Resident Evil: Dead Aim (PS2)
When in doubt, shoot ‘em in the head.
By Susie Vee

PLATFORM: PS2

PUBLISHER: Capcom

DEVELOPER: Capcom

GENRE: Survival Horror

ESRB: Mature

Resident Evil is one of those franchises we love against our better judgment. Even though the most recent titles in the series are essentially exactly the same as the original Resident Evil (hence the shot-for-shot remake of the first game on GameCube last year), there’s something oddly satisfying about squaring off against the undead.

It’s the same reason George Romero’s Living Dead films are so popular decades later, or that the new indie hit film 28 Days Later mines the same fertile ground.

With this entry, however, Capcom takes a slightly different tack. And while we literally do mean “slightly,” it’s enough new blood, no pun intended, to give the series a temporary reprieve from obsolescence.

Combining the standard 3rd-person RE game with Time-Crisis-style lightgun shooting creates a unique Resident Evil/FPS hybrid. You steer your way through the game in the 3rd person, with either a standard controller or the thumbpad on the back of a lightgun. Then, when zombies appear, you click the trigger to jump into 1st-person view and blast away with the lightgun.

While shooting, you can turn in a circle with the thumbpad, but you have to jump back to 3rd-person to move any more than that. It’s a highly confusing control scheme at first, but once you get used to it, it gets much easier.

You might remember a similar PSone game called Resident Evil Survivor, essentially a Resident Evil FPS, but this a far cry from that game (which was universally derided as one of the worst games of all time).

The game itself is pretty standard RE fare. You play as both male and female protagonists, this time trapped on an ocean liner. Naturally, said ocean liner is infested with zombies.

It’s got the same bad dialogue and voice acting as all the other games in the series, along with the key hunts and a few simple puzzles. But overall it’s a much more action-oriented affair than we’re used to seeing from the franchise.

We were also drawn into some of the great scripted events and set-pieces, which usually involved a zombie jumping out from somewhere, us screaming our heads off and blasting away blindly at the screen. More adrenaline-pumping action than we’ve experienced in a long time.

Graphically, the game is nicer-looking than we expected, especially from a title that seems to lack some of the big budget production values the more marquee Resident Evil titles get.

We liked that Fong Ling, the female Chinese agent you play as part of the time, is more of a tough gal than other Resident Evil heroines. We just wish she got a little more screen time.

If you’ve got a guncon-style lightgun and you’re in the mood for something different, we’d highly recommend checking Dead Aim out (without the lightgun, it would be a forgettable experience).