Who is this Veronica, and why is she in code? After playing about four or five hours into the game and even casting a brief glance over the manual, I still couldn't tell you. What I can tell you is that Code: Veronica is, in gaming parlance, a class act. You see a lot of games in this business, and most of the time, when the review's done, it's a relief to chuck 'em in back of the games cupboard, safe in the knowledge they'll never come out again. The flip side is that when something you do want to play comes along, it invariably means tearing yourself away before you're damn well ready. Such is the curse of having only a finite amount of time for each review.

Bad news for me translates into good news for DC owners, because this is just the problem I've had with Code: Veronica and, for once, I will be taking it home to finish, if they ever let me outta here, that is!

I loved the original Resident Evil. A superlative adventure packed with atmosphere and suspense. The kind of game it was easy to stay up playing all night. The second one didn't do it for me in the same way and I never got round to playing Nemesis but Code: Veronica doesn't just ask for your attention - it demands it with all sorts of menaces.

Code of honour
By Mork, posted on Tue, 13 Jun 2000 15:39:06 GMT
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Resident Evil - Code: Veronica

Is that a zombie over there?

Who is this Veronica, and why is she in code? After playing about four or five hours into the game and even casting a brief glance over the manual, I still couldn't tell you. What I can tell you is that Code: Veronica is, in gaming parlance, a class act. You see a lot of games in this business, and most of the time, when the review's done, it's a relief to chuck 'em in back of the games cupboard, safe in the knowledge they'll never come out again. The flip side is that when something
you do want to play comes along, it invariably means tearing yourself away before you're damn well ready. Such is the curse of having only a finite amount of time for each review.

Bad news for me translates into good news for DC owners, because this is just the problem I've had with Code: Veronica and, for once, I will be taking it home to finish, if they ever let me outta here, that is!

I loved the original Resident Evil. A superlative adventure packed with atmosphere and suspense. The kind of game it was easy to stay up playing all night. The second one didn't do it for me in the same way and I never got round to playing Nemesis but Code: Veronica doesn't just ask for your attention - it demands it with all sorts of menaces.

Go sister, go sister
Still on the trail of Bruv Chris, Claire Redfield has landed herself in all sorts of bother with the Umbrella corporation and got herself shipped off to an isolated island facility to be used in their ongoing experiments. Predictably the facility's security system has broken down however, and the zombified former staff are now milling around looking for people-snacks along with assorted mutants and some pretty monstrous 'boss' creatures.

Right from the opening sequence you know this is gonna be something special. The intro is outstanding with some of the most expressive CGI character animation I've seen. Then the actual game kicks in and it looks incredible. The visual quality doesn't fall far short of the CGI rendering. The PlayStation's backdrops were very nice, but they were entirely static, pre-rendered images. All Code: Veronica's locations are rendered entirely in realtime. The camera is no longer static but pans and moves to create a totally cinematic effect. The inevitable problems of being snuck up on by zombies because the camera didn't deign to point them out when you entered the room remain, but that's par for the cours
e, I'm afraid.

The character control and movement hasn't been improved either. Claire still runs into walls a lot and sometime perspective can be hard to judge when you're searching shelves or trying to go through a side door at the far end of a corridor. A little assistance in wriggling round obstacles wouldn't have gone amiss, but it's easy to forgive such irritations when the rest of the game is this monster wicked!

When you see a title of this quality, the ailing fortunes of the Dreamcast become all the more disappointing. Code: Veronica shows that it's not only arcade-style games like Crazy Taxi and Soul Calibur that are capable of showing off its impressive capabilities. Code: Veronica is different in that you won't have seen virtually everything it has to offer within the first half hour. You won't have seen it, but you'll want to, and you'll keep playing until you have. It has that addictive quality that's hard to tear yourself away from for small things like eating or going to bed.

Verdict: Put simply, buy this game now. Lock yourself away in a dark room with enough biscuits and water for a couple of days sustenance and lose yourself in it. This is a finely crafted and dazzlingly realised adventure no Dreamcast owner can possibly allow themselves to miss out on.