A new way to kill some old friends. Review

A new way to kill some old friends.

Game Revolution is notorious for being tough on games. We consistently grade hyped-up

titles lower than our occasionally na’ve counterparts. It might not help ad sales,

but we’d rather be right than wrong.

So when I had already heard some bad stuff about Resident Evil: Dead Aim

and saw some of the low scores from other reviewers, I prepared to take aim

myself and blast a few new holes in the CD.

But I’m not going to, because I like it and I think my fellow zombies are going like it, too.

RE:

Dead Aim breaks free from the arcade-style shooter standard and does some

terrific new things. It doesn’t hit the bullseye, but I love the direction Capcom

is aiming because gun games have been stuck in a rut since Duck

Hunt.

Hell, the latest next-gen version of House

of the Dead III still has “Insert Coin(s)” flashing at the bottom of the

machine. I had to learn the hard way that your Xbox warrantee will not cover

shoving $3.75 in quarters into your console.

First and foremost, Resident Evil: Dead Aim is not really a gun game

in the traditional sense. You spend more time using other controls than you

do aiming your light gun. You simply cannot shoot everything you see because

you don’t have enough ammo. You have to explore, find pesky keys, get lost,

and run away from zombies.

A gun game where you run away from things? Yep. Resident Evil: Dead

Aim is really the latest installment in the Resident Evil Survivor

series. You just happen to use your light gun to shoot rather than your controller.

I think this is a terrific innovation, really bringing you into the game like

no other RE title.

Speaking of you, this time you get to be Bruce MacGavin, who appears to be

some sort of rogue cop or possibly a government agent. Resident Evil

plots never make too much sense, what with their underwater airports and all,

but this one might be the most poorly explained yet, literally dropping you

into the middle of the action already in progress. You will also run across

and play as Fong Ling, a Chinese agent who, according to her bio, tracked down

and captured her own brother to be executed by the Chinese government for promoting

democracy. Thanks, sis.

You will eventually figure out that ex-Umbrella employee Morpheus Duvall has

made off with the T-virus. He and his followers have taken over a cruise ship

owned by the Umbrella Corp and plan to sell the biological terror to the highest

bidder. Meanwhile, they have turned the ship into to greatest cruise ship of

all time, full of fun-loving, shuffleboard-playing zombies. Carnival

Cruises just can’t compete with forward thinking like this.

The ship looks good, too, with some nice textures and great looking shipboard

cabins, halls, lounges, and everything else you’d expect on a luxury liner.

Our zombie friends are a little square around the edges, as are the main characters,

and there are a few clipping errors, but the game keeps up a smooth framerate

and overall looks pretty good.

The sound is well done, with ship noises, zombies groaning for brains, satisfying gunfire and eerie music. The voice acting is a little better than the zombie game standard, even if the dialogue isn’t.

The gameplay itself is straight out of classic Resident Evil. You control

your character in the third-person with the camera locked fairly solidly behind

you. While you run around desperately trying to figure out where the zombies

stashed the “Hex Key” (Note: Not a real item, so don’t e-mail me), you spend

as much time avoiding the undead as shooting them.

And

when you want to shoot at them, you just pull the trigger, instantly zooming

the game into a first-person view of the action. Then you just aim the gun and

shoot. Aiming is important, because you don’t have unlimited ammo and good hits

(ie. head shots) are key. There are even a number of different satisfying weapons

to find. It’s simple, elegant, and really makes you feel like those zombies

are coming at you.

Unfortunately, when you’re not shooting, the controls are not so elegant or

simple. The game supports about a million control schemes, including the option

to play with a mouse, but I found it best to play with just the PS2 GunCon.

Whatever you do, don’t play Dead Aim without a light gun. It uses

every button on the gun, although some of the button-mapping is awkward. For

instance, you can’t look up or down.

But the biggest control issue is that all movement is done with the little stick on the back of the gun, the “thumbcon,” and this is a straight D-pad and not an analog stick, which makes movement a bit jerky and uncomfortable. You can solve this by using a PS2 controller to move and then snatching up your gun to shoot, but it would all be simpler if the “thumbcon” was analog.

This is the opposite of every other gun game ever made, which historically

feature the easiest controls to learn: just aim and shoot. Make no mistake –

having to learn a whole new set of complex controls is definitely going to put

off some gamers, but I think the freedom to explore your environment is well

worth it. However, this means that Dead Aim is not a party game like

other light gun games. It’s very much a solo effort like the other Resident

Evil titles.

Some people have been complaining that the game is too short, and indeed it

will only take you about five hours to complete in Normal mode. But while this

is about a third of the length of other Resident Evil titles, it’s about

10 times longer than most other light gun games. Is the glass half empty or

half full? Sure, I want a longer game, but that’s only because I’m enjoying

myself. It doesn’t bug me so much when I hate the game.

RE: Dead Aim isn’t the first gun game to try taking you out of the

arcade and off the rail, but it’s the first one to do it well. I found it innovative

and engrossing, and I think it’s a great new direction for both the genre of

light gun games and the Resident Evil series. At least until they finally

let you play as a zombie…