Heroes Never Die...

Pretty much went in blind with this, not knowing anything about it other than how great a save room theme it has (as well as the vocal version) and had a surprisingly good time with it. The controls were a bit clunky in some areas, like the lack of being able to look down and no quick turn, which made for a bit of sluggish dodging and weaving during boss fights. Only died once on the final boss due to the aim snapping to way above its head, making me unable to move the aim back down in time. Other than that, the third person movement is slightly rough, being pre-RE4, but still definitely manageable, with the one benefit being that you can at least move around a bit while aiming, even if very slowly. Definitely came a long way from the first Survivor game. Another thing of note is that ammo is in absolute abundance in this. I often found myself having to leave some good ammo behind because I just had so much shotgun ammo, pretty much being the main gun I used through most of the game. Doesn't help that enemies sometimes also drop ammo, made more ridiculous when you kill a zombified maintenence worker and they drop a frickin 100 round assault rifle mag. The guns are quite satisfying in this, even if the flash of the assault rifle is quite bright.

The story was a little weird, but entertaining. Cowboy Bruce McGivern and, after a brief rivalry, his newfound Chinese partner Fong Ling, aboard a ship at sea, both after ̶S̶e̶p̶h̶i̶r̶o̶t̶h̶ Morpheus (not that one), a dude turned hot, intelligent electric female tyrant turned abomination, with a bunch of other typical boss creatures thrown in throughout as they find themselves in yet another Umbrella facility. Lots of over the top slow motion moments, almost to comedic effect. Some good enemy designs mixed in with surprisingly good atmosphere, having multiple areas that were actually creepy, and some moments that can actually get a jump out of you or get your butt clenching.

It's a bit of a short experience, finishable in under 3 hours, but it's definitely worth checking out.

Resident Evil Dead Aim is a light gun shooter and classic RE hybrid made by the infamous budget developers, Cavia. Games by Cavia often had a certain je ne sais quoi, where they punched far above their weight in certain areas while still very much maintaining their budget status. Dead Aim is no different in this regard. More interesting is how prophetic Dead Aim proved to be, hinting at the future of the franchise as a whole.

I played through Dead Aim on my Steam Deck through emulation, so I did not use a light gun or USB mouse to control the aiming reticle. I found the right stick was accurate enough in scoring headshots without wasting too much ammo, at least until the brutal final boss. It took me 3 tries to beat the boss on Normal mode, I had not died in my playthrough otherwise. I found the game to be fairly easy overall. Save rooms provide unlimited pistol ammo, which is enough to take down all non-boss enemies, and there is a large selection of other weapons that can make quick work of tougher enemies and bosses.

The best part of Dead Aim is not the shooting, but the atmosphere and sound design. The drab colour palette and dark lighting work wonders for the feeling of horror. Hearing a zombie shuffling in the distance where you can just faintly make out their silhouette in the darkness lends itself nicely to a sense of dread, even if you have enough ammo to deal with most enemies. The cruise ship is an awesome setting that is well executed, with the below decks being a particular spooky highlight.

Nobuyoshi Sano of Drakengard fame was in charge of the sound in Dead Aim. There are no real melodic tracks within the environments, but droning ambient noise, footsteps of your player character and enemies, and moans of zombies envelop the sound scape. The save room theme is a lush ambient composition that is among the best in the series. Surprisingly, sound effects actually contribute to the gameplay. There is a stealth element, where enemies will only notice you when you have been loud enough. This can occur by running instead of walking, or by walking on noisy metal grates, or of course by shooting at other enemies without a silenced weapon. The silenced pistol is the weakest weapon with the smallest ammo clip, but it is useful in sneaking through areas without taking damage or consuming excess ammo. There is one boss battle that makes full use of these mechanics in a very novel way, and is quite fun as a result.

Despite being a light gun game, Dead Aim incorporates plenty of elements of classic RE design. The game's environments utilize backtracking as well as lock-and-key puzzles to slowly expand the explorable area. There are lots of rooms off the beaten path containing additional weapons, ammo, and healing items, encouraging some light exploration. In true Survival Horror fashion, you are actually able to skip or run past most enemies in the game, saving valuable resources in the process. The above mentioned stealth mechanics contribute to this, as does a quick dodge similar to the one in Resident Evil 3. The quick dodge in Dead Aim is much more reliable and easier to activate compared to that previous game.

Dead Aim can be seen as a prototype of Resident Evil 4 in some ways, or at the very least a test bench for some ideas in that later game. You play as a blond-haired American Secret Service agent wearing a grey body suit. No, that's not Leon S. Kennedy, it's Bruce McGivern. There is another playable character, a Chinese spy also involved in the operation that serves as a love interest for the male protagonist. No, not Ada Wong, it's Fongling. The gameplay takes the Survival Horror base of the previous games and injects it with some shooting action. Both Dead Aim and 4 have tank controls but use over the shoulder cameras with stop-and-pop shooting gameplay when you press/hold a shoulder button, though Dead Aim transitions to first-person and allows you to move around while in aiming mode. These parallels are very interesting. It's fun to imagine some Capcom employees instructing Cavia to implement certain features as a test of their playability and fun factor.

The story in Dead Aim is mostly nonsense. There is a trans-coded male-presenting villain who transforms into an extremely femme, fishy-looking tyrant. That feels problematic to me, with Bruce referring to the tyrant with male pronouns at least once. The plot is mostly an excuse to get Bruce and Fongling onto the cruise ship, which is a very fun setting to be fair. The voice acting is terrible, but at least in an enjoyable RE-style way. Bruce's southern accent is constantly slipping, which doesn't help him avoid feeling like a complete loser. Whereas Leon is a dorky but cute action hero who tries to act cooler than he is, Bruce pretends to act stupider than he really is to trick his opponents into letting their guards down. That characterization doesn't really work for me, and makes Bruce feel as stupid as he acts.

The graphics are certanly budget, with even the CG cutscenes looking off. The environment design makes it work, as does the enemy design, which is mostly quite interesting. The zombies have gotten a lot of care, with many unique character models for different parts of the game. There are cool new enemy designs like the Glimmers, shadow-stepping Hunter-like bastards that are better ran away from than fought. There are 3 tyrant-like bosses in the game and they all look pretty unique and have novel mechanics. Unfortunately, Bruce and Fongling look terrible. They are low poly and have strangely elongated necks. It's not the hugest deal as you spend a significant amount of the experience in first-person view anyway, but it bears mentioning.

To conclude, Resident Evil Dead Aim is a fun and short little experimental spin-off. It does not overstay its welcome. I had a good time with it, with the exception of the difficult final boss. It's nothing special, but classic RE diehards and light gun enthusiasts might get a kick out of it.

Here is another side-game from the RE series that's often forgotten, Dead Aim! I have to admit it is an interesting hybrid idea here, better than Survivor 2, however, it still isn't a very good RE game. It's not terrible, but it's not great and suffers from some janky animations, especially the facial ones!

I do love the design of some new monsters created from the T+G virus, however, the idea that is adds electrical powers because SCIENCE is hilarious to me.

I'm confused as to what they were attempting to do with the main character who looked like discount Sephorith, but as he was wounded in the opening cut-scene he injects himself with the virus to become a tyrant that is very feminine in appearance! Complete with visable bumps on the chest (no nipples), curvy hips and feet shaped like high-heels.

I feel like there was a different angle this game was going for, but we never saw it in the translation. From doing further research there's a suggestion of different potential meanings to it. The character loved beauty in everything, including himself, so he took HRT to keep himself looking youthful and it could be merely how the virus reacted with it or as Sphere Hunter suggested, it could be how the Virus turns people into their inner, base desires and the character was actually trans? It's very hard to tell, especially with the history in places like Japan in regards to "Traps" and other such cultural things over there or villains appearing feminine like in the Final Fantasy series. It makes it worse that there is no actual confirmation on if it's my idea that the character, named Morpheus, was transformed that way from his own base desire like suggested with others or if it really is just because of being on HRT when the virus was introduced into his system, like how mixing drugs can give off different effects.

(Though, him being made Morpheus and considering what The Matrix was actually meant to be trying to deliver...maybe someone in the closet did this on purpose?)

Anyway, it's a discussion to be had regardless.

The game itself, as mentioned before, tries to do this hybrid thing of 3rd person when walking around and exploring, but as soon as you aim it becomes like a FPS. Kind of like Fatal Frame, but if it was guns instead of the camera obscure!

The issue with this is with fast firing weapons like machine guns as the occasional flash, especially in regards to Fatal Frame, won't be too bad on the eyes but if you use the machine gun you get, there's such bright flashes that it's almost a damn strobing effect! I don't recommend playing it in the dark or if you're in any way susceptible to epileptic fits!

It was a good thing I had watched Sphere Hunter's video before making this review because a major feature of the game, which you are never once told, is that you can actually sneak past enemies! It seems this T+G Virus rotted the eyeballs out of zombies and such so you can potentially sneak past and not waste all of your ammo like I did! That said, save-points have nearly limitless ammo so I never once suspected that I was using up too much ammo at any moment. Sneaking is the strategy for fighting the boss Pluto who is a huge creature, once human, that's blind but listens to your footsteps to come after you.

Again, the game, though fun, is certainly not great. Out of all the other forgotten side-games, I'd say it was the best out of all of them. There's all the side-games apart from Code Veronica that were on the PS2 and certainly better than the first Survivor game too!

Stream/Gameplay

This game is so stupid. US Agent Bruce Mcgivern is called on to track down Dr. Morpheus D. Duval, who's extorting China and the US to the tune of 5 Billion dollarinos. Bruce looks and sounds like the Tiger King and his love interest is Ada Wong Fongling, a Chinese agent who, the moment she even thinks about betraying China, is targeted by an orbital satellite laser.
Morpheus turns into a super tyrant, which for some reason gives him organic high heels and a rockin set of tits. The fight between him and Bruce plays out like an MGS battle. When defeated, Morpheus explodes, killing everyone....until the post credits reveal Bruce and Fongling survived in a convenient, not established submarine.
The game-play isn't too shabby, better than the last survivor game because it's actually designed like a light gun game where you have to target weak points and stuff, but the game almost doesn't matter because I was just rushing between areas to see the next cutscene.

My guilty pleasure!

Love every minute on this game.

Yes, have a lot of cringe moments, but the enemies, sets and soundtrack are excelent!

House of the Dead meets Resi. Fixed camera with tank steering to stab walls while walking, a motherload of closed doors and no-minimap on sight. Find a key and seek the damn door, door-by-door while zombies re-spawn in rooms you've already cleared. Makes a 3 hour stroll if you don't walk on circles. Takes on the most mansion looking boat i'd ever see and the non-canon plot is akin to mindless 80's VHS action. Exists entirely for a terribly sold light-gun. The first zombie apparition scared the living skies outta me when i first played it, but now it makes a Jehova's witness simulator growing up for the amount of closed doors i kept facing. The murky low-poly aesthetic is charming for this type of throwaway survivor horror, makes it seem like a puppet combo.

Like Matthew McConaughey playing a Resident Evil protagonist with the mindset of Joe Dirt! After playing all the Gun survivor games this one definitely was the best of all. Given you a full blown game to playthrough with its own unique story and adding a mix of classic Resident Evil with the first person guncon gameplay. Villain was kinda goofy, but a good bit of weapons and locations to explore even though the game was so short. I like how they tie it in to other games as well. I really wish we would get more love of some of these other characters instead of Chris and Leon. So many great characters we need updates on and not just through CGI films "cough" Rebecca Chambers "cough". Can easily be played through controller as well. Once you get used to the controls it feels good to get those headshots in and feels damn satisfying making the zombies bounce to the walls.

The cheesiest and most low budget RE game to ever exist: so awful it's good voice acting with bizarre fluctuations in accents, cgi cutscenes with creaky animations and way too much slow mo effects, subtitles not matching at all with what the characters are saying in scene, knock off Leon Kennedy and Ada Wong protagonists, goofy low poly models with Bruce getting hit the worst with a hilariously unpolished model sporting a giraffe neck in every cutscene, Bruce's cringy one liner after taking down Morpheus, the literal J-rap rock theme song of the game "Gun-Shot". How does this game even exist and was actually released by Capcom?

Most of what this game tries to execute ends up being pretty mediocre but I can't say it's a complete trainwreck; the synth-heavy music and dark atmosphere is strangely unique for the series and added a tinge of haunting vibes to the ship "exploration", something I can't really say about the later entries that also have ship levels. The save room theme surprised me with how much I loved it despite how little it is encountered during the campaign.

Movement and gameplay is a mess. The tank controls were fine, but the moving and shooting just felt off and clunky the entire time and especially in transition from one to another and vice versa. The sneak mechanic is pretty underutilized for how much it can change zombie encounters, and I never really used or even knew about it till I was close to the end of the game. Also underutilized is the dodge/block mechanic that's similar to RE3 Nemesis and it's just vastly superior to it and it just breaks all encounters???? What is this game??

Anyways, Dead Aim has absolutely no replay value after finishing it and the gameplay is a little too janky for me to return to it, but it was cool to have finally checked out this bizarre RE spin off. Capcom should do more of these today, along with a new outbreak game.

Also did not play with a guncon, unfortunately.

The first of the Gun Survivor series felt like a genuine effort to keep continuity with the core Resident Evil titles. Sure, it was a spinoff light-gun game, but it was still recognisably Resident Evil, bringing the slow paced, explorative style of Resi into a different genre. Keys, notes, herbs, a little bit of ammo conservation... it wasn't a good game, but in its adherence to series conventions it was quite a charming little thing.

Survivor 2 gave up on this completely, eschewing the series' identity in favour of being a generic arcade shooter. Its execution was even worse than the first game's, and without that Resi identity to prop it up it really was worthless. I skipped the third in the series, Dino Stalker, as it's actually a Dino Crisis spinoff rather than RE. From what I've seen it looks to be a follow-up to the style of Survivor 2, though a lot more competent and less of a betrayal of series identity, given the direction Dino Crisis 2 took.

All this said, imagine my joy when I start playing Dead Aim and I'm not being timed. In fact, everything's very quiet... and dark. Bodies on the floor, but they're not getting up. Are they zombies? Ooooh, a locked door! Wait... LIMITED AMMO?!

Dead Aim is a follow-up to Survivor! Thank god. It's still a bit shit, but the atmosphere is surprisingly strong. Sensible improvements have been made, such as having a reload button, and moving in third person makes encounters much more readable. I'm missing the alternate routes and encounters from that first game, but otherwise this is an improvement across the board.

I loved this. It hit that perfect sweet spot of mediocrity, being just good enough while at the same time being just shit enough to keep me entranced for a couple of hours. I recommend putting subtitles on for cutscenes and revel in the dissonance between what they claim the characters are saying and what they actually say.

Resident Evil: O reino da beleza

O titulo dessa analise deveria ser o titulo do jogo, pois todo o plot do game gira em torno disso mesmo: beleza kkkkkk sério, enquanto eu escrevo isso eu só consigo rir. Essa é a segunda vez que jogo esse game e a primeira foi sei lá, há mais de 15 anos atrás, quando eu não sabia nada de inglês então eu só joguei sem saber o que se passava, mas agora, descobrindo o plot... pelo amor de deus é o PURO SUCO DA GALHOFA kkkkkk

O vilão mais excêntrico que a franquia já teve e vai MUITO além do Alfred de Code Veronica, além de na real o Morpheus (nome do vilão e esse nome meio do que já dá um spoiler do que acontece por ele ser metamorfo no game) ser MUITO inspirado nos vilões de Code Veronica e as mutações dele também e todas (as duas) envolvem algum aspecto da beleza.

Agora, deixando um pouco a beleza de lado, vou falar sobre o restante do jogo, não que exista muita coisa pra falar, mas vamos lá:

- Dificuldade: bem fácil, apesar de ter momentos que o jogo, sem explicação alguma, spawna uma caralhada de inimigos no seu caminho e em duas lutas contra bosses onde eles são totalmente bugados e dão muito dano por você não conseguir se levantar sem tomar outra porrada. Se não conseguir usar a esquiva, pode ser um looping de alguns danos idiotas e que tornam a experiências frustrante.

- Inimigos: zumbis e hunters são os inimigos base e tem alguns outros que não são memoráveis. Tipo o Glimmer e o Nautilius, dois inimigos que você consegue passar por eles de forma muito fácil pois eles são irrelevantes e nem exigem o mínimo de combate. Tem um tytant totalmente aleatório que é fácil de deter e outros inimigos que se tornam chefes, além é claro do rei da beleza (que tem uma das boss battles mais chatas que eu já joguei na vida).

- Gameplay: jogando com controle normal é BEM ruim de pegar o jeito, a movimentação é horrível pois independente do quando você coloque para frente para andar, o boneco sempre vai correr, então é ruim demais de controlar. Mirar com o controle é bem tenso pois o hitbox é impreciso, apesar de que eu confesso que é satisfatório dar critical hit nos zumbis, mas tirando isso, o restante é ruim.

- Personagens: Só temos 3 kkkkk isso pra você ter uma ideia do quão raso o jogo é. O protagonista e a coadjuvante que são enviados para o local onde se passa o game para os mesmos fins e um tenta dificultar a vida do outro até que eles passam a cooperar pelas necessidades e o Rei da beleza, um ex funcionário da Umbrella que roubou várias amostras de vírus para colocar seus planos em prática.

- História: não tem o que falar muito aqui, pois é ruim, fraca, sem profundidade e sem criatividade.

Resumo: A beleza não foi alcançada!