Claire and Chris Redfield, in their first game together.
Resident Evil Code: Veronica is the fourth game in the Resident Evil franchise, originally released for the Dreamcast in 2000. Despite being an oddly named sequel and not a numbered installment (a result of the game being developed for the Dreamcast, rather than on the PlayStation like previous titles), Code: Veronica continues the story a few months from where Resident Evil 2 left off, focusing on Claire Redfield as she continues her search for her missing brother Chris. Despite being initially billed as a Dreamcast exclusive, Code: Veronica was later ported to the PlayStation 2 and Nintendo GameCube in the form of an updated version titled Resident Evil Code: Veronica X (which also released for the Dreamcast, albeit in Japan only). An HD version was later released for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in 2011.Three months after the destruction of Raccoon City; despite the setback, Umbrella is still producing bioweapons. Having lost contact with her brother Chris, Claire Redfield infiltrates an Umbrella facility located in Paris. She is discovered and attempts to escape, but runs out of ammo in the resultant shootout and is captured by a lucky security guard. She is promptly flown out to Rockfort Island, an Umbrella prison complex on a small island somewhere in the South Seas.While Claire is confined to a solitary cell, someone attacks the island, causing a T-Virus outbreak. Claire becomes aware of this only when an injured guard, by sheer coincidence the same man who managed to capture her in Paris, stumbles down into the solitary cell to seek shelter. In an attack of conscience, the man releases her and tells her that the island is finished, so she's free to go.Stumbling up the stairs, she finds herself in a small cemetery, and quickly realizes what the disaster is as decaying bodies rip through the sodden earth and start shambling towards her. Fleeing for the comparative shelter of the nearby walled-off yard, she is not pleased when someone in the guard tower opens fire on her. Waiting for a lull in the shooting, she fires back with a recovered pistol and destroys the spotlight, intimidating her assailant into surrender. Said assailant turns out to be a teenaged boy of about Claire's age named Steve Burnside, who explains he's also a prisoner on Rockfort. Claire immediately suggests they team up, well aware of the danger that must be present if the T-Virus has gotten loose, but Steve declares she'll simply slow him down and wanders off alone.Fortunately for him, he and Claire continually run into each other, and wind up having to help each other against the sole remaining survivor — the demented Alfred Ashford, former commander of the island. After numerous escapes from the psychotic aristocrat, they finally manage to board a seaplane and escape, just as Alfred detonates the self-destruct system. Unfortunately for them, Alfred also escaped the blaze and seizes control of their plane by remote control, crashing them into a derelict Umbrella facility somewhere in Antarctica.Meanwhile, Chris, having been alerted to Claire's location early after she escaped by an email she sent from a computer in a guard station, arrives at Rockfort Island to find it in ruins. Narrowly escaping a confrontation with Albert Wesker, presumed dead in the Mansion Incident, Chris finally manages to track Claire and Steve's location and sets off to rescue them from Alfred's even crazier sister, Alexia Ashford.Code: Veronica was the first Resident Evil title in the main series to featured fully 3D environments instead of relying on pre-rendered backgrounds like in previous games. The protagonist changing system from Resident Evil 2 was also carried over, but instead of choosing which character to start the game as, the player starts off the game as Claire and then plays most of the latter half as Chris.
Alas, Poor Villain: Alfred dies in Alexia's arms as she strokes his hair and sings to him - and bear in mind that this is the first and last time they've seen each other since they were children.
And I Must Scream: Alexander Ashford was subjected to horrifying experiments by Alfred and Alexia, turning him into Nosferatu.
And Then John Was a Zombie: Steve is forced to kill his own father after he becomes a zombie, while Steve himself and Alexia both become T-Veronica monsters. Many of Wesker's subordinates also became zombies when they invaded Rockfort Island.
And Your Reward Is Clothes: Averted in the main game, but the Battle Game mode has an alternate version of Claire who wears a tank top, hot pants and go-go boots.
Aristocrats Are Evil: Alfred and Alexia are of noble birth and completely out of their minds.
Ax Crazy: Oh, good Lord, Alfred. Such is what happens when one forms bonds with someone that remained frozen for over a decade. It doesn't help that he was mentally unstable prior to Alexia's 15 year slumber.
Back from the Dead: Wesker, having returned from his death in the original game.
Bag of Spilling: Happens all the time throughout the series, but a literal example occurs here where Chris drops a bag of equipment into the ocean at the beginning of his portion of the game.
Nosferatu, the product of a failed experiment on the twins' father. Sports bondage, Eyeless Face, razor-tipped Combat Tentacles, exposed beating heart, poisonous breath, etc.
Also, Steve, who's later subjected to the same experiment, but he goes back to human form before dying.
Bond Villain Stupidity: Subverted. While Alfred does subject Claire and Steve to an overly elaborate death trap (and gives up on it fairly quickly), he does try to shoot and kill them both before and after. He fails several times.
Boss in Mook Clothing: The very first Bandersnatch. The best weapon the player can use on it is either their pair of M100Ps or their much more valuable explosive-tipped arrows (which a prudent gamer will probably rather save for the Tyrant later on). Yes, the player can try to run to its left side where it has no arm, but it can still slap them with its one elastic arm.
Bottomless Magazines: Averted with the Calico M100-P pistols. They have a percentage-based ammo count but still have a factually accurate 100 rounds each.
Cutscene Incompetence: When Steve's father, now a zombie, tries to munch on Claire, she apparently forgets all about the weapons she's been carrying around the whole game. Let alone Steve doing nothing for a while, saying how he can't help her. Justified in that he just found out that his dad is dead the hard way. The kid's still human.
The Rockfort Island Tyrant and the Nosferatu could also count.
Emergency Weapon: Subverted. In this game, the knife is actually useful, since, as opposed to the measly stab from the predecessor games, it registers multiple hits as the blade slices through.
The novel explains it by giving Alexia psychic powers (to the point that the narration from her point of view really gives the impression of her being omnipotent). The fact that she could project herself in an island half around the globe (or the fact that she knows that an agent of Umbrella is there) scares the shit out of Wesker (the novel is based on the original version where Wesker is utterly dominated by Alexia unlike in X).
Umbrella's Antarctic facility is clearly no longer heated, but lightly dressed Claire and Steve barely seem to notice. Claire even has an outdoor boss battle in a snowstorm. Oddly, Capcom didn't even get this right as the game is set in December, during the Southern Hemisphere's summer, and Antarctica could be survivable. But the game goes out of its way to show how cold it is.
Claire and Steve crashed at Latitude 82 degrees 17 minutes South and Longitude about 136 degrees East, which puts them in the vicinity of Antarctica's Southeast coast, but they're a good ways inland, so even in the Summer we're still talking temperatures of at most -10 degrees C. Exposure is definitely still fatal.
Face Monster Turn: Steve is infected with T-Veronica and attacks Claire until The Power of Love stops him from killing her. He then returns to (almost) normal after being mortally wounded.
Fixed Camera: Still fixed like the PlayStation games, but this time the camera follows the player around as opposed to only switching at fixed points, since RECV uses real time environments instead of pre-rendered backdrops.
Guide Dang It: You know the fire extinguisher, the one the you used way back at the very beginning of the game and then left in the security terminal? Well you better take it with you to Antarctica or you're not getting the magnum, which makes the final boss much easier to handle.
Guns Akimbo: The gold lugers, submachine guns, and calico pistols are all paired and are each able to target two different enemies at once.
Gun Fu: Claire went to John Woo's school in between games. Steve must have gone to the same school.
Hopeless Boss Fight: Mutant Steve. Cannot be defeated, and will kill the player in two hits, lest there're a couple of full-health items handy (or heavy-duty weaponry to hold him off while running away).
Karma Houdini: Suffice to say, Wesker went on to star in more Resident Evil games...
Late Arrival Spoiler: Some versions of the game had Wesker's face on the title screen, despite the fact that his resurrection is supposed to be the game's big plot twist.
Late to the Tragedy: Chris only makes it to Rockfort Island after Claire and Steve have already left and the self-destruct has already occurred.
Leitmotif: The Ashford twins' favorite lullaby is heard multiple times in instrumental form (via an automated piano, a music box, a carousel, etc.), and Alexia later sings it to Alfred as he dies in her arms.
Lethal Joke Item: The knife, for the first time in the series, proves to be a viable weapon against individual zombies or even small groups.
Let's Split Up, Gang: Claire is Genre Savvy enough now to try and avoid this, but Steve is so moody and confused that he keeps running off on his own anyway.
Lost Forever: You know that extinguisher you used early in the game, and then might have left in the metal detector bin? Well you better go get it before the island's self destruct sequence starts, otherwise, you're not going to get the magnum.
If you don't give Rodrigo the hemostat, then trade your lighter for a lockpick, then have Chris fight the Skippable Boss Gulp Worm... you won't get the lighter back, and the submachine guns it unlocks.
Minigame: The Battle Game available upon completing the main story mode.
Naked on Arrival: Alexia, upon awakening as an adult from her cryogenic tube.
No Celebrities Were Harmed: Steve's haircut in Code: Veronica X was altered to lessen his likeness to Leonardo DiCaprio. Ironically, Steve's hair was likened to Leon S. Kennedy's, to the point that some fans initially thought that Steve was Leon.
No Export for You: The Dreamcast version of Code: Veronica X was never released outside Japan.
No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Wesker brutally mahandles Claire in their first encounter. He later gives Chris an impressive beating in the ending of Code: Veronica X. Both times, he's interrupted before he can finish them off.
Oh Crap: Wesker gets one of these moments in the original version when Alexia mutates in front of him. She follows it up by slapping him down the stairs.
One-Woman Wail: Heard during Alexia's boss themes, and during Alfred's death.
Sequel Number Snarl: Code: Veronica was originally going to be Resident Evil 3. However, since it was developed as a Dreamcast-exclusive at a time the franchise was still tied to the PlayStation, it was officially designated as a sidegame rather than being treated as a numbered sequel, despite being a more proper sequel to Resident Evil 2 (storywise and design-wise) than Nemesis is.
The Gulp Worm can be skipped not once but twice; the first time by Claire, the second time by Chris. However, doing so the second time results in a couple of items Lost Forever (assuming Claire gave Rodrigo the hemostat earlier; otherwise there's no point in fighting it).
While the Tyrant must be catapulted from the seaplane in order to be defeated, Claire can either do that five times in a row and defeat him... or choose to fight him, weaken him enough and then catapult him to his death.
Chris can fight the adult Albinoid from a safe distance and afterwards fetch the Eagle Plate unharmed... or he can just jump in, absorb some damage from the electrified pool and leave with the Plate without even fighting the Albinoid.
Same goes with the Giant Black Widow custodying Alexander's Pierce, except you can fetch the item in question without even getting hit once, so there's even less of a reason to stay and fight the spider in the first place.
Talking Is a Free Action: In the original version, Chris kills Alexia, triggering the self-destruct which he barely escapes. X includes a long extra scene while that clock is ticking. Somehow, Chris still barely escapes.
Tap on the Head: Claire is knocked unconscious on more than one occasion. In the opening cutscene, a guard hits her on the head with the butt of his rifle. Later, she and Steve were both knocked unconscious when their plane crashed at the Antarctic base, and again when their snowmobile was wrecked by Alexia's tentacle.
You'd best get used to the pistol and the bowgun, and get used to running out of ammo for both, because you won't start finding enough ammunition for bigger guns to actually stockpile until about the last third of the game.
The magnum is a One-Hit Kill against any normal enemy and tears through bosses, but there are only eighteen bullets for it in the entire game. Six of them are inside a duralumin case, which means the player can quite easily overlook them.
It's already pretty easy to bypass even getting the magnum by forgetting to put the extinguisher in the Item Box before Claire leaves Rockfort.
Updated Rerelease: Code: Veronica X for the Dreamcast (in Japan only), PlayStation 2 and GameCube. Further explored in Code: Veronica X HD for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
Villainous Crossdresser: Alfred. Justified in the fact that he has a split personality disorder.
What Happened to the Mouse?: Finding D.I.J.'s Diary in the minigame Battle Game tells the player exactly what the mouse was up to. Fittingly, the mouse is the only peripheral character to get any closure.
Zombie Apocalypse: Subverted. This time, the zombies don't get the great spotlight.
0 reviews 