Three months had passed since the Raccoon City incident. The peaceful town has been destroyed by a nuclear missile due to the outbreak of the T-Virus that was instigated by Umbrella. Claire Redfield since that time continued to search for her brother Chris, and infiltrates an Umbrella compound in hopes to find him, but was caught and imprisoned in Rockfort Island. However, she is released from her cell by the warden and discovers that the island has been contaminated by the T-Virus outbreak, turning prisoners and officers into zombies and monsters. She joins with a fellow inmate named Steve Burnside, and fight to escape the island.
Code: Veronica is the first Resident Evil game in the main series to use 3D backgrounds instead of the traditional pre-rendered ones. Despite this, the camera does not follow the player around, but swings between semi-fixed angles and the skyboxes are pre-rendered. However, two weapons in the game can be fired from the character's point of view. First person view mode is also available in the game's unlockable Battle Game minigame.
Gameplay remained largely unchanged from Resident Evil 3: Nemesis (which was developed in tandem with Code: Veronica); features such as explosive oil drums and a 180-degree turn having been carried over to this game, though the dodge feature was removed. Items from Resident Evil 2, such as upgradeable handgun parts and "side packs" to increase carrying capacity are included, as well as new weapons such as crossbow arrows mixed with gunpowder and anti-BOW rounds for the grenade launcher. A feature of Code: Veronica is the inclusion of various dual-wielding pistols, allowing the player to target two enemies at the same time. Some of the more subtle improvements include the addition of continues, allowing the player to retry a scene after a game over, and the ability to pick up and use a healing herb when the character's inventory is full.
Code: Veronica features two protagonists: Chris and Claire Redfield. In the first half of the game, players take control of Claire and in one part get to play as Steve Burnside. In the second half of the game, they pick up where they left off with Claire until they can play as Chris. When beating the game, players unlock Battle Mode, in which they can play as Chris, Claire and Steve, and when beating the mini-game in a certain time, they can unlock Claire in a sexier costume, and even Wesker. Steve is unlocked by obtaining the Luger Replica.
The story begins when STARS Bravo Team heads on a mission to investigate a series of grisly murders occurring in the Arklay Mountains. Their chopper is sabotaged and must head on foot. They soon come upon a military police car and a stopped train, and learn about a death-row fugitive named Billy Coen. Rebecca Chambers, a rookie cop in her late teens, enters the train and discovers the horrors inside as many of it's passengers had turned into zombies. She also encounters Billy Coen, and the two must team up if they are to survive the horrors that await them.
The gameplay remains pretty much the same, but it also introduced a new feature. That feature is known as the "partner zapping" system, in which rather than choosing characters to play with, players can play as both Rebecca and Billy. They can switch from Rebecca to Billy or Billy to Rebecca at any time. When separated, players must find a way to get the characters together in order to progress. The difference between the characters is that Rebecca can mix herbs, while Billy cannot. Rebecca is fast and her defense is low, but Billy's defense is high but quite slow at times. The game also does away with the use of boxes placed in fixed locations for the player to store items in. Instead, the player can now drop items on the floor to make room for new ones, which they can later retrieve for future use. The locations of dropped items are displayed on the player's map.
The first film was released in 2002 and starred Milla Jovovich as Alice. Alice, who was once a security operative working for Umbrella and is now the ultimate enemy of the corporation. Through her battle with Umbrella, she eventually meets with the main antagonist, Chairman Albert Wesker (Shawn Roberts). A number of video game characters also make an appearance in the films, including Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory), Carlos Olivera (Oded Fehr), Claire Redfield (Ali Larter), Chris Redfield (Wentworth Miller), Leon S. Kennedy (Johann Urb) and Ada Wong (Li Bingbing).
Despite a mixed reaction from film critics, the films have become the most successful film series to be based on video games, and the franchise has collectively brought in US$915 million worldwide on a $248 million budget. However, many fans believe that only the first two movies were great, and the rest were horrendous.
Aside from the American made live-action movies, Capcom had made three CGI movies of the series: Biohazard 4-D Executer, which only lasted for 18 minutes. Resident Evil: Degeneration, in which Leon and Claire teamed up once more taking place between Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil 5. And finally the prequel to Resident Evil 6 and sequel to Degeneration, Resident Evil: Damnation.
Some fans enjoyed the live action movies, many did not as they have agreed that the live action movies had something to do with toning down the scares and horror feelings that the games had. Certain action sequences in Resident Evil 4 had references to that of the live action movies such as dodging laser grids and hand-to-hand combat.
Tune in next time for Resident Evil 4, 5, 6 and Outbreak Series.