Resident Evil Code: Veronica Review

This was the technical leap. Real-time environments with a moving camera let the series stage things the pre-rendered games could not, and the Antarctic base and the Rockfort prison are genuinely distinct places rather than another mansion with different wallpaper. Claire and Chris both work, the Ashford twins are the closest the series has come to gothic melodrama played straight, and the tonal swings between prison horror and family opera give it a personality nothing else in the line has.

The design, though, is hostile in ways the earlier games never were. Item boxes are not universal, so parking your weapons in the wrong place before a one way transition can leave a boss fight mathematically unwinnable, and the Nosferatu encounter is the standard example of a fight you can arrive at already having lost. Backtracking is heavy and the ammunition math is stingier than it should be for a game that keeps introducing armored enemies. Brilliant and spiteful in roughly equal measure.