Liked it when I was young "YO 3D RESI" .... but the older I got and the more the series went in the wierd anime direction CV started, plus Steve, yeah, not a fan.
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Happy 20th Anniversary to Resident Evil - Code: Veronica (Dreamcast)
- Thread starter Jawmuncher
- Start date
Abso-fucking-loutely. We've talked about reconning history, but there was a lot of reconning the history of Resident Evil when Code Veronica came out. This idea of "camp" suddenly invaded everything, but to my eyes it was nothing more than an easy excuse for shit writing. People were talking about how the series had always been camp, and I have never agreed with that. It's also a terrible thing to try and purposefully create camp, camp is something that is best when it is organic not because you plugged in a formula that tells you how to be campy. In numerous replays of R2 "camp" is not something that has ever really come to mind because it's trying very hard and succeeding at setting an uneasy tone. RE3 is all action, so it does lose some of the atmosphere of 2, but it's just a very different experience so I think it's ok. Code Veronica just went full-on stupid. Steve, the siblings, a giant worm, the return of Wesker, a recreation of the original mansion, every single thing was just fucking dumb. Even the things they did right, like recreating the house from Psycho, were either not important enough or used well enough.
I mean, they did remake it back in the day, with Darkside Chronicles. But the lack of acknowledgement today make it hard to believe they still give a shit about it.
CVX on PS2 was reviewed 17 months after the Dreamcast launch, and in many cases ports get lower scores than their original versions. On that note, the PS2 version has an 84 on Metacritic overall.
The CVX PS2 on IGN doesn't actually prove your point, either. It spends time explaining that the game's formula works for those who explicitly want it, which the reviewer admits to not being such a person. Nowhere does the review even remotely insinuate that CV was "the beginning of the fall of RE" like some of its most vocal critics have claimed.
Well I guess this is why it's divisive because all those things are a positive for me. RE is camp and it's best when it knows it's campy. Wesker was the best move the series could make, no villain in the series even comes close. Steve was a great spoof on Leo and the killed him so horribly it's hilarious. Ashfords were the perfect mix of weird and creepy, where Marcus was just some terrible FF villain reject as an example of a poor RE villain, these guys fit into RE perfectly. Worm is a fine RE monster. The recreation of the RE mansion is one of the best moments of the game, remember this is before REmake so to see the most iconic location looking so incredible was a dream come true. Chris in a fighter jet, come on it's perfect.
A lot of people bring up valid points about the game design and to that I say yeah it has some odd design choices. And a game can have weird decisions and still create an experience that is incredible, that's what CV does.
Recently did a replay of a few of the oldschool style RE games. I did remake/zero on GC and CV emulated through the original DC version. I still adore CV and I think it is prime for a remake. It's definitely a game that would benefit greatly from a ground up remaster that mainly just kept the story beats intact while changing up the gameplay style.
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You know what, I'm sincerely happy you enjoyed the game. You and I sound like polar opposites in our tastes, but videogames are supposed to be fun and I'm glad Code Veronica delivered on that for you.
Those 17 months were enough time for the 'new gen visuals' haze to fade and the game to be reviewed for what it was.
Also sales wise CV saw a huge drop from previous titles. On DC it sold 1.14m and PS2 1.4m. And it had an entire generation to build up those numbers, on PS2 at least.
Why leave out the rest of what he said when quoting him? His paragraph as a whole is absolutely true and balid.
I'd already addressed reviews and I quoted the part I wanted to respond to. There is no revisionist history, CV has always been seen as deeply flawed by the fanbase and RE3 has always been praised.
I remember being really impressed with the game when I got it on DC, there's just something about 'full 3D environments' that gave me my jollies.
Then a few years later when REmake came out on GameCube I thought WOW EVERYTHING SHOULD BE PRE-RENDERED!
Then a few years later when REmake came out on GameCube I thought WOW EVERYTHING SHOULD BE PRE-RENDERED!
This simply isn't true. I very vividly remember RE3 being treated as "more of the same" while CV was pushing the series forward, despite its flaws.
cv's description is 100% on point. He's also one of the people whose thoughts on RE I'll trust more than anyone else's, based on his history with the series. He knows what he's talking about.
I remember my mom knowing I absolutely fell in love with RE and got this for my birthday in April. Best birthday present ever. Little did I know its the worst paced and laid out in the franchise of the classic games, but none the less! It's got a special place in my heart.
It's easily the game I want a remake of the most just because its got the most room for improvement.
It's easily the game I want a remake of the most just because its got the most room for improvement.
Metacritic 84 though.
And yet CODE: Veronica was Capcom's best selling game of that generation until RE4 came out, when you combine the DC and PS2 versions. More than Devil May Cry, more than Onimusha, more than Outbreak.
RE4: 3.9 million
CV: 2.54 million
Dino Crisis: 2.5 million
DMC: 2.16 million
Onimusha: 2.1 million
Onimusha: 2.0 million
There is nothing out there to support this assertion.
Decided to go back and read some reviews from CODE: Veronica on Dreamcast.
AllGame:
GameRevolution:
GameSpot:
And according to Wikipedia, here are the score run downs from the time:
Hardly "CV has always been seen as deeply flawed by the fanbase and RE3 has always been praised" as someone claimed earlier.
AllGame:
GameRevolution:
GameSpot:
And according to Wikipedia, here are the score run downs from the time:
Hardly "CV has always been seen as deeply flawed by the fanbase and RE3 has always been praised" as someone claimed earlier.
Capcom doing poorly all gen doesn't make CV sales good, especially when gotta combine different releases which without a doubt include an amount of repurchases.
You're quoting gaming media though. Not the fanbase.Decided to go back and read some reviews from CODE: Veronica on Dreamcast.
AllGame:
GameRevolution:
GameSpot:
And according to Wikipedia, here are the score run downs from the time:
Hardly "CV has always been seen as deeply flawed by the fanbase and RE3 has always been praised" as someone claimed earlier.
There is a reason a bunch of people are getting so defensive of the game in this thread, it's because the game has been viewed negatively for many, many years.
For what it's worth I think it's totally possible for the game to be both well reviewed and also poorly regarded a few months/ a year later. From what I remember of 2000, REC:V had a very mixed reaction by fans online in the months after its release. I think there was a general fatigue around the series even at that point, so while reviewers may have said "yes, this is the best Resident Evil ever" it wasn't making the impact like previous installments had. I remember there just being a lot of excitement around the PS2 in those days, but a re-release of a Dreamcast just didn't hold most people's attention. I think StallionDan is on to something when he brings up the 17 month gap between releases. Yes, Code Veronica X was still well reviewed, but in those 17 months I remember thinking that the luster was gone from the game and that no one really cared.
Looking at sales, RE2 sold almost 5 million units, so REC:V did about half that. This tells me a lot about how people viewed Code Veronica. Well reviewed or not, the game did not live up to expectations for one reason or another.
Looking at sales, RE2 sold almost 5 million units, so REC:V did about half that. This tells me a lot about how people viewed Code Veronica. Well reviewed or not, the game did not live up to expectations for one reason or another.
Loved this game. Played it all the time on the Dreamcast, the graphics were really amazing back in 2000 and Claire dual wielding those guns was the coolest thing to me at the time.
I also prefer it to the X version. Didn't really care for the added cutscenes and the changes to Wesker.
I also prefer it to the X version. Didn't really care for the added cutscenes and the changes to Wesker.
Take a look at GameFAQs' user review page for CV. Plenty of positive impressions all around and only a truly handful of negative ones.
Capcom as a whole had a rocky generation, but that goes beyond anything specific to CV and more to Capcom as a company. To use CV's sales against it despite its performance relative to other games (especially with little evidence that repeat sales contributing to overperformance) is just cherry picking.
Besides, if the game were awful, who would repurchase it? If the Dreamcast game was truly a terribly received title, how did the PS2 version outdo it?
The answer is because your narrative simply doesn't hold scrutiny when examined under the evidence we have now.
This is a flawed way to look at CV's reception. Games series sales are very cyclical and go through ups and downs, which can be, but are not necessarily tied to game quality. By the time CV rolled around, the survival horror genre was no longer new or original. There was more competition from games like Silent Hill, Parasite Eve, Fatal Frame, and even Capcom's other games like Onimusha and DMC. CV for Dreamcast launched when the system had a tiny userbase, while CVX for PS2 launched right as games like GTAIII, MGS2, SH2, Halo, and so forth were hitting, and not long before REmake.
Again, I'm not remotely arguing that CV wasn't some unflawed gem that everyone liked, but I wrote a book on the history of Resident Evil and found great examples of user apathy with titles like Resident Evil Zero, the moving of RE4 to GameCube, and so forth, yet no one I spoke to and no sources from the time I looked into even hinted that CV was a cursed game.
Ehhhhh. I think this is why I've chosen my own head cannon at this point.
The "villain" in RE never needed to be anything other than Umbrella. Wesker's double crossing plotline in RE1 was enough for his involvement, and I don't think the series gained anything by his "2000's as fuck" edgelord revival for the other games. Resident Evil's best "villains" are all mutations with Umbrella (or specific virus strains) as a nebulous, overarching thread in the background.
This is inevitable when you have a series that's been around for approaching 25 years, with so many games in that time frame. But in hindsight "Chris in a fighter jet" was just the early preview to most of my thoughts about this series between the releases of RE4 and RE7.
Because the Dreamcast died an early death and had no further sales, while the PS2 went on to become the best selling console ever. That is how the PS2 version outsold it.
And just because it got criticised by the fanbase doesn't make it some abomination, you're trying build a strawman argument there. I always thought it was steps back since day 1, yet I imported the Japan only DC re-release for the extra content, and bought it on PS2 and GC, and even imported the disc release when RE4/CV got ported to PS3. That's just what some RE fans do.
And yet you posted this earlier:
If your opinion was limited to just preferring RE3 over CV, that's one thing. But you're literally inventing unsubstantiated reasons to speak against the game, while ignoring its critical and commercial successes. It goes beyond just "thinking it was a step back since day 1."
The game was seen as steps backwards by the fanbase, because it literally, factually was. Key features of previous games were missing or done worse. The fanbase criticised the game because of this, and some other decisions.
But you're trying twist and turn this into "If the game is terrible, how can it have got sales!!".
Your arguments still make no sense. I guess by that definition (that because CV didn't have RE3's features, therefore it was a step back), REmake and RE0 were also seen as a step back from RE3 because they too didn't include its spinoff features that were never intended to be used in mainline REs?
Or that CV's longer and more relevant narrative, stronger characterization, more thematic puzzles, first person aiming, higher number of bosses, wider weapon/enemy/environment variety meant nothing to the fanbase back then?
I was around then too. I cannot remember anything you've asserted in this thread as forming some kind of dominant narrative on CV.
As I pointed out in a previous post, CV lacked features even RE1/2 had, not just RE3s new ones.
..and yes, REmake are RE0 are in some ways steps backwards too. Not on the level of CV, but they were. Even Remake's branching paths are steps back from RE1's as an example.
Also just because some features were only intended for a spin-off doesn't mean a game without them isn't steps backwards, especially when they were features that greatly enhanced the game and genre. Outside of RE RE3s features were put to great use, and some of them have finally returned to RE even if it took nearly 20 years.
Also, you can't remember anyone ever thinking RE1, 2 or 3 were better than CV or had better features even in any way? Really? Bollocks.
I remember there being preferences from one game to another, not overreaching narratives.
