Code Violet - PS5 Review

Code Violet by developer and publisher TeamKill Media—Sony Playstation 5 review written by Pierre-Yves with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes. 

Taking place in 2584, Code Violet is a prime example of humanity with the Jurassic Park Clause. Just because we can, should we? With no real context as to what's going on other than a dinosaur outbreak, equipped with nothing else than a knife, a pistol and underwear, you set out to find proper clothing attire and a man at the other end a comms line. 

 
Code Violet has me torn. On one hand, at the time of this writing, it's a technical mess. There are a lot of issues which resulted in me restarting* five times, and almost twice more down the line. Making things worse, there's no way to skip the intro so it was a long five restarts. On the other hand, the story piqued my curiosity enough to brave through the technical issues. Would the plot be what I thought it was? Or, would there be some twists that would make it worth it? I wanted to find out. 

* Note: Restarting can only be done by deleting the save data from the console. 

Starting with the technical issues, the “autosave” checkpoints are bizarre. Sometimes, if you die, they'll delete things from your inventory or your character. This would make sense in cases of starting you back before you would have picked these items up, but oftentimes, items that acted as character upgrades, such as inventory expansion packs, simply wouldn’t return to the area with everything else. They were gone as the checkpoint noted you picked it up even if you no longer actually had it. I also had items needed for puzzles such as my blacklight, or various weapons, disappearing from my inventory or storage with no way to get them back as there's only one save file. 

The audio can also be everywhere. Hearing certain sound effects once you've left the audible area they were in could still drown out the sounds that you're actually supposed to be hearing sometimes completely across the map of an area. This had me reducing the volume either on the TV or my headphones because the actual audio sliders, if used, would nearly mute everything in the game. Dinosaurs that should make large amounts of noise based on their size were often so silent that you wouldn't hear them coming over the sound of Violet's breath as she was running or jogging. 

 
Into the gameplay, visually, Code Violet looks great at first glance. The environments both inside and out of the installation facilities look detailed. Stepping outside for the first time was a wow moment as I figured this would have been a space station and at some point we would make it planetside to the ground. 

When it comes to Violet herself, I almost want to quote Richard from his Seven Pirates H review, with “Alright, fine. It's time for what all you degenerates are probably here for…” as the devs put some serious effort into sculpting her character model. Was this to get people’s attention? Was it a selling point? I couldn’t tell you, but I can say that they went a few steps further and provided multiple Violet outfits to dress in similar to Eve in Stellar Blade. 

Ranging from Violet's underwear and then skin tight default environmental suit over to some interesting catwalk runway design choices, a nod to Dino Crisis and Christmas ugly sweater T-Rex, there’s a decent amount of choice for how you want to dress for this adventure. You can also customize Violet's hair as pure cosmetics and equip earrings which can provide bonuses to damage and stamina usage. So some of these options are in your benefit to explore, the rest is simply personal preference.

 
The same effort was also applied to the looks of the few dinosaurs that you’ll encounter, which act as your main, and almost only enemies. The scales and the claws look incredible, until they start to move. This is where the disconnect happens. Violet when walking, jogging or running looks “right” but once you take aim? Both Violet and the Dinosaurs look like static moving 3D mock-ups that are gliding around, not moving naturally. It’s really odd that so much detail went into the models and the environment, but not into the various movements.

There were also multiple issues with the gameplay. The Dinosaurs had no real “mass” to them, so they could move right through you while hitting you. There was also no real feedback to these hits so if you missed Violet’s sounds that she took a hit? You may not even know about it. This, when combined with status effects made the adventure a bit hard to get through. 

Getting hit by a poison spitter would instantly get you poisoned. My luck? Or gameplay design? Regardless, it was not fun. It was the same thing with bleeding or needing to restore your maximum health. There are only so many items that you can pick up to deal with all of these issues. But still, I needed to know what was going on and why! So I adapted as best as I could and got into the swing of things even if a lot of the above could take me out of the immersion. 

 
Now for the story. Did I see it coming? Yes, no, toaster for the Quebec crowd that may read this. The best way to describe Code Violet’s story is a B-Horror story and I mean that in the best way possible. I love B-Horror movies because they are willing to go routes that others are not, and Code Violet did. 

Starting with a dinosaur outbreak and needing to find an environmental suit to make it further through the installation, it doesn’t take long to find out that there’s something else going on. As you move through the environment there are a lot of data pads with messages or diaries that give you a better understanding of what's been going on. I thought the pacing of these was done well as it always tells you just enough, but not enough to let you make a 100% confirmation. I just wish the font on the screen was larger as it was rather small from a distance. 

Finally, I won't go into the twists as I don’t want to spoil anything in case you decide to play. Now I have an idea of what you could be thinking, “why would I play with ‘everything’ you’ve mentioned above?” Because as much as Code Violet has a lot of issues “now”, I believe a good deal of these can be fixed down the line. It's flawed, but it's not completely broken. Code Violet also only takes around 6 hours to complete (as long as you don’t lose the items you need to help yourself out) so it's not a complete time sink. 

In its current state, Code Violet is rough. The constant loss of inventory items and equipment doesn’t make it easy. The animations of the dinosaurs makes it hard to stay immersed and in the moment. Because otherwise, Code Violet would have a creepy horror atmosphere as I’ve honestly jumped more times while playing this compared to the latest Silent Hill releases. 

But on the other hand, there’s an underlying structure that could be saved if it gets polished with provided feedback. At the end of the day, I can’t say that I didn’t enjoy my time playing Code Violet, but, it was a rough experience making it currently hard to recommend until it gets polished up.

Score: 5 / 10