Resident Evil: Dead Aim

Resident Evil: Dead Aim, known as Gun Survivor 4 Biohazard Heroes Never Die (ガンサバイバー4 バイオハザード ヒーローズ・ネバー・ダイ) in Japan, is the fourth game in the Gun Survivor series. Unlike its predecessors, which involved first-person gameplay, Dead Aim includes third person movement, something more familiar to veterans of the Resident Evil series. At the time of Dead Aim's creation Nintendo held exclusive rights to Capcom's mainstream Resident Evil games. Because of this limitation, Capcom made several spin-off titles, one of which was Dead Aim. The game has little relation to the events of the main series and is part of an 'expanded universe'.

Story
A mid-western town in the United States known as Raccoon City was destroyed when a biological substance known as the t-Virus was leaked from the Arklay Mountains in 1998. The Umbrella Corporation refused to abort the experiments. When a large amount of the virus is stolen on a ship cruiser, Bruce McGivern is sent by an anti-Umbrella agency to take back the cruiser and stop the spread of the virus.

This game starts on board the Umbrella-owned ocean liner, Spencer Rain, which has been infected with the t-Virus stolen from Umbrella's Paris labs by former employee Morpheus D. Duvall. You take control of Bruce McGivern of the Anti-Umbrella Pursuit Investigation Team, a U.S. government task force with the sole purpose of taking down Umbrella. Unlike the previous two Gun Survivor titles, this game features navigation from a third-person perspective as you move your character around to explore the ship and avoid zombies. If you wish to fight the zombies, you must enter a first person view.

The story also features Fong Ling, Chinese agent working for the MSS (Ministry of State Security), one of China's most ruthless intelligence agencies. She became known in the intelligence community when she was ordered to arrest her brother, who happened to be a fierce anti-communist and pro-democracy activist. He was later executed.

Ling was ordered by her superiors to infiltrate the hijacked vessel in the Atlantic Ocean in order to halt Morpheus' activities and ends up fighting Umbrella's monsters with Bruce McGivern. The second half of the game takes place on another island research lab.

Characters

 * Bruce McGivern - A member of US STRATCOM (US Strategic Command Forces). Has a tendency of going in guns blazing before thinking about the consequences. This has often left him in many hostile situations, but in the end he always comes out on top, and its usually on top of bodies no less.


 * Fong Ling - A cold as ice agent for the Chinese Safety Division. Professional to the core and doesn't let things like emotion get in the way of accomplishing her mission.


 * Morpheus D. Duvall - Former Umbrella R&D (Research and Development), who was fired for the blame of the t- virus outbreak in the Arklay mountains. He has a dream of creating a perfect beautiful world, doing this of course means destroying the existing world. Seeing himself as the portrait of beauty he's undergone plastic surgery to maintain his youthful looks. His group was responsible for the theft of the t-Virus and the hijacking of the Spencer Rain.

Reception
Dead Aim had a mixed reception. Gamespot gave it a 6.4 saying "It's not the best Resident Evil game, and it isn't a stellar light-gun game, but Dead Aim creates an interesting, unique hybrid of the two, and that is a commendable feat". IGN gave it a 6.9 praising it as the best in the Gun Survivor series, having stellar graphics, but criticized it for its cheesy dialogue and unoriginal premise. X-Play gave the game a 4/5.

Trivia

 * On the back of the North American game case, Bruce McGivern's last name is misspelled as 'MacGavin.'
 * Dead Aim is the only Resident Evil game that doesn't have a title call.
 * Dead Aim is referred to as the fourth Gun Survivor game, the third being Gun Survivor 3 Dino Crisis (known as Dino Stalker in North America) which is unrelated to the Resident Evil universe.