Resident Evil: Dead Aim (PlayStation 2, 2003)

Graphics and Sound, 9/10: Generally pretty good. The cruise ship level that you start out in is well designed and sufficiently novel to be interesting even if you've played all the other RE games. The player and enemy character models are fairly well detailed, and generally pretty well animated. Like most RE games, this game suffers from re-using the same enemies a bit too much, but you probably won't notice your first time through. There was one non-boss enemy design that I thought was particularly substandard, uninteresting and poorly done. But on the balance, there was also one that I thought was exceptionally interesting and well done, too. Most are a small cut above average.

Gameplay, 8/10: It's a fairly standard Resident Evil game, perhaps even a bit less so. You'll do a lot of walking around, exploring rooms, picking up ammo, health and keys, and of course shooting zombies. There are no puzzles to speak of, except perhaps figuring out the weak points of the bosses given the clues in the files you find.

You have unlimited ammo (well, as much as you can carry from each safe room) for your handguns in this game. Given that it may be more difficult to accurately hit enemies with the light gun than you might think, this actually turns out to be a fairly good thing. I didn't find it unbalanced the game much at all, as a matter of fact the first time through I think the game would have been much too hard and a heck of a lot less fun without this. Of course, I do like my games a bit on the easy side, and I love plugging zombies. But ammo for the better weapons is limited to only what you can find, so game balance is preserved. All in all, I am quite happy with this design decision - they were quite wise to include it.

The weapons and items are not hugely original, but they're original enough. It's very nice to be able to get additional healing items or handgun ammo from zombies that you kill quickly and/or with highly accurate head-shots. It adds a bit more strategy to the game.

Story, 7/10: The story is just novel enough and has enough character believability to not be boring. The good voice cast and voice acting helps to add some interest to what otherwise might be a bit less fun. The pacing can be somewhat uneven, sometimes a huge amount happens in a short time, sometimes it feels like it's taking forever for anything to happen. In general you probably won't mind as there are plenty of other things to keep you occupied.

Overall, 8/10: My overall rating is not an average, rather it is my general feeling after having played the game through a couple of times. The combination of decent graphics and general ''good production value'', plus the novel combination of controller and light-gun at the same time, lift this game above the average and deliver a playing experience that is somehow slightly better than the sum of it's individual parts. There are annoyances to be sure - controls that I think could have been better, and a price tag that is probably a bit high, especially if you don't already own a guncon. That said, if you are a gamer who enjoys RE games and enjoys using a light-gun, you will probably enjoy this game as well. You could certainly do worse than this game.z