Blog: Forcing Myself to Relax with Resident Evil Code: Veronica
I forced myself to relax on Monday, Memorial Day. Relaxing? On a day off from work? BLASPHEMY! That’s not the American way!
Rachel and I had a non-stop weekend that was initially supposed to be a vacation. My Instagram will eventually sum up the insanity, but in a few words, it was the following:
Friday — 2-hour drive, dead mall, ghost tour, awesome pizza.
Saturday — Hang out with family (lunch, mini golf, wondering why we didn’t nap, dinner, realizing we don’t care for the party scene).
Sunday — 2-hour drive, awkwardly assembled game competition/rock show/panel at a pinball arcade in the middle of nowhere.
Monday — force myself to slow down.
I recently started playing Resident Evil Code: Veronica (RECV) after finally finishing the novelized version by S.D. Perry. For those super curious, I decided to download it on PS4 because, in my brain, that action tells Capcom we want the RECV remake sooner than anything else (at the time of this writing, details of the re-remake of Resident Evil 1 have been leaked), and trophy hunting is sometimes fun.
Since starting RECV, I came across a physical strategy guide as I quickly remembered I am the least familiar with this chapter of the series due to only completing it once on Dreamcast in the far-off year of 2000. At first, I found a guide easily enough on my phone next to me during playtime, but a random thought reminded me of the nostalgic experience of having a magazine-sized guide on my lap with a Dr. Pepper on one side of me and a bowl of goldfish or oyster crackers on the other. I recently did ¾ of this with Resident Evil 3: Nemesis (the original, not the remake) sans a strategy guide, but the nostalgia was so extreme that I finished the game in just a few sittings — an unheard-of accomplishment in my adult life.
Getting back on track, I opened the RECV guide and loaded my save file. Based on my item and weapon management, I determined my location in the game/guide. Before diving directly in, I skimmed the booklet for item descriptions and stared at the different maps to remember the ideal path for my current goal. Then I decided to say, “screw it,” and just read ahead only a few sentences for fear of forgotten spoilers and indirect hand-holding.
Soon enough, I was honed into the game, sitting cross-legged on the couch with the guide on my lap. I was even caught off guard by a cheap zombie jump scare. Cursing and laughing at myself, I decided to read ahead a little more than before since I wasted a few herbs on an easily avoidable fight.
The RECV guide hinted at an upcoming battle, so I moved a bit more cautiously through the current room. Once turning a corner in said room, the game shifted the static camera angle to focus on the top half of a jostling body bag, at which point I said out loud — “I really do miss these games creating that sense of dread.” I was always a fan of the earlier Resident Evil games that included “tank controls” and static camera angles as they enhanced the cinematic restrictions of horror more than some first-person views do today, in my opinion.
Retracing my steps in preparation for serpentining between infected canines, I noticed no enemies were in a once-populated narrow area. Suddenly, that blonde jerk with sunglasses-too-cool-for-Agent-Smith showed up to put Claire in a chokehold only to toss her on the ground as an earpiece told our star baddie she would “prove useful after all.” Those were the cutscenes we had back then! So campy! I had to laugh since I recently finished the Resident Evil 4 Remake involving a modernized Wesker equally as menacing as RECV’s version of this Saturday morning cartoon villain.
As if it was 2000 all over again, I was reminded dinner would be ready soon — so I found an ink ribbon for a typewriter to catalog my progress and tossed a bookmark in the strategy guide. You can bet, however, that I will find a spare hour sooner than later to help Claire find her way off that insane island of monsters and maniacs.
