21 years later, the best Resident Evil spin-off game is still the most underrated

I never thought I'd be fleeing the delicate clip-clop footfall of a catwalking, mutant stiletto pursuant, but once again, here we are. Morpheus is Resident Evil: Dead Aim's main antagonist, and although his telltale stride might not strike the same fear into my heart as that of another series mainstay, he is the only Tyrant I'm aware of whose mutation involved growing a pair of permanent high heels.

Runway-ready villainy aside, there's just something about Dead Aim that I find absolutely delightful. I've been replaying it passively over the last few days, marveling at how unremarkable yet enjoyable an experience Capcom's fourth entry in the Gun Survivor spin-off series still is, and trying to put my finger on why it's always been one of my favorites. It's neither the most unique nor the best Resident Evil game, and it's not always the most memorable for the right reasons. At its core, though, Dead Aim shows that the series was moving in the right direction. Also, it's just plain fun.

Back to basics

Resident Evil: Dead Aim contains a collection of ideas that would soon be refined into something better. Fong Ling is just budget Ada Wong, sandy-haired and burly Bruce is the unholy genetic offspring of Leon and Chris (if only they, too, could walk while aiming down their sights back in 2003), and you can see how the zombie-infested Spencer Rain cruise liner paved the way for Revelations' own take on a ghost ship, the Queen Zenobia. It's also a far more linear, condensed experience than a mainline Resi game, so I don't judge Dead Aim's forgettable plot too harshly – especially when it ticks plenty of other boxes. 

It may be strange and under-baked but the game's DNA is recognizably Resident Evil. Dead Aim moves through three confined locations, charts the mutation and degeneration of an overarching big bad who has ties to the Umbrella Corporation, and is teeming with zombies to shoot in the head with a limited supply of handgun bullets. You can even stealth past inactive zombies, a mechanic I still have a lot of time for to this day. What's not to love? Well, after reaching a certain point in my rediscovery mission, I realize that I'm actually not too crazy about running into the Hunter Elite again. These amphibious monstrosities are just as mean and ugly as I remember from my last playthrough, exploding from their containment vessels like a trio of hulking hook-clawed bullet-sponges. 

The sight of the Hunter Elite sends me running laps across the ship's deck to get away from their punishing melee attacks. I'd almost rather be fighting a pair of Lickers – almost, I said. Still, battling past an infamously tricky foe with one or two unique quirks, worrying the whole time about whether you have enough ammo or green herbs to make it through… that's about as Resident Evil as it gets.

Tyrant Banks 

Infamous though they might be, the Hunter Elite is not my favorite thing about Dead Aim. That honor goes squarely to one Morpheus D. Duvall, an ex-Umbrella lackey-turned-criminal mastermind with grand ambitions for himself and the world. Morpheus, like almost every villain in their requisite Resi game, is by far the most interesting character in Dead Aim. He might seem like your typical comic book crook, leveraging a bio-organic weapon against global superpowers in exchange for a wild sum of money, but he's also a self-professed aesthete. This pursuit of true, unattainable beauty underlines what happens to Morpheus when, upon being mortally wounded, he injects himself with an experimental combination of the t and G-Viruses.

Unlike all others known to have been infected with the Progenitor virus, this modified version doesn't cause Morpheus to mutate into some misshapen horror. Instead, Morpheus sprouts breasts, hips, long hair, and the semblance of permanent high heeled boots. He mutates from a supervillain to a supermodel, and you know what? I absolutely adore it to this day.

Morpheus's unusual transformation is by far Dead Aim's most compelling contribution to the Resident Evil canon. No in-game explanation is given of why he becomes a lady Tyrant instead of a monster; we can only assume that this is his view of what absolute beauty entails, and somehow, the t+G Virus has taken that into consideration. But it also marks an ambitious step for Capcom – one the publisher might not have intended to take. 

Dead Aim is a Japanese game that launched in 2003 and given all this context, I can only assume that Morpheus' feminization was meant to be seen as shocking rather than progressive. That doesn't matter to me in 2024 though, because as Morpheus hunts me down through this gleaming lab at the bottom of the ocean, his shoes clattering purposefully against the polished white floors, all I see is a gay icon ahead of their time and hot on my heels. He eventually reaches his final form: the characteristic amorphous blob that all old-school Resi villains must eventually become, as per tradition, but I'll always remember him as the lady-Tyrant that beat me up way worse than Mr X ever could.

I've been loving every moment of my Resident Evil: Dead Aim replay, so much so that I'm already tempted to hunt down the other (worse) Gun Survivor entries. This is a series known for its B-movie camp, and Dead Aim has that in spades. It reminded me how much fun these spin-off entries in the Resident Evil timeline can be, and as we await the 9th mainline game, I can't help but wish Capcom would revive these bitesize snippets to give us something else to chew on in the meantime. Even if it is perhaps the most unhinged video game in the world.

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