Zombies, and guncon and Umbrella... oh my!

User Rating: 7.2 | Resident Evil: Dead Aim PS2
Resident Evil: Dead Aim is a rare game, which most likely a certain audience will find amusing at best. For the most part, it's a short gun adventure game driven by unlocking doors and shooting mindless zombies... which isn't that bad, considering it being a game. But it does make the game a bit pointless due to the lack of story. Even the opening is a bit lackluster by throwing your main character into a bit of stand off with yourself and the only villain in the game without showing how he got there... on a cruise ship. These little instances of the creators passing up perfect story material hurts Dead Aim, and it doesn't happen just in the opening. Another thing about the story which bothers me, is the absence of other characters, throughout the entire game only 3 main characters... and that's it. No other side villains, survivors stories... just storyless running around and shooting.

Being a guncon game, you can't expect a large variance on how the game plays. You run around, shoot enemies as they appear, and run around again. The adventure aspect is shown in 3D, and easy to control on both control and guncon with practice. It would of been nice to see a larger variety on guns, but everything works just fine. The levels though, are a bit on the bland side with lots of backtracking or very little "adventuring" to be had... this is probably caused by the lack of story again...

The graphics are something that also could of been majorly improved on, while they're very nice to look at somethings could of used a bit more detail. Such as Fong Ling... the character model to me looks fairly mashed, while also wearing a fairly uninspired costume. And again, the same for Bruce... there was hardly any creative genius at work within this game! And that's the biggest drawback which indirectly hurt almost everything else.
Also, the level design was fairly bland while other areas had little details which made the game something to look at. For my liking, there were TOO MANY empty hallways.

Finally, the sound in the game. Guns make gunshots, zombies make creepy moans and the voice actors are average. Sadly, the voice recording seemed to be a bit drowned out in several scenes making it hard to hear or understand, while the subtitles didn't even match what was being said at all. But what was really nice in the game, would have to be the background music, it was all a real nice surprise in the strange mix of a Resident Evil game.

Once all of this is said, I can't really hate the game since it DOES play well, despite being a bit short in terms of length. As a Resident Evil fan, it did amuse me seeing more zombie action, but the lack of story and uninspired look really takes some of the value down.