Resident Evil Dead Aim

Your shotgun will take the Zombies down quicker, but do you want to risk running out of them before a boss?

Next to Silent Hill, I’ve often felt the Resident Evil games to be the most terrifying horror games around. Whereas Silent Hill focuses more on the lingering fear of imminent danger, Resident Evil games try to shock you into having to change your underwear. The series has really split into two distinct groups. The first is based around a 3rd person perspective, running around destroying zombies and solving puzzles. The second group (the survivor series) involves you grabbing your closest light gun and blasting the zombies until they’re dead… again.

Resident Evil: Dead Aim is the fourth in the Gun Survivor series (not to mention the first PS2 exclusive Resident Evil title) and naturally benefits from the use of a G-Con (either the original or the new version), also supporting the USB mouse, and doesn’t work badly on a regular controller. One of the few light gun games that let you truly control your character, you are able to wander around in third person perspective, and with a quick pull of your trigger zoom into first person perspective where you can then shoot what you like.

What’s going on here? Where are all the people?

This is Fongling... we like her, at least at the start of the game.

For those new to the series, Resident Evil focuses around an undeniably evil corporation known as Umbrella who has developed a virus, which strangely reanimates corpses creating the walking dead, or zombies to you and me. This game begins onboard a cruise ship apparently a few years after the initial outbreak in Racoon City. The ship has been carrying various Umbrella samples for testing, and Bruce McGivern (one of the two characters you control throughout the game) is sent in to infiltrate and investigate the cruiser.

Naturally, the plot becomes more complex as the head of the Umbrella operation, the unfortunately titled Morpheus (I can’t help but think of The Matrix whenever it’s mentioned) tries to stop you, and you end up having to prevent a major virus attack on a host of U.S cities. Fortunately, the ending is pretty satisfying, so the story does feel like it’s worth paying attention to.

Control mechanics

The ship reminds me of the Titanic. I hope that's not a bad omen!

As simple as the premise sounds, controlling your movement with a light gun could be difficult, if not for the d-pad on the back of the G-Con 2, but the controls are laid out pretty well to accommodate whatever style of play, or joypad you happen to be using. When in first person view, if a zombie is out of view and posing a serious threat, you will hear a beeping noise and a set of lines on the appropriate side of the screen indicating whereabouts the threat is coming from and how far away it is. One quick tap on the d-pad will then send you facing towards the monster, creating a remarkably intuitive feeling to blowing away the oncoming hoards. I especially like the C button on the bottom of the G-Con 2 being used to reload, often feeling like you are slamming it in as if it was another magazine.

Aiming for the head often seems to give me a good chance of taking down a zombie quicker, but any hit will slow them down, and give you a little more time to take care of everything around you. Of course zombies aren’t the only things you’ll encounter; In the good spirit of the RE games you’ll come across Hunters, which seem even more powerful than before, as well as a few well designed and fearsome bosses (the tyrant which chases you, Nemesis style, through various rooms especially).

Overdoing the slow motion

Why can't they just play nice? Either that or go down for good when you shoot them.

When the game begins, you are treated to an FMV that oozes quality visually, however the style used in all of the FMV sequences, of which there are plenty throughout the game, seem to overuse slow motion sequences. The slow motion itself wouldn’t be bad if the designers hadn’t gone with the frame doubling method of slowing the action. This means that it feels jittery and very obvious throughout when the effect is employed.

Fortunately, the in-game cinematics aren’t hindered in any way by the same effect, but do feel very in place with excellent motion captured animation. The bane of both styles of cut-scene however is a simple fault that at the default volume levels, I’ve found the dialogue to be difficult to hear. Subtitles on by default don’t really help matters, or at least the atmosphere by basically paraphrasing what is said with speech. If you have a tendency to read the subtitles when they are available, you’ll definitely notice the same thing told to you two different ways depending on whether you’re listening to the voices or reading the titles for example ‘That was not in your dossier’ becomes ‘You tricked me’ in the subtitles.

Getting back to the zombies

My advice? RUN!

Similarly to the cinematics, the main game animation is excellent with zombies staggering around effectively, and reacting beautifully to being hit with any of the multitude of weapons available to you. If you get a particularly great shot off, a zombie in question may fly back, and depending on where he lands, they’ll fall a different way, lying flat on the floor if it’s an open area, or resting against the wall if there’s no room (with appropriate blood stains left of course).

Often, when you turn away from a dead zombie they will disappear, to ensure the frame rates remain consistently good (or just to scare you). Fortunately, the graphics do the series justice, with moodily dark areas, lit up by the light you’ll be carrying, Silent Hill style.

The sound of fear

When a boss gets this close, it's time to pray you've got more than a handgun to hand.

Many of the modern survival horror games, including Dead Aim do use very limited music in order to keep a silent atmosphere, and bring out the sounds more effectively, so there’s not much music throughout the game, though the sound effects are excellent, as we’ve come to expect from the series. The voice acting isn’t bad, and aside from being too quiet in most places it is acted pretty well, bringing forward the whole drama of the situation.

In terms of atmosphere though, the light gun first person viewpoint really does well to enhance the fear. Seeing zombies lurching towards the camera as you desperately try to fire off enough rounds accurately enough to make a difference is quite unsettling, especially when you know they are closing in all around you. Fortunately, your range of weapons is very wide, giving plenty of handguns, a shotgun, an assault rifle and an even more impressive final weapon (which you’ll certainly need). The puzzles are very simple, but personally I didn’t feel the need to put in a brainteaser in such an action-based game, leaving you with few items such as key cards and crowbars. Other items for you to collect include the classic green herb and first aid spray, of which you can carry as many as you can find unlike ammo that limits you to six clips in total out of all the weapons.

The inevitable dig on durability

Hunters are difficult to kill. Facing two at once you'd better have some herbs.

Resident Evil games are rarely very long, with Resident Evil 2 probably knocking back the most hours, purely for the different ways in which you could play the game through. Obviously being a light gun game that wasn’t going to be helped, since most of them are much shorter. I made my way through Resident Evil: Dead Aim in just over an hour and a half of game play, bagging myself a grade A (the second best score – S being the best). Considering the time it took to play through such games as Time Crisis 2, this is a very respectable figure.

After finishing the game, you may unlock various extras depending on how you have performed. Bonuses include starting with various different weapons, having infinite ammo, or simply being able to play through the entire game with another character (which changes only the visual appearance of the character and to a small extent what guns you start with. Unfortunately the cinematics are exactly the same, showing the original character instead of your new one.) With all of this taken into account, it is still an excellent game, especially if you’re looking for another use of your G-Con, though it is certainly one to avoid if horror isn’t your thing.