s too long, the one that’s too hard: these were my impressions of Code: Veronica before I tried the game for myself, except… I loved it. I don’t say that to be a contrarian either. Resident Evil Code: Veronica is actually my second favourite game in the series behind REmake on the Gamecube and in this post, as I do my annual revisit, I’d like to critique it with a bit more compassion than most, explain what I love about this game and what a potential remake needs to do with it.
Background
It’s common knowledge in the Resident Evil community that Code: Veronica was supposed to be bear the Resident Evil 3 moniker; Veronica is a direct sequel to RE2 whereas Nemesis was not, RE3: Nemesis was markedly more action-focused but Veronica marches to a more traditional survival horror beat (with some twists.) According to Shinji Mikami himself, it’s thanks to Sony and Capcom needing to put them: their biggest console benefactors first that Veronica lost out.
What I had no idea about before researching this review is that Code: Veronica also came about partially due to Capcom’s pity for Sega fans.
Listen, I really like the Sega Saturn and find its technical shortcomings to be overemphasised and the quality of its library to be downplayed but there’s no doubt that the console was a nightmare to develop for and on average, its games don’t look quite as good as those on the PlayStation unless they’re 2D. I bring this up because Resident Evil 2 was planned for the console and spent some time in development but the process proved too difficulty (and too late in the console’s life) to be worthwhile. The decision was eventually made to develop an entirely new game for Sega hardware.
Code: Veronica doesn’t differ massively from the original trilogy in terms of gameplay, only instead of two separate campaigns, you play one long story as the two siblings Redfield and you have some pretty cool dual-wield guns that can target 2 enemies at once. Where Code: Veronica really differs is in the technical aspects.
This was the first game in the series to abandon static backgrounds in favour of fully-3D environments giving Veronica a unique look all of its own; instead of swapping between background images, the fixed camera pans smoothly to follow the player, it’s a great evolution of the fixed-camera perspective.
Code: Veronica launched in different months of Spring 2000 for the Dreamcast only in North America, Japan and PAL, with us in Europe and the Commonwealth getting it last as always. The game was ported to all the other consoles bar Xbox in 2001 following the Dreamcast’s demise but those version are… mixed to say the least.
Version Rundown
Code: Veronica is the game I bought a Dreamcast for and I’m seriously glad I did because this is now one of my top 3 favourite consoles and I’ve amassed a pretty sizeable collection for Sega’s twilight machine.
1: Shenmue 2
2: Code: Veronica
3: Soul Calibur
My top 3 Dreamcast games for the 2 people interested, also you should play Bangai-O, that game is really underrated.
I started with (and still own) the PS2 port: Code: Veronica X but that version of the game looks seriously ugly and introduces a level of motion-blur I can only describe as Pikmin on the Gamecube level. It’s horrible. The handful of extra cutscenes add very little to the overall experience too, aside from a few deliciously hammy lines such as “I despise Chris!”
I had no plans to grab a Dreamcast at the time but while mulling over the idea of getting one to play a version of this game that didn’t look like Vaseline mixed with dirt I discovered a bunch of other games of interest, inevitably I ordered myself the console, ended up loving the unfettered Code: Veronica and getting so hooked on Shenmue I shelled out £80 for a good condition, complete in box Shenmue 2 and express delivery. I don’t regret that one bit, everyone needs to play Shenmue 1 and 2 at least once.
Today, you can get Code: Veronica on PS3, maybe Xbox 360 if you take to the high seas (that version is unlisted) and the game is available on PS5 I believe via the PS+ service but don’t quote me. The Dreamcast version and the Gamecube version are generally considered the best, though I choose to play on the Dreamcast because…
There we go, I snuck the GIF in.
What’s especially neat about this version is that Claire’s health is displayed on the tiny VMU screen, I play at night with headphones in my Trinitron so it’s not much of a feature but if playing horror games in the day is your thing, you’ll be able to look at the unlit LCD and see how banged up you are.
Je Suis Redfield
Code: Veronica picks up three months after Resident Evil 2, using the note in Chris’s Diary in the S.T.A.R.S Office you find in that game, Claire has followed her brother to Umbrella’s HQ in Paris where she mounts a one-woman raid on the building.
As anyone with a brain could have predicted, Claire’s mission goes tits up and she winds up getting captured by the pharmaceutical giant, who ship her off to Rockfort Island: a remote gulag surrounded by ocean in the far Southern Hemisphere complete with its own research facility, mansion and military base. Why not just blow her brains out? I don’t know. While Claire is in captivity, the island comes under assault by unknown forces causing a T-Virus leak and another outbreak, it’s then that a wounded guard lets Claire go.
Something I always like about Resident Evil is that Umbrella’s underlings are rarely ever given the 2 dimensional villain treatment and instead are always treated like real people. Annette Birkin in RE2 was morally twisted but devoted to her husband and Rodrigo: the guard who sets Claire free, does so out of a shared humanity and because how could it get worse? He’s wounded anyway, if Claire killed him it wouldn’t be a worse fate than what awaits outside.
Code: Veronica certainly has a weaker premise than the previous games in the series and I never feel that Claire goes through much development in this game, however, it makes up for these shortcomings with variety and a really fresh location.
The entire series thus far (and Resident Evil 3, which released less than half a year before Veronica) took place in and around Raccoon City: around gothic buildings, liminal manor houses and ruined streets but Code: Veronica has a much more military feel with its barracks, training facility and areas with discarded vehicles and crates. Even this game’s mansion area connects itself to the military theme nicely with memorabilia and vintage weaponry on display.
Rockfort Island is a fantastic location, one of my favourites and yet we never see any signs of battle or shelling despite it having been recently attacked, if that hotly rumoured 2027 remake turns out to be real then I hope they double down on this aspect and we find a lot of spent casing, ruined tanks and the like sitting about; a stupidly elaborate puzzle to detonate a piece of unexploded ordinance would be a very Resident Evil way of progressing.
The New Millennium
The Dreamcast reminds me a lot of modern Nintendo consoles, it undercut the release of its competitors by a full 2 years (in Japan at least, the West didn’t see it until 1999) and in terms of its technical prowess, the console is something of a half-step forward, excelling in a few specialised areas to fit Sega’s uses but not on the same level in others.
The PS2 had a much better CPU and RAM (for those who understandably don’t pay attention to tech jargon, this essentially means that PS2 games could be bigger and more complex) but the Dreamcast shared a lot of hardware with Sega’s Naomi arcade board and had Windows CE built in, so it always had the best versions of PC and Arcade games; Dreamcast games looked better than PS2 games of its era because the GPU (graphics brain) is actually more powerful and the console compresses textures better but the PlayStation 2 was on the market longer so its capabilities were able to be fully realised.
But why am I waffling on about specs? Well, it’s because Code: Veronica looks nothing like other games in the series and that can be a positive or negative based on your preference.
(My apologies for the dubious screenshots, it’s hard to find them from original hardware and I don’t have the equipment to take my own. I’m pretty sure some of these are from the PS2 version, they look duller than on Dreamcast.)
On one hand, Code: Veronica’s character models and facial animations honestly look better than most PS2 games, it has that rich colour palette that only Sega’s hardware delivered, textures are detailed and animations are a huge step up from the PlayStation; whip out the lighter in a dark room to see some impressive lighting effects.
On the other hand, environments are much less detailed than the static backgrounds of old, character models have painted-on gore rather than removable limbs and chunks of flesh, some of the larger areas can have render fog and Code: Veronica never really does anything smart with its camera angles, the scares are all pretty telegraphed. The tension of knowing when you pick up those Handgun Bullets something bad will happen is a kind of fear in itself but I prefer to be surprised, it’s hard to be afraid of a situation I have complete control over.
On a technical level? Veronica is undoubtedly better looking but some may feel a lot of charm has been lost with the switch to full-3D, I don’t have strong opinions on the matter, come to your own conclusions.
An area where I do have strong opinions though is the soundtrack, damn, this is a fantastic score.
A Moment Of Relief is my favourite Save Room track in the entire series. It’s so relaxing, melancholy and hopeful all at the same time. Full disclosure: this song has been the soundtrack to the vast majority of articles I’ve ever written on Substack, whether I’m at my Dreamcast sorting through green and red herbs or tapping away on here, this song always sets me straight.
Making the trip all the way from the prison area to the palace: past dogs, zombies, fire and destruction and entering the eerily quiet interior with this song playing is a vivid memory I have of my first playthrough. It’s so mysterious and the piano gives it a kind of aristocratic edge, very in-keeping with Veronica’s villains.
The Castle’s soundtrack is wonderfully gothic, I just love the piano in this game’s soundtrack and the organ makes it distinctly European in feel.
Gone-Off Filling
A lot of people, crude as this is, would probably call Code: Veronica a bit of a shit sandwich: it looks good, it plays well but the game’s design and especially its story put a bad taste in a lot of people’s mouths. I have some counter points and opinions of my own so let’s get to it.
First of all: the difficulty. Code: Veronica has a reputation as being one of the hardest Resident Evil games. There are a few reasons people struggle: you don’t get the Grenade Launcher for a good 2+ hours, meaning that for about a quarter of the game, your only offensive options are the Knife which has a high skill-ceiling, the Handgun which requires a lot of ammo to put a zombie down, the Crossbow which is almost useless without crafting Gunpowder Arrows or the M-100P pistols which are limited use with no refills, scaring first-time players off using them liberally; Claire can only use the Shotgun in one specific area and can’t take it with her.
Making this more of an issue is the sheer number of enemies you often have to deal with and how most areas end up being repopulated if you leave for a while. Long gone are the days of the Spencer Mansion with only 2 zeds to a room.
I’m not going to defend the game entirely, Veronica does go overboard with the enemy count and I remember feeling really up against it on my first playthrough; there’s a lot of stuff you just can’t see coming (more on that later) which makes the initial run a serious challenge but if you play Code: Veronica after reading my review then I would advise you to kill any dogs you find with the M-100P dual pistols to spare your healing items, don’t be too afraid to use up your handgun bullets on crowds because they’re quite abundant and don’t waste your other weapons on the Bandersnatches, they go down quick to Gunpowder Arrows though to be honest, only the ones inside the Palace are worth killing in my opinion; if you get good with the Knife then it is super overpowered, I recommend practising with it but don’t use it unless you’re facing only 3 zombies or less.
There’s also the infamous filter that is the Tyrant fight on the cargo plane once you leave Rockfort Island for the game’s second location: Umbrella’s Antarctic Base. If you aren’t clairvoyant on a first run and don’t know to save the Gas Rounds for this encounter then it can be torturously difficult to beat this boss. Absolutely inexcusable design.
Another issue people tend to beat Code: Veronica over the head with is its supposedly high amount of backtracking and an apparently brutal trip back to the first room of the game… and this is where I start to disagree.
Rockfort Island is basically arranged in a straight line: the Prison leads to the Iron Bridge, the Iron Bridge leads to the Palace and the Palace leads to the Castle but the Iron Bridge has a fork in the road where you enter the Training Facility and the Palace has a sick submarine lift that leads to the Airport, so the connections look something like this:
Castle
|
Palace → Airport
|
Iron Bridge → Training Facility
|
Prison
This presents 2 points of friction: firstly, you’re supposed to run from the Iron Bridge and head straight to the Palace after you leave the Prison, which leads on to the Airport where you get an ID Card to use back at the Training Facility but some players on their first time (like I did) can enter the Training Facility first instead. You can still pick up some goodies here and make some progress but inevitably, you’ll hit a wall and have to head back outside. If you then take the intended route at the Palace you can end up having to go back ‘all the way’ to the Facility but the journey doesn’t take that long; this is standard Resident Evil fare, perhaps it feels like a longer journey when not within the confines of the Mansion or the RPD?
Regardless of how I feel, a lot of players take issue with this, so in a potential remake I think it needs to be made clear (or perhaps enforced) that the player goes to the Palace and Airport first, an extra key for the door to the Training Facility would be a pretty easy way to solve this issue, or perhaps Steve could unlock the way by doing something other than being an annoying twat (more on him later.)
The second point I have a bit more sympathy for but I still think the irritation of this backtrack is overstated.
At the beginning of the game when Rodrigo sets Claire free, it’s made clear that he’s in need of Haemostatic Medicine for his wounds and that you should keep an eye out for some to bring him later. You don’t find this medicine until a good 2 hours in, towards the end of the Training Facility, necessitating a backtrack all the way to Claire’s cell: literally the first room in the entire game. Technically you don’t need the Lockpick he trades you to finish the game but without it you can’t upgrade the Handgun or get some other useful goodies.
You need to go back to the Prison anyway after visiting the Castle but if players decide to give Rodrigo the Medicine before going there, this turns into two trips and might have you going through the Castle and the Prison’s underground areas without the Lighter, which is a serious pain because the Lighter keeps away the bats which sap your health.
Some more railroading would certainly fix this issue, maybe in the remake they’ll contrive in a stalker enemy like always that pushes you to the Castle but to be honest… I sort of enjoy the fact that you can screw yourself over a bit. It’s not fair that you can’t see the need to repel more bats coming but a big reason I love this genre is that poor decision making is consistently punished, if they work out a way to have this be a stumbling block you can see coming, I wouldn’t be against keeping the Lighter for Lockpick trade in.
Speaking of trades, let’s talk about Chris briefly. Claire and Chris actually share the same pool of items through the Item Box, the trouble is, when you switch characters about 60% through the game (something that happens with zero warning) the items you had equipped aren’t in the box, this means that yet again, without clairvoyance, you can be put in a situation where you have nothing to play with and need to reload a past save to rectify the mistake, or possibly even start the whole game again.
If and when Code: Veronica is remade, these moments need to be explicitly telegraphed or the items you had equipped before the switch need to be contrived back into the box, perhaps that could be a helping hand for the Standard difficulty setting, with Hardcore mode working how it did in the original?
Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3: Nemesis were both significantly more linear than Jill’s campaign in Resident Evil 1: the default version of that game, I have to guess that they were trying to reintroduce some non-linear progression into Veronica but it’s really hampered by the map being arranged virtually in a straight line. Resident Evil 1’s non-linear design was entertaining because you could get from one wing of the Spencer Mansion to the other in about 30 seconds if you didn’t find anything.
In the Remake, the areas after the Prison should all be interconnected in a manner similar to RE2 2019’s Sewers and RPD, or Dark Souls’ shortcuts.
It’s Getting Silly
Now the gloves are coming off.
I love Code: Veronica and I can sit and defend or attempt to justify its design choices all day long but the one area everyone can agree was insanity is the plot; Code: Veronica is where Resident Evil jumped the shark and it didn’t un-jump that shark for another 16 bloody years.
It goes without saying that from here on I’ll be spoiling the plot for this game but believe me, you’re not missing out on much more than a good laugh.
So… Rockfort Island has long been something of a private fief for the Ashford Family with Edward Ashford having been one of the 3 founding fathers of Umbrella. His son, Alexander Ashford takes samples from the body of Veronica Ashford: the greatest of the dynasty and the object of his obsession, for a cloning project. This project results in the birth of a pair of twins: Alfred and Alexia, so far, so Metal Gear Solid. I told you in the last retrospective these franchises cross pollinated, I was serious.
Time passes and it becomes clear that Alfred is a relatively normal human being intelligence-wise but Alexia is a true prodigy with unrivalled intelligence and beauty, rising rapidly through the ranks of Umbrella, the details of the twins’ birth are hidden in a secret room in Umbrella’s Antarctica base by Alexander, where the second half of the game takes place. Alfred finds this room and flies into a fit of rage when he discovers the truth behind his and Alexia’s birth and how he is essentially the runt.
Alexander meets a horrendous fate and you can encounter him in-game in a state only to be described as less than human.
Alexia’s experimentations on Alexander provide vital data for her own T-Veronica virus: it causes the host to mutate too quickly, destroying tissue and causing them to lose their mind. She figures the way around this is to put herself into cryosleep and awaken Master Chief-style when the writers need to artificially pad out the length of the game. Alexia stuffs herself into a cryotube and instructs her brother Alfred to protect her, to this end, he uses the power of nepotism to get himself command of Rockfort Island despite being as mad as a box of frogs.
It’s here that the peak absurdity hits.
Alfred develops a borderline incestual obsession with Alexia and is driven mad in the 15 year wait for her awakening, so mad that… he starts to dress up like her, apply makeup and a wig and even develops a fake, feminine voice and split personality based upon her. I’m not even going to begin to wade into how controversial this would be today or how to fix it, I’m simply not qualified.
To top it all off, the forces that attacked Rockfort Island are revealed to be under the command of Albert Wesker. Now, it was pretty obvious even in RE2 that Wesker had survived the events of the first game: the S.T.A.R.S combat data clearly made it out of the Mansion and if memory serves, Umbrella never acknowledge his death; he’s on this game’s front cover in some regions as well, great job hiding that twist, Capcom. But this isn’t the Wesker we knew, rather he has Agent Smith powers, Sith Lord eyes and a comic book villain level of hatred for Chris Redfield.
Code: Veronica feels like if Hideo Kojima directed a Resident Evil game. The plot is fucking insane.
The characters besides Claire, Chris and Rodrigo don’t behave like human beings at all and you know what? I love it. I can’t in good faith praise this story or point out a single good thing about it but it’s so fantastically, unashamedly nonsense that I can’t help but watch on in awe. Whoever has to write a remake for this game is going to have the hardest job on earth.
Give it to me, Capcom, let me do it.
Dulcet Tones
I’ve taken care to celebrate the voice talent and face models a lot in this series because it means a lot to me; voice actors are one of the roles who are most in danger of being replaced by Skynet so we should be celebrating them and making it absolutely clear that we won’t stand for these talents being hung out to dry.
All of that being said… there are some absolutely baffling writing and acting choices in this game, to the point where it harms the narrative.
Starting with the positive, Alyson Court as Claire… enough said. Court is the voice of Claire Redfield for most Resident Evil fans out there and she delivers once again, returning from Resident Evil 2. Unfortunately though she just has very little to work with in terms of development for Claire Redfield, this is largely the same character as in Resident Evil 2 with very little growth or maturity; she didn’t have to be G.I Jane but some change would have been nice, she still acts scared of the undead and she’s still a little too trusting for someone who experienced Chief Irons in my opinion.
Another sticking point is Peter Oldring as Alfred Ashford.
Oldring’s performance as Alfred can best be described as pantomime: an over the top voice, manic mood swings and cartoonish laughs and shouts. I personally really enjoy his insane take on Alfred and the over the top, snobbish aristocratic tone but many players find it to clash with the game’s tone and to that I say… what tone? Code: Veronica goes from ham-fisted romance to cross-dressing aristocrats back to Matrix agents and giant bio-organic monstrosities constantly, nothing it did surprised me or felt off even as a first time player.
Right, the ‘romance’ I have to talk about Steve Burnside now.
Shortly after escaping Prison at the beginning of the game, you’ll come under fire from a watch tower.
(Timestamp)
“You’ll only slow me DYOWN.” Gagh, his voice, his stupid haircut, his weird little advances on Claire, the persistently dumb attitude, Steve’s constant fumbling of the bag throughout the campaign: it all comes together to make him the worst side character in the series, so detested that he’s even been referred to as the Jar Jar Binks of Resident Evil.
Worse yet, they decide to write a thoroughly unconvincing romance between the two where Steve tries to plant a kiss on Claire while she’s sleeping and no joke, pollutes an entire section of the map with toxic grass because he’s staring at Claire’s ass while operating a crane. This character is dreadful.
In the remake, I’d honestly like to see the romance angle canned entirely and Steve could be made more tolerable by giving him an actual character arc; he begins the game acting like a petulant child and he (spoilers) dies without having gone through much of a change besides learning to trust Claire and to put some faith in others. If Steve began the game as an annoying dick, slowly became more useful and chose to sacrifice himself for someone else, I might give a damn when he kicks the bucket.
This section has been a mixture of praise and punishment so I’m going to end it on a high note: from his look to his characterisation, Code: Veronica’s version of Chris Redfield is my favourite. That’s saying something because this character has infamously had a million different redesigns and voices across the span of the series.
But why this version? Well, I can sum that up in a short cutscene.
There’s quite a lot here to unpack but this is getting to be a very long review and I still have some other points to cover, so I’ll try to be brief.
I love how Chris is still wearing his RPD S.T.A.R.S uniform all these months later, it implies that he’s been tirelessly hunting Umbrella but also shows his loyalty to his fallen comrades. We get a moment of doubt when he drops all his equipment into the sea but then our hero toughens up, remembers that he’s the Chris Redfield and climbs onwards; Shotgun or not, he’s gonna save Claire and if Chris can survive the Spencer Mansion, he can sure as hell survive whatever awaits on Rockfort.
Going The Distance, Or Stumbling At The Finish Line?
I’d like to finish this review by addressing what might be the biggest complaint about Veronica and a hot topic for the franchise in general: game length.
Resident Evil games, especially the survival-horror ones, tend to be put together in a way that makes them medium length on a first playthrough and increasingly shorter as the player revisits them, remembers item locations and optimises routes around the map; my first playthrough of Resident Evil 2 remake for example was around 17 hours but today? I tend to get through it in 4-6 if I’m not speed-running.
Code: Veronica on the other hand doesn’t get much shorter on repeat playthroughs, worse, it seriously drags in the second half where you explore Rockfort and then the Arctic as Chris.
The reasons for this dragging feeling are many: while the island is destroyed when you visit it as Chris, the locations you explore are mostly unchanged, the plot swaps gears to focus more on Albert Wesker which quickly begins to feel more like sequel setup than actual meat on the proverbial bones; gameplay between Chris and Claire is identical, he doesn’t really get any unique toys to play with.
The end result is a game that feels like 2 very similar campaigns stacked on top of each other. If you love Resident Evil then the length combined with the challenge can be really nice but if you value a quick playthrough or the speed-running aspects of the series then Code: Veronica is certainly not ideal.
A Critic’s Folly
You know how you get games in some franchises like Metal Gear Solid 5: the Phantom Pain and Fallout 4 which are pretty good video games but bad entries in the series? Well, Code: Veronica is the opposite of that: it’s not a great video game… but it is a pretty good Resident Evil.
Code: Veronica is chock full of unfair design, overstuffed with nonsense plot threads and garnished with a host of structural choices that make it a brutal time for the uninitiated; Veronica doesn’t do anything new with the RE formula either.
Code: Veronica also features a location I love exploring, a timeless soundtrack, some great puzzles and while it does nothing new, what is there is something of a greatest hits of classic Resident Evil tropes with an added challenging kick, it is an experience unashamedly for existing Resident Evil fans.
Many of you will try this game and hate it, a few of you will see what it was going for and write it off as a botched attempt in-need of a remake but a smaller still handful of you, like me, will be able to enjoy this divisive mess for what it is and learn to really appreciate the game. Everything negative you’ve ever hard about Code: Veronica is mostly true and it wasn’t the Ocarina Of Time moment for the Resident Evil franchise that it perhaps should have been but I love Code: Veronica anyway.
Just because I like it, that doesn’t make it good. Just because something isn’t good, that doesn’t make it unenjoyable. This is my second favourite and I’ll die on that T-Virus contaminated hill.
Thank you very much for reading to the end, I hope you enjoyed today’s post, as always I’ll be happy to chat in the comments below and please like and subscribe to the Journal for more.
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I didn't realize this game was so hated today. I remember it getting really good reviews in EGM back in the day and they could be notoriously tough on games.
I remember enjoying the first few hours, but as you point out, man, does this thing drag. You don't realize how well paced the first three games are until you play Code Veronica.
If any RE games need remakes, it's Zero and Code Veronica for sure.
Thanks for the writeup, really been enjoying these RE retrospectives!
It's great to see someone who appreciate Code Veronica! I don't particularly vibe with this game, but I see its merits. That being said, I think this is the Resident Evil that really needs a remake the most. I've heard rumors that Zero is up next, but Code Veronica should come right after that.