RPD Dispatch 4 - Playing RE:CV

[James]

I've just beaten Nosferatu the hard way because I totally forgot about the Sniper Rifle. I'm also playing the Gamecube version.

I've got the Japanese version too, which came packaged with SOME kind of demo, so I might try that one too. (PS2)

[Rombie]

It'll be the Devil May Cry demo. The Japanese demo is different to any other version of the game released too.

[Project Omega]

That was one of the things that bugged me to no end. That and the fact that Alexia and Alfred should have been the same gender.

Well, their whole birth using modified genes taken from their ancestor, Veronica Ashford, should mean that they should have both been women considering that Veronica's genetic code would have two X chromosomes. Although they could have used somatic cell nuclear transfer to create a "clone" of Veronica, they didn't have this technology back in the 1970's when the Ashford Twins were born. The process entails the transfer of a nucleus from a donor adult cell (a somatic cell) to an egg which has had its nucleus removed. If the egg begins to divide normally (generally, after a stimulus is applied) it is transferred into the uterus of the surrogate mother.

Since they probably used invitro fertilization techniques to create the twins, this would have involved Alexander to manually fertilize the genetically modified eggs with, most likely, using his semen.

Dizygotic (two zygotes) twins (a.k.a. fraternal twins) occur when two fertilized eggs are implanted in the uterine wall at the same time. Given that most invitro fertilization techniques involve fertilizing many eggs and then placing them into a prepped uterus and hoping that atleast one attaches itself to the uterine wall which starts the pregnancy, there is the chance that more than one egg will achieve uterine wall attachment, as seen in this case with the Ashford Twins.

Nothing is ever mentioned about the surrogate mother and we don't know what happened to her or even how she was chosen or what compensation she was offered (other than money of course). Hell, we don't even know if the Ashford Twins were the only set of children created from Alexander's experiments. If there were more, and Alexia and Alfred found out, it could have fueled their hate for their father as we see in Code Veronica. Knowing you're the end result of an experiment and that you could have been a fluke is a lot to swallow at the age of 10/11 when their father mysteriously "died".

[Helegad]

I'll try and score myself a second hand copy ASAP, then boot it up on an emulator, and have a quick and hard runthrough. See if I can finish it in time, but probably not.

If I work really hard at it though... we'll see what happens.

[Mr. Spencer]

I've just begun Chris' adventure, I now need to engage the Gulp Worm with just a handgun and 70 bullets. As for how I would describe this game, it would be as follows:

Backtracking, crate pushing, moth eggs and siblings.

[Skunky]

I might just reread the 4 part CV graphic novels. It would be much faster and probably a lot more entertaining too
Those comics actually follow the CV story very accurately.

[Dot50Cal]

I'm playing as Chris now, at the Antarctic facility. Jesus, this game has so much back tracking its not even funny.

[Vector]

I'd get so frustrated if I had to do all that backtracking. Back in the day it was pretty normal, but most games today barely have any backtracking at all, let alone the absurd amount of backtracking that some of the Resident Evil games had.

[Dot50Cal]

This goes way beyond the previous games. Seriously, its insane. It doesn't help that the environments are so bland either.

[aris13]

Dot, the backtracking makes the game more challenging and more fun to play (for me). The first three RE games are easier you can complete them in 2 hours.

[A-J]

artificially lengthening the game by making the player return to area's already visited multiple number of times, with no real significance other then "oh a single new room opened up half a mile behind, go get an item from there" is not my idea of challenging OR fun.

with the previous RE's you were atleast going through new area's in short amounts of time.

[Helegad]

I hate backtracking. Shortcuts FTW!

[Dot50Cal]

artificially lengthening the game by making the player return to area's already visited multiple number of times, with no real significance other then "oh a single new room opened up half a mile behind, go get an item from there" is not my idea of challenging OR fun.

with the previous RE's you were atleast going through new area's in short amounts of time.

I agree completely.

I do like CVX, but there are some things which I can't gloss over. The environments are not particularly interesting. Perhaps its because they were build with "early" 3d tech, and don't contain many interesting things in the environment. You mostly have flat walls, with a generally foggy atmosphere which drowns the game in a blue-ish haze. I wouldn't mind this so much if the game hadn't had me going back and forth between the private residence, all the way to the training facility area numerous times. Heck, you even have to traverse all the way back to the guillotine at one point, just to unlock one door.

That said, when it gets to the Antarctic, things lighten up a bit and get interesting. Once you get into the labs, that nostalgic feeling comes back. Gone are the drab brick walls, and you are introduced to a more familiar atmosphere for the game. Hunters, Sweepers, are back, giving it a nice feel.

Overall, I like the game, a lot. But I think the first half of the game was unnecessarily elongated to pad the games length. Looking back at the files and seeing Alexia's paranoia about Spencer taking control of Umbrella is pretty interesting, and I forgot most of that stuff. Its nice to see it though, since RE5 seems to be tying in directly with it.

[TheBatMan]

Can i ask roughly what time we can expect the podcast today?

[Helegad]

Is it that time already?

[Rombie]

Oh crap... it does say today on the front page. For some reason I thought I had another week to record something. I'm not going to get the chance before Tuesday which will be too late, so instead I'm posting my notes here. Feel free to use any as a jumping point if I bring up something not noted.

So... yeah... I played through Code Veronica X on PS2 a bit during the last day or two when I've had some time. I've split my thoughts into two area's - Pro's and Con's.

Firstly... Pro's

- Weapons & Enemies
I'd forgotten how much variety in weaponry there really is in the game. RE3 had a lot too, but for some reason I didn't remember there being as much in Code Veronica as there actually is. Enemies too are vastly numbered and different in the game too which helps. I want to GameShark it to get more BOW Gas rounds though to remember the effect on some enemies.

- Visual Design
Sure, there is some bland textures here and there... or a lot of places, but visually the game is well designed for the strengths of the original Dreamcast I think. It's one of a few games I'll forever remember on the console (that said while I'm playing the PS2 edition though... ). Enemy design too is exceptional even though it suffers from limits.

Yes... I don't entirely like the vivid color choices against dingy blackness so much, but it does add to a visual style of it's own.

- Puzzle Design
Even with the oh so horrible amount backtracking I don't like, a number of the puzzles in the game are intelligent enough without being over complicated or annoying like others in the series.

- "Zapping"
I know there was a lot of talk about this in the RE2 discussion. Code Veronica doesn't have a direct "make a choice" impact akin to RE2 or Zero, but the concept behind the changes and paths found as Chris compared to Claire are really well thought out. You access new areas and the old areas are environmentally changed, but still make sense without little overlap of "same puzzle syndrome" (and instead some that do are tweaked really well to make sure you're not specifically repeating the same thing). I'd actually say this is probably the best in the series for this.

- Voice Acting
Say what you will about the clunky scripting, the game probably has the most consistent voice cast. Steve's supposed to be annoying and he is, Alfred and Alexia are crazy and over the top, and Chris and Claire sound generally good. Oh and can't forget Rodrigo and Wesker either.. All and all, it was better than I recall it being.

- CVX additions
The scenes added to CVX were great... sure it doesn't make a lot of sense that the countdown at the end basically stops and delays an additionally several mins while Wesker and Chris battle it out.... but otherwise, they weren't a bad choice to add to.


And now... Cons

- Loading
This is more of a PS2 issue... sometimes the game loads doors and areas, then when it should be finished loading by being hidden by this instead it switches to a black screen with loading in the bottom corner. Geez man... bad port.

- Gore
They really toned it down for CV. Blood yes, but no dismemberment, major deaths, or anything really. Can't even really shotgun a zombies head. You get a splatter but their head is still attached. Shame. I recall early demo vids showed all sorts of effects, but they really toned it down inhouse. I think CERO was a big part of that issue.

- Backtracking
As DotCal mentioned already... dear god there is a lot of useless searching and backtracking in the game. It constant dragging out of fetch questing which is a good chance to be the worst at it in the series.

- Steve
Yeah, still don't like him.

- Wesker Retcon
Really, even seeing the stuff with RE5 right now... I really hate how they retconned Wesker to living because of some super human virus. It really screwed the story since to be fair. Code Veronica was really the last point in the story... and basically where I stopped caring afterwards (honestly, it was when it was released I gave up on the timeline). He has great scenes and Waugh is great in it, but the plot changes made by his return was almost un-needed.

- Plot
Speaking of which, excluding any implied ties to RE5 we won't know about till later specifically, the plot of the game isn't bad... but it's just not really amounted to anything in the long run at this point. It's a shame, because (excluding Wesker's return) it was the best thing about the game at the time it first came out I thought. The history built up, especially in the files and the twins speeches were great... just didn't amount to anything really.

- So sloooooowwwwwwww...
Man.... hurry the hell up. Backtracking doesn't help, but I forgot the pacing in the game. Big long gaps of nothing between story, slow clunky movement... especially stairs, geez. The original game controlled so tank like too, but at least I felt like I was moving when running.... running in this feels like power walking.

[A-J]

This is more of a PS2 issue... sometimes the game loads doors and areas, then when it should be finished loading by being hidden by this instead it switches to a black screen with loading in the bottom corner. Geez man... bad port.

i have never had any issues like that where the game goes into an extra "loading" screen AFTER a door animation.

[Archelon]

Rombie summed up most of my thoughts regarding the game fairly well, but I'll give my two cents on the matter anyway.

CODE: Veronica, for me, was in many ways a major step back for the series. I don't think I ever fully realized this until I played RE3 and CV back-to-back. There were so many additions, though some were rather subtle, in 3 to the already great gameplay of 2that I was really disappointed to see pretty much all of them dropped in CV. The dodge mechanic, for example, is probably the most obvious omission, though admittedly, it was pretty wonky in 3 so I can see why they would get rid of it.

But there were lots of other little things as well. I didn't really miss the ability to make your own ammo, but what I did miss was the pacing. As many have already stated, CV is extremely slow. 3 sped things up from 1 and 2, but then CV dialed it back significantly, to the detriment of the gameplay. Also, what was up with having to press a button to go up and down stairs again when 3 did away with that entirely?

I did like that CV brought back the ability to examine weapons and items in 3D ala RE1. Also, I would have liked to have seen the ability to equip two weapons at once and aim at different enemies return in subsequent games. I think that mechanic is pretty much impossible now with the way aiming works in RE4 and 5.

The story, while probably the most interesting part of the entire game, was a total mess, even by RE standards. Bringing Wesker back (with superpowers, no less) remains one of the biggest mistakes this series has made in terms of plot, in my opinion. As a general rule, I am not a fan of bringing dead characters back to life, but it's even worse when the explanation is so contrived.

I did like the subplot about the founding of Umbrella, and Alexia and Alfred's twisted "relationship." However, this game makes more ridiculous leaps in logic than arguably any other game in the series, even RE4. Just as an example, I quote Mr. Zombie:

I always wonder, how did Alexia, after she had awaken, know that the dead man wearing a red suit and a female make-up (at least Alfred had make-up when he felt over the railing) is her brother? How did she know that Claire and Steve were responsible for his death? How did she know who Wesker was (and why the hell did she pop-up on that screen and laugh at him)? And did she know that someone was coming for Claire, so she placed her cover in that sticky yellow goo under the stairs in the main hall (I don't think she did that just because she thought it would be cool)?

I would add to this *deep breath* how Chris knew that Wesker attacked Claire, why the heck Alexia simply appearing on a monitor and laughing would stop Wesker from killing Chris when he had the perfect opportunity right there (not to mention, he already made it very clear how much he despiiiiiiiiiiisssssssssed Chris; if he really hated Chris so much, he would've taken the extra second to pop Chris' head off), Alexia being a fully matured adult when she was released from her stasis when she should have still had the body of a 12 year old, and Alexia and Alfred not being the same gender despite being monozygotic twins.

I think it was with this game that I finally learned to just stop really caring about the plot and just enjoy playing the game. As long as the game is fun to play, then the plot doesn't have to make a whole lot of sense. That philosophy has served me well ever since.

But I think that's enough rambling from me.

For now, anyway.

EDIT:

Oh yeah, did I mention how ridiculously easy this game is? It's by far the easiest game in the main series. Insultingly so.

[Dot50Cal]

I have the voicemail line open, but its only for 6 hours. Sorry for the delay on that.

[Mr_Zombie]

To add to those question Archelon posted: why does Alexia wear the very same dress that Alfred wore on Rockfort Island? Not only does that dress shouldn't fit her, it shouldn't even be in the facility (unless Alfred took it with himself which would be... stupid) :|.
I know that's just Capcom's laziness (they did only one Alexia model - for both Alfred's Alexia and real human Alexia), but story-wise, it doesn't make sense.