Resident Evil: Code Crossdresser

It is an unfortunate reality of fiction that for MUCH of western literature that fay or crossdressing  are symbols of SUPER evil. Its pretty insulting now and still happens sadly. Resident evil code veronica features a villain who has actually lost his mind and didn't realize he was crossdressing as his dead twin sister. Its actually potentially sad, since he's doing this out of a sense of needing to meet his families expectations, which drove him to such great stress as to have a legit mental breakdown. AND THEN the "heroes" call him freak. Pleasant.

You SUCK

My friend Jay is a resident evil fanatic. He grew up with the games and loves them all, even the shitty later ones. I have NO such fondness for the series and genuinely find the early entries to be quite shit. Why? The tank controls.

Not what I meant

The idea behind the "Forward is run, side to side is turn" controls is that they make maneuvering less fluid, so dodging the zombies is more difficult and therefore the game is scarier. Im not saying tank controls can't be done well; silent hill uses them to great effect. But game design needs to be cohesive. In Silent Hill, you are generally faster than the enemies and can run past them if you are careful. In Resident evil, EVERY. SINGLE. ZOMBIE has this bullshit grab motion that is sticky as fly paper dipped in honey and would be difficult to avoid with PRECISE movement controls.

The weapon aiming is similarly bad, though this can be more blamed on the AGE of the game. Later resident evils found a much better form of third person aiming. What is harder to forgive is how bullet spongy the enemies are. Basic zombies can take upwards of 5 bullets to bring down. Now this could be forgiven since its a survival horror game and in those combat is not supposed to be the answer. But as previously stated, the only other answer is running which is bullshit. And most more advanced enemies are fast or dangerous enough that leaving them alive just isn't an option, so combat as a last resort doesn't really hold up either.

Really, all roads lead back to the terrible combination of movement and sticky zombies. I actually like the puzzles in this game. The fact that the doors on this research facility are locked with statues is bizarre. Put the puzzles area  good mix of logic and key hunting and I really didn't mind running back and forth around the island. Or I wouldn't have, had the movement not been so grating.

And the story was laughably bad. Claire was looking for her brother chris but got kidnapped and taken to an island facility. Which is owned by Umbrella and currently has a wee bit of a zombie problem. The video and in game cutscenes actually look pretty good, but dear lord this script and these voice actors. Claire is pretty solid but back up bro Steve sounds like a castrated Vic Mingogna. He's supposed to be a cool loner type who slowly softens to claire, but the only thing the voice actor appears to be able to pull of is "whiny brat". And I don't even KNOW what the villain is doing, but its like some one doing a bad parody of the fopish villain. And his laugh is pure comedy gold.

Interesting note, Code Veronic was the first resident evil to feature 3d rendered backgrounds as apposed to the pre-drawn ones of earlier games. It was also the LAST of the classic resident evils, before Resident Evil 4 reinvented the franchise. I can see why this game was praised back in its day. It has good points and actually has good action movie chops (weird thing for a survival horror game to do, but capcom has always sucked at writing). But now? Its a dated relic of control we put up with cause there was nothing better. Pass on this. Maybe watch a playthrough, but don't actually get it for yourself.