If you've kept up with my previous reviews, you'd probably already know that I'm not a huge fan of Capcom's Gun Survivor franchise. I didn't play Dino Stalker, but both Resident Evil: Survivor and its sequel are some of the worst games that franchise has to offer. Resident Evil: Dead Aim was the first RE title developed by Cavia, known for the Drakengard games. Despite Dead Aim's uncharacteristically low sales and mixed reception, they would later go on to develop The Umbrella Chronicles and its sequel for the Nintendo Wii. Directed by Eiro Shirahama and Takuya Iwasaki, Dead Aim would serve as the final nail in the coffin for Gun Survivor. Did they manage to make the franchise good for once? Dead Aim marks a significant improvement over its predecessors, though not enough to make it worthwhile.

The story was written by a trio of writers, with Resident Evil veteran scenario writer Noboru Sugimura heading the pack, being his last contribution to the series. Unfortunately, every single aspect of it is underdeveloped. The game opens in medias res with American secret agent Bruce McGivern held at gunpoint by Morpheus D. Duvall, a rouge Umbrella executive who threatened both the United States and China with bioweapons of mass destruction. A shadowed figure tosses a grenade at the two, giving Bruce time to escape deep into the bowels of the Spencer Rain cruise ship. From there, Bruce meets Fongling, a Chinese agent with whom he forms an uneasy infatuation and alliance. If you think any of this sounds interesting, sadly, it's not explored in any great detail. Bruce and Fongling have no character development and they feel like very blatant stand-ins for Leon S. Kennedy and Ada Wong respectively, giving off intense "original the character" vibes. Morpheus isn't a strong villain either. He gets very little screentime before suddenly deciding to become the big scary mutated bad guy. His only personality trait is being obsessed with beauty, even asking Bruce why Americans choose the ugliest guns. We barely get enough time to be introduced to these characters, and the plot doesn't take them anywhere. Bruce and Fongling, of course, predictably fall in love, which has no payoff. Naturally, the game ends with Morpheus mutating into a giant, bloated monster who gets blown up with the rest of the underground laboratory, because of course there's an underground lab. None of this is satisfying and it feels more like fanfiction than a screenplay written by the writer of Resident Evil 2.

Dead Aim continues Gun Survivor's tradition of attempting to mix survival horror and light gun shooters, and like the previous games, it does not work. Nothing about Dead Aim's game design really works in general. Exploration is done from a third-person perspective, similarly to Resident Evil 4, but when fighting enemies the camera snaps to a first-person perspective. I still can't figure out exactly how to emulate a Namco GunCon, so I played with a gamepad, and honestly, it doesn't play too bad with one. It takes some getting used to, but it does feel relatively responsive. What I don't like is the camera system, which still has Survivor's problem of jerking around whenever fast-moving enemies are on screen. This not only looks bad but can also be frustrating when fighting the hunter elites, which in hunter fashion tend to leap around the map. Previous games indicated that a zombie was dead by a pool of blood forming underneath, but Dead Aim has no such courtesy. It's hard to tell if zombies are actually dead or not, as they tend to play dead after you've downed them, leading to them sneaking up on you after you've moved on. This is a terrible design oversight that just makes an otherwise easy game so much more frustrating. On the other hand, the block move, if you time it correctly, eliminates any shred of difficulty the game has, even reducing the mighty Tyrant 091 into a joke. This strange difficulty balancing just makes encounters feel weird, as I feel like I shouldn't be cheesing the block, but the game lets me do it anyway. Oddly enough though, the game does remain somewhat fun. Blowing holes in zombies will always have some inherently entertaining element to it no matter how poorly designed, so I wasn't really bored by Dead Aim. The game is also ridiculously short, taking me only 3 hours to beat it. If I paid full price for this back in 2003, I'd be pretty pissed off.

Visually, Dead Aim resembles shovelware of the lowest variety. Running on the id Tech 3 engine of Quake 3 fame, Dead Aim looks flat and lifeless. Environments are sparsely detailed, without any impression that the cruise ship was once populated by living people. Character models are low-poly, resembling a PC game from 1999. They all animate like a design student's first project, rigidly. Zombie models are visibly blocky and enemies, in general, don't leave a lasting impression. Considering this is the same year and console that Silent Hill 3 came out on, this is inexcusable. None of the new enemies have striking designs. The glimmers' glowing heads are kind of cool, but otherwise, they're just yet another frog enemy. The new tyrant actually looks pretty cool, but I wouldn't exactly call its design exceptional. Morpheus's monster design looks like a b-grade Alexia Ashford, which is a design I wasn't particularly fond of, to begin with. Like all previous RE games, Dead Aim uses pre-rendered FMV cutscenes, and these are wildly inconsistent in their quality. The most important scenes are rendered with some pretty slick-looking CGI which looks and animates rather well, they're even shot rather nicely too. The main problem with these FMVs is that the editing is atrocious, with many unnecessary slow-motion scenes and quick cuts which interrupt the action and make it feel like an early 2000s nu-metal video. The less important scenes are treated to FMVs that are less than savory, so to speak. While models are somewhat more detailed and expressive than their in-game counterparts, they animate terribly and this can often lead to faces looking really funny. They're also plagued by aliasing, which frankly makes them look unfinished.

Although I've found the vast majority of this game rather pitiful, I actually found the soundtrack, composed by Nobuyoshi Sano, to be rather unique. While I'm not as big of a fan of it as some are, I have to admit it's an oddly bright spot in an otherwise broken game. In fact, Dead Aim's save room theme is probably my favorite in the entire series. It's simplistic but incredibly evocative and hits an atmosphere the others don't really touch. It's more synth-heavy than previous titles, and I appreciate the constant use of flange and reverb effects. To paraphrase YouTuber ThorHighHeels, it does feel oddly atmospheric. Save Room, Battle Tyrant, and Scream in the Darkness are my favorites of the bunch. Escape Now is the only track I wasn't a fan of, as it is just a repetitive piano being smashed relentlessly.

The voice acting in Dead Aim is, as many would claim, "fits RE standard". It's hilariously bad in every respect. Raj Ramayya sounds uninterested as Bruce, playing him as a ditzy idiot who doesn't know what he's doing. Angus Waycott plays Morpheus as a "British villain" and he's probably the best of the bunch, but that really isn't saying much and by and large it isn't a good performance. Claire O'Connor's Fongling is... a slightly offensive Chinese stereotype. None of these performances carry dramatic weight and while some would argue they add to the charm, I didn't find it nearly as funny as say, Survivor or RE1.

Resident Evil: Dead Aim was the last Gun Survivor game for a good reason. Although it does manage to improve upon its predecessors, it still struggles with a cookie-cutter narrative, d-list "original" characters, broken gameplay, and visuals that resemble the worst of Wii shovelware. Thankfully, the soundtrack is pretty interesting, but you're better off just listening to it on YouTube.

Strongest and most consistent atmosphere in the series besides RE1. The sound design, heralded by none other than Nobuyoshi Sano himself is nothing short of masterful and haunting, ambience and subtlety are a horror strength oft ignored. What’s already there visually is incredible on its own but with a man of his talent enhancing it through meticulous sound design? Holy shit. I thought the story was alright, it’s mostly carried by its setting and being short and cohesive, the relationship between Bruce and Fongling was neat. The light-gun gameplay mixed into third person was refreshing and fun, i really wish there was more of this. Awesome game overall.

“A “Don-Gua” never abandons a woman.”