Burton's Bytes

YOU'VE got to admire the Italian film industry. They may not break much new ground these days but they sure know a bandwagon when it rolls into town.

Take horror movies as a prime example. In 1979, a director called George Romero had something of a minor hit with a film called Dawn of the Dead, a sequel to a film he made ten years earlier.

An intelligent critique on American values and the consumerist society, it told the story of the breakdown of civilisation when the dead are brought back to life by means unknown. Nowadays, most film buffs acknowledge Romero's film as a classic of its kind.

No sooner had Dawn of the Dead hit cinema screens than it was followed by a slew of Italian imitators led by the infamous Zombie Flesh-eaters (which was re-titled Zombie 2 for America, where Dawn of the Dead was also known as Zombie; confused yet?) Soon, UK video stores were groaning under the weight of these undead epics rejoicing in titles like Zombie Holocaust, The Living Dead (which was actually a remake of Romero's first film set in the Lake District, England, instead of Pennsylvania) and even Zombie Nosh.

The moral of this story? None of the Spaghetti horrors were ever as good as the original. After a while (and before the BBFC banished such films using the Video Recordings Act) they became a bit of a bore even to bloodthirsty teens such as myself.

Sixteen years after the Zombie fuss died down (no pun intended), another medium re-used the motifs pioneered by Romero to create a classic for the computer games generation.

Resident Evil was a deliberate homage to those splattery zombie horror fests that, for a very brief period, were once freely available in video shops across the country. What's more, it was a damn good one, being both scary and exciting in equal measure.

But now there's a sense of history repeating itself as the video games industry squeezes every last drop of blood from the horror genre.

The original Resident Evil gave way to Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil: Nemesis, Resident Evil Survivor1 and 2, Resident Evil: Code Veronica, plus a 21st century remake for the Gamecube and a prequel. We've also had the Silent Hill series that gave us zombie babies, House of the Dead 1 and 2, and even Typing of the Dead, where you killed the undead by typing words that flashed up on screen (no I'm not joking).

The latest in the Resident Evil franchise is Resident Evil: Dead Aim and it's the first game to combine first person shooter action with third person adventure exploration.

Dead Aim sees special forces agent Bruce McGivern infiltrating a huge cruise liner making its way across the Atlantic. But this is no jolly sea trip because the ship has been chartered by the Umbrella Organisation - the corporation responsible for the virus that reanimates dead creatures.

Soon, Bruce and his female partner Fongling (a name worthy of any badly dubbed Italo-splatter movie) are up to their necks in trouble.

Previous attempts to meld the first person genre with Resident Evil have been uneasy failures, partly because the all-action shooter dispenses with any tension in favour of never ending hoards of nasties.

Dead Aim hopes to address this problem by dropping out of the action sequences from time to time for a bit of traditional Resident Evil puzzling. Also, bullets are scarce, so it pays to conserve ammo where possible rather than blasting away like a maniac. As you progress deeper into the ship, more weaponry makes itself available, including a shot gun, assault rifle and a very handy grenade launcher.

In truth, it's only partially successful. Resident Evil worked precisely because it wasn't a full-on slaughterfest. Instead, it built up a sense of brooding horror as your character wandered cautiously from room to room. The feeling of menace - a "what's behind the door" approach - made the horror set-pieces all the more effective. Anyone who has played that first game will know what I'm talking about - it's the moment the undead dogs jump through the window in the corridor and you jump out of your skin.

Sadly, Dead Aim abandons those kind of scares for full strength zombie assaults that start to resemble a turkey shoot far too quickly. After a while, it just becomes second nature.

In its favour, Dead Aim is a better game than either of the Survivor titles (the graphics are a big leap forward) and if you have a light gun, then it's a great way to cool off after a stressful day at work (Dead Aim gets a 15+ rating, so it's not a game for kids). It's over rather quickly so it doesn't out stay its welcome - just like all the best horror stories.

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