Resident Evil: Survivor

"Uuuurrrrggggggggggg!"

Wouldn't it be a nice idea if you could use a light gun in a Doom style game? Imagine walking about in real-time with your GunCon 45 in your hand? Capcom, with their mad concepts, decided to have a go and actually make a game out of it.

Set just after the events in Resident Evil/Biohazard 2, your character unexpectedly crashes his helicopter on Umbrella's private island. As you regain consciousness, you realise you have lost your memory. Armed with only a semi-automatic handgun, your job is to find out where you are, why you are here and most importantly, who the hell you are...

Unlike the other Biohazard/Resident Evil games, the game uses a first person perspective view similar to all the popular PC shooters such as Quake and Half-Life. You can use either the GunCon 45 or a control pad to move and shoot your way through the zombie-infested streets of the island. To walk forward using the GunCon, press and hold the trigger away from the screen. To run, press and hold the trigger again while walking. Pressing the trigger twice will make you walk backwards, while the A and B buttons are you're left and right. To shoot, point the gun towards the screen and fire!!! You won't be able to walk backwards or forwards and shoot at the same time, for the more obvious reasons. If you need to access the status screen, then press A and B together. By pressing the trigger along with buttons A and B, you'll be put into the options screen where you can recalibrate the gun, change volume status or end the game altogether. The controls on the pad are very similar if not exactly like the controls on Biohazard/Resident Evil. It has Dual Shock and Analogue support, as well.

A status bar is given to you in the game to tell the type of weapon you are using, how many bullets you've got left and your health. This is very helpful as you can see whether you need medical attention without having to look into your status screen. When you need to go into the status screen, it has the traditional Biohazard/Resident Evil interface. You can look at your map, read the information or clues you've picked up and recorded, and maybe do a bit of herbal mixing. There are eight weapons to collect such as the shotgun, rocket launcher, grenade launcher, etc. Each of the weapons has different strengths and weaknesses such as reload times and firing rates.

There are loads of different monsters that you'll encounter throughout the adventure - all from the previous instalments of the series. They include the famous zombies, the annoying lickers, the hard ass Tyrant and even a big giant and ugly alligator! (Yes, that enormous lizard that will eat you if you don't kill it, regardless if you are cheating or not!) There is a lock-on feature to help you seek and destroy, which automatically target and lock-on to your enemy so you don't have to.

The game branches out into several different routes. Whichever paths or doors you choose to go through will change the storyline by just a fraction. You won't be able to back track through some of the previous doors - it won't let you. This means you have to play this game several times to complete the whole game. When you have beaten the game, you will receive a rank for your progress. This will be determined whether you've used first aid sprays, how long it took to complete the game and which difficulty setting you've chosen.

I have encountered serious flaws to this game. The first one on my list is the controls. It's very sluggish when you're aiming the crosshair upon the head of a zombie, using the control pad. But because there is no collision system, there is no point of aiming at body parts at all. Shooting at their head will cause the same damage a leg shot, removing the whole purpose of the gun - not being able to kill them quicker just decreases my enjoyment and satisfaction. The lock-on feature has problems too. This feature works perfectly with slow creatures such as zombies but problems lie when the targeting feature is used on dogs. The auto-targeting is so unstable; you can't get a straight shot in thus wasting loads of ammo. You'll also get frustrated from the disability of looking up and down. You'll only be able to look vertically when you are auto-targeting or picking up items. Again, enjoyment and satisfaction is taken out for not being able to shoot at the dead corpse. The major problem out of the whole game is the usage of the GunCon. For some known reason, it doesn't seem to work on the European televisions I've tried. The system can't differentiate between the screen and the gun. This means that you'll be moving, regardless, if you're aiming at the screen or not. What's even worst is the American version entitled Resident Evil: Survivor won't have GunCon support. Could this mean the PAL release won't have the GunCon feature, too?

The graphics are not bad considering the Playstation is now on it's final legs. The textures can be very pixellated and clearly unrecognisable at times but there are some impressive texture mapping in the later stages of the game. The texturing of the enemies are nice as well. However, the animation's very choppy and glitch - when zombies die and drop on the ground, they seem to skip a few frames.

The sound effects are very solid and very Resident Evil/Biohazard like. The sound also helps you identify and locate enemies. As for the over-exaggerating voice acting...
Music is atmospheric but can also be action-orientated as well depending on the situation. It's actually quite cool because it suits the game quite easily for a horror survival game.

Overall, Gun Survivor as an idea is great and it's exactly what it needs for a series that uses the same concept over and over again. However, the controls need to be less like a Resident Evil/Biohazard game and more like a Quake game for this idea to work. It's a shame that Capcom didn't think of supporting an extra control pad with the use of a gun. This would make the game a hell lot easier to navigate thus having the ability to shoot and move at the same time. This game is definitely perfect for the Dreamcast because of the D-pad located on the gun.

For now, the Playstation version of Biohazard: Gun Survivor is solely for fans. For the average gamer, don't bother, get House of the Dead 2 on the Dreamcast instead.

Overall Rating: 5/10

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 02/10/00, Updated 06/14/01