Resident Evil: Dead Aim

"A slightly short yet totally SWEET Resident Evil thrill ride"

It's so interesting to sit and think about how much of a child I act like every time a new Resident Evil game is released. I'm serious I really do act like I'm five and about to get my first Pokemon card set or Dragon Ball Z toy or whatever the new anime fad is right now. The case of the just in Resident Evil: Dead Aim is no different. I had to rent it as I am horribly low on money or I really would have bought it without even testing it first. Yes I am that much of a Resident Evil fan. All RE devotion aside however, this is a very satisfying rush of a game and would have been worthy in my mind of the buy before I try. While it is a bit short and has little replay value that I've seen from playing through twice, it should still hold RE fans over for a bit...but probably not until the highly anticipated 4th chapter in the series is released. My score is based on five categories of the game each with a sub score of 0 (bad), 1 (ok), or 2 (great) points accumulating to the possible 10 points total. Here is the detailed breakdown...

STORY-2/2
There's not much to the story being it a side story. It has little to do with the central story following Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine and the other S.T.A.R.S. vigilantes trying to overthrow the evil Umbrella Corporation. But it does however, give you a little bit of insight on the events of Raccoon City (without giving too much away we learn who REALLY supposedly caused the outbreak in Raccoon City, I think). This chapter takes place on a luxury cruise ship that is carrying samples of the T-Virus and the G-Virus as well as many employees of Umbrella experimenting with them trying to successfully fuse the two (the literally electric results are quite impressive). But as we all know experimenting with the viruses always leads to outbreaks and infections and mass hysteria. The cruise ship experimentations are no different. We also learn that someone has hijacked the ship and is taking it elsewhere to an unknown destination. That's where your characters come in. You play as all-American (and badly accented) Bruce McGivern sent by the government to retrieve the virus samples and stop the hijacking terrorists and as the lovely FongLing from China believing that her country is threatened by the virus. I find it interesting because in my opinion, Capcom has a way of intertwining different elements from big-screen movies into their games. The underground labs of 2000's RE remake looked exactly like the haunted asylum from the 1999 remake of ''House on Haunted Hill'' and this game is no different as the cruise ship has the eerie feel of 2002's ''Ghost Ship'' and there are
elements of ''The Matrix'' and even the sewer scenes from ''Blade 2.'' And even if that's just me and my movie loving self this is totally not a bad thing as in fact I wish it would happen more often in video games. nevertheless the story is insightful and involving and enough to keep you going through the game.

GAMEPLAY-1/2
As most have said this game works surprisingly well even with an analog controller. And believe me after the ''Survivor'' mishaps I really was worried about how it would play out. Capcom really went out of their way this time to make this system work. Your character moves in 3rd person perspective (like the other RE games if you don't know the perspective concepts) and when you take aim with a weapon it switches to first person (like the survivor series) and unfortunately this is where it lost the one point because you can't move while aiming other than looking around so you do have to occasionally run from corner to corner to get enough safe space to fire. An added bonus that makes up for it is that you get warnings on screen when an enemy is moving or approaching you out of sight. Even the analog controller will practically auto aim on the enemy when you move your sight to their direction. There is also a new hit system called ''critical hit'' which is basically shooting everything in the head and taking it down in a shot or two. The zombies are as nasty as ever as they can even slightly run toward you and they REALLY limp as their heads and even half their bodies can fall out of your gun sight when firing. It's almost like ''Resident Evil'' meets ''House of the Dead'' with fun and explosive effects.

CONTROLS-2/2
As I stated earlier, I was very worried about having to use an analog controller on a first person shooter (the previous ''Survivor'' game mechanics were like trying to play the fast pace ''House of the Dead III'' with a controller non-responsive because you spilled coke on it ages ago. You can actually make it through almost every zombie encounter without taking any damage because the aim sight works WITH you instead of AGAINST you (as previous Capcom shooters have had a tendency to do). You actually get to fight enemies more than fighting with the controls. It's slightly difficult (again) not being able to move in first person view as Elite Hunters, Big Boss Alpha, And the Tyrant variation come up on you so quickly so you have to take a shot or two and then try to out run them for 5 minutes before finding a safe distance to fire again. You get over it pretty quickly in the heat of the action though. As I said before, Capcom goes above and beyond to make this system work for everyone and for the most part they accomplish that goal well.

GRAPHICS-2/2
Here I am slightly torn on the score. The intro, ending and movies scenes in between are the best I've seen from Capcom yet. Bruce and FongLing are incredibly well animated. The zombies are as ugly as ever and the cruise ship environments are lush and detailed giving the much needed creepy feel on an RE game. There are however, a lot of rooms later in the game that are a bit too simplistic and bland especially when compared to the Gamecube remake and prequel. And some of the creatures seem a bit rushed like Capcom was running out of time and ideas. There are some excellent creations such as new ''Elite Hunters'' (Yet another Hunter variation for all you Hunter fans) and the final enemy produced from the fused G and T virus is very original and impressive but there are such boring not creepy creatures that are awfully named like ''Glimmers'' which are nothing more than glorified ''Lurkers'' from RE ZerØ with jewels on their heads that jump on you and puke away with toxic vomit. And then there's ''Torpedo Kids'' (how much more awful can a supposed to be scary frightening and grotesque RE creature be named?) which just look like that Dreamcast flop ''Seman'' however its spelled with a tadpole with a human face attached to its front and the queen that produces them look nothing more like an ugly empty snail shell. There is also a fat big boss (named the Greek letter for ''alpha'' for some reason) that plays right alongside ''Daredevil'' as it has no eyes yet an incredible sense of hearing that it uses to track its prey and determine its location. The last creature feature was annoying glorified mosquitoes and an ''okay'' slightly creepy queen that too closely resembles the queen from Sigourney Weaver's ''Alien'' series to really qualify as scary in the game. There is also a variation of a Tyrant but it seems a little to low grade to do the Tyrant creatures we've seen any justice. The final creature fight is impressive yet a bit short of previous RE standards. Ever since we saw the step-by-step transformation process of William Birkin in Resident Evil 2 Capcom has rarely given the same insight on the final boss transformations and does so again in Dead Aim. The boss goes from the equivalent of Birkin stage 1 to Birkin stage 4 in two fights without even showing the transformation process. Capcom still gives enough to satisfy players in this game but rushes itself and falls short of giving more than enough to wow players.

BACKGROUND MUSIC (BGM)- 2/2
I give the music a full 2 pts in this category as even though there are some too quiet moments in the game where some scary theme would make for a more gritty time on the cruise ship rather than none at all, the themes are a nice take away from the dreery survival horror scenarios. its almost like since it takes place mostly on the high seas they gave it a slightly summery keyboard hint which is evident in the not fear inducing intro. But again this is not a bad thing. I like variety compared to the same old same old. And there is some great action tunes when involved with big fights. I've said it a million times and I'll keep saying it until I play games no more, I love some good electronica pumping tunes when running from zombies or blowing them apart (such as the amazing opening theme to REØ). Maybe some day Capcom will give it a full shot especially with some of their sometimes impressive musical talent.

OVERALL-9/10
I know if you add the points up they total a 9 out of 10 points but I have to dock the one point I was torn over in the graphics category as in addition to its 2 hour 45 minute running time even for a beginner, Capcom also almost completely left out any replay value as far as I could tell. I played through twice and all you get in addition to the short ending is the opportunity to switch characters where instead of playing as Bruce most of the game and FongLing occasionally, you play the vice versa but even then the story does not change at all. The first time through you play as Bruce eventually running into a room where FongLing is and tell her to go through an air duct to unlock a door for them. The second time through as FongLing you run into a room where the movie still changes it to Bruce telling FongLing to go through the air duct where you then play as Bruce going through the air duct instead. They simply changed the characters for their parts during actual gameplay and not any of the movie scenes in between. We don't get to see anymore insight as to where FongLing is when you're Bruce and vice versa. Again, they make some effort but fall short in rushing themselves. Imagine Capcom being in such a hurry that they couldn't even give extra costumes for once(I guess they assumed that since only 40% of the game is played in 3rd person we wouldn't have time to admire extra costumes?). This could just be because I played on easy however. Maybe in normal mode or hard mode you do get some extras but I doubt they took the time of putting any actual new modes of gameplay in unfortunately where they had a huge playground to experiment with it too. As my one liner says however, all small flaws aside this is a very satisfying game and is worthy of at least one play through. It's just unfortunate that it might not be consistently surprising and rewarding enough keep players interested much longer after that. Games like Resident Evil: Dead Aim would be great if Capcom came out with them more often than every couple of years because its simply too short and too low on replay value to keep fans sustained longer than about 6- 8 months. Let the RE community hope and pray that Capcom takes its time and focuses all effort on the high expectations set by the Gamecube RE games for Resident Evil IV because if they leave out the more than 2 hour play through (2:45 for a first time play even for yours truly, who is so meticulous about checking everything in RE games it took me 12 hours to get through the remake the first time, just doesn't cut it) and forget to give you more reasons to play the game again and again then it may not be so worth the wait.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 07/02/03, Updated 07/02/03