The right to be God...I've always loved Capcom. I can't think of anything they've ever done which is extremely terrible; even those spin-offs and odd little experiments seem to be, if not excellent payoffs (Devil May Cry), at least fun demonstrations which aren't bad at all and never feel like a waste of time (Resident Evil Gun Survivor). Something about what Capcom does just clicks; unlike say, Square-Enix who is a little too aware that video-games are a cultural artifact and try to cash in on their fruits with twenty FF7 spinoffs, FF remakes, and talking about their own accomplishments like they were holistic video-game canon (I get it I get it! Final Fantasy has been around for 20+ years), Capcom sort of just goes with the flow - Mega Man instantly comes to mind as a corporate and cult mascot, yet we aren't constantly bombarded with reminders that the blue bomber is a gaming tradition that must be respected. Hell, thankfully he isn't a sacred cow - or else spin-offs like the Zero and Legends games wouldn't happen. Also, instead of trying to make games that imitate popular art, Capcom just borrows and sometimes damn near plagiarizes concepts - Dead Rising, Resident Evil, and Mega Man once again come to mind. Let's take Astro-boy and Blade Runner and mix in midi's inspired by 80's Rock - boom, Mega Man X is made.
Gotta admit it takes more than copy and pasting to make the idea appealing.
By doing this a few things get accomplished: (1) The game is rooted in familiar pop-culture themes and concepts, it's easier to delve into and spread among the masses Easier to understand. You don't come off like a crazy neckbeard who smells of cheetos and mountain dew - the game is *gasp* somewhat attractive and holds mass appeal. (2) The game is self aware of what it is doing, rather than trying to march around as high art it realizes it's a videogame. Devil May Cry and Resident Evil 4 work really well because they embrace over-the-top situations that can only be pulled off in video-games; any other medium wouldn't be able to maintain the suspension of disbelief. (3) Being self-aware and embracing the fact that you're a video-game, not an interactive movie or an interactive novel, along with some semblance of artistic style and themes allows games to be made that, while not extreme deep, mind-altering endeavors, are extremely well put together and fun. They work. Mega Man 5 may be the worst in my opinion of the classic series, but it still works - and for an NES game, it still has what was for it's time an excellent little story boiling with all kinds of plot twists and cut-scenes which for an NES game were quite impressive. Mega Man 5 is also an example of the "Ain't Broke Don't Fix It" mentality the company runs with. So yeah...Code Veronica.
This is not what this review is about.
Code Veronica works. Holy crap does it work. It's got all kinds of weird Alfred Hitchcock and George Romero influences carrying the outlandish story, and that Resident Evil control scheme. You know the one. Tank Controls. I've always liked those too. People complain a lot about them, but really, if I could master them as a ten year old kid then it shouldn't take that much out of you. Resident Evil wasn't designed one day as an intense action shooter and then someone in the office said near the end "HEY! WOULDN'T IT BE MEAN AS HELL IF WE MADE THE CONTROLS INTENTIONALLY BAD?!". One of the biggest things you worry about while designing a game is how the player controls the avatar. Games are built around that. Resident Evil is definitely built around that. The reason you suck at Resident Evil isn't because the controls are inhibiting you; it's because you're ignoring the little nuances such as the dodging in Nemesis or the quick turns, you're not observing enemy patterns and learning how to run past zombies, you're too busy not using the map and emptying clips into enemies which are just easier to walk by. There's a nice crunch to micromanaging all those little tidbits, remembering what enemies are placed where whilst managing how many items you have in your inventory and remembering what keys go where. You plan out routes, backtrack and manage ammo and optimal save room visits, have your little box pooling what you can't immediately use. Take away the art design and Resident Evil is very much a Tetris-like puzzle game. The puzzle is not so much placing the crests in the right order, but the bigger game of finding the crests, managing your health and ammo as you deliver the crests about, and slaying or fleeing whatever terrors stand between you and those goddamn crests. That's why Resident Evil is one of the Capcom games I think merits a ranking system - I want to know the final time, I want to know how good I did, I want to find shorter routes and more efficient ways of killing those monsters. Game is only 3-4 hours long, manageable in a sitting once you've gained some skill in the system, and it's all your skills that will get you out alive. No RPG number crunch. It's fun.
Code Veronica is great because it takes the Capcom "Aint Broke Don't Fix" mentality to just the right degree, and tweaks what doesn't work to just the right degree. Even though the world makes little sense thematically...hell, no Resident Evil has ever done this - the only 'natural' puzzles the series has ever had were probably the MO Disks and Plant 42 Chemical Antidote, and those were just the same Crest and Math games the game had been running us through; the point never was that they fit within the context of the game, but that they were entertaining as hell and kept us playing. RE2's police station was loaded with chess pieces, red jewels, card keys, and card-deck themed locks - they weren't the most difficult things in the world but holy crap did they flow, and you definitely felt a little fist-pumping sense of accomplishment when everything just clicked in the end. Code Veronica takes that familiar sense of momentum and makes it awesome as all fucking hell. You're still moving crests and finding outlandish insect themed keys, but the game is ridiculously relentless about survival - the game is the long, you're going through haunted houses, island prisons, research labs, and antarctic bases the likes of which any Bond villain would be envious of. While you visit these places you get not just zombies and dogs (they vanish after the first quarter practically), but hunters, stretchy-creepy bandersnatches, ants, robots, axemen, POISON SUPER HUNTERS, a crazy Nosferatu creature, some frogs and leeches, this ant lady, an effeminate sniper, and don't forget that crazy superpowered Wesker (also there's this giant earthworm and remember that Tyrant for the first game? Now you have to run from one as the PRISON IS ABOUT TO EXPLODE! AND HE HAS TWO CLAWS! AND YOU FIGHT HIM ON AN AIRPLANE!). Surviving any of the non-zombie enemies just makes you feel like a monster slaying badass.
I don't think even the game knows what exactly this thing is but IT MUST DIE!
And that is why the game is so successful. At the end of the day it has taken me from my mundane little world and made me into a Zombie Slaying Apocalypse Avoiding hero - not just because I picked up the controller and mashed A for a few hours, but I struggled and fought tiny little boxing matches with the most outlandish creatures whilst juggling all kinds of abstract and obtuse puzzles of which the balance of good and evil in the world depended. I did that. You're welcome world. You're welcome. We're all safe now.
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