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Bruce is aiming for you.

A spinoff series of the Resident Evil franchise, Gun Survivor is a series of first person shooters produced by Capcom between 2000 and 2003. Apart from gamepad control, the series has its gimmick of optionally allowing players to use a gun controller.

A total of four entries in the Gun Survivor series were released:

  1. Resident Evil: Survivor (PlayStation) — An amnesiac person gets trapped in a strange town that also fell to T-Virus outbreak.
  2. Resident Evil: Survivor 2 – Code: Veronica (Arcade, PlayStation 2) — A semi-remake of Code: Veronica as an arcade-style shooter, with a co-op mode featuring Claire Redfield and Steve Burnside as playable characters. Originally announced under the title Resident Evil: Fire Zone.
  3. Dino Stalker (PlayStation 2) — Actually a Dino Crisis spin-off, and thus unrelated to Resident Evil. Mike Wired, an ace fighter pilot from World War II, is transported to hyperspace to battle time-displaced dinosaurs.
  4. Resident Evil: Dead Aim (PlayStation 2) — Government agent Bruce McGivern contains a T-virus outbreak at the Umbrella-owned luxury liner Spencer Rain. Developed by Cavia, who would later make Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles and Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles.

Due to the fact that Dead Aim supported Namco's GunCon light gun, Bruce and Fong Ling from Dead Aim both appear in Namco × Capcom as representatives of the Resident Evil franchise.note 


Resident Evil: Survivor contain examples of:

  • Amnesiac Hero: Ark has no memory of who he is.
  • Ascended Extra: For what it's worth, the giant alligator from Resident Evil 2 (which was laughably easy to kill in its own game) becomes a proper boss in Survivor. For bonus points, you have to fight two of them... at the same time.
  • Bag of Holding: Survivor is one of the few games in the franchise which gives you a limitless inventory.
  • Bladder of Steel: Resident Evil Survivor has no in-game saving (saving is prompted in the end for New Game Plus where you carry some of the collected items on previous playthrough). Somewhat downplayed that you still can pause the game, the inventory are unlimited allowing to stock a lot of healing items, and for new players the game took two hours to beat including reading all the important files without even rushing. It was also at this point that the series started giving you continues as a safety net in case you died, else you'd have to start all over again.
  • Boring, but Practical: Your handguns aren't as devastating to use, but infinite ammo covers a multitude of sins, and the sliding scale of speed vs. power on the different models makes them decent enough for situational use. Of these, each round out of the Nambu is close to the power of a shotgun blast, while the CZ-75 has a true semi-auto rate of fire to the point that a quick-thumbed (or turbo-using) player can employ it like a submachine gun.
  • Continuity Nod: The events of Sheena Island from the original Survivor are mentioned alongside Raccoon City and Rockfort Island in the opening prologue of Resident Evil 0.
  • Degraded Boss: The T-00 Tyrant from Resident Evil 2 makes a comeback in Survivor, but they're now fought as Giant Mook enemies. Ark at one point can even come across an entire room full of tanks containing mass-produced, deactivated T-00 units.
  • Do Not Run with a Gun: Due to the nature of the controls, such as Tank Controls and to accommodate light-gun controls, player have to hold the aim button to make the crosshair appear and stand in place to shoot.
  • Easy Amnesia/Identity Amnesia/Laser-Guided Amnesia: Ark Thompson in Survivor, whose amnesia conveniently leads to him misremembering he's Vincent, the main villain.
  • Emergency Weapon: Survivor and Survivor 2 both give the basic handgun(s) infinite ammunition, though they still need to be reloaded.
  • Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Averted with Vincent Goldman from Survivor - at one point Ark (still under the impression he's Vincent) can come across a video recording of Vincent's mother pleading him to stop his activities on Sheena Island. It doesn't work.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: Although they have no qualms with working with Umbrella for the money, the people of Sheena Island are visibly disgusted with the company's actions, and by extension, with Vincent's. Some decide to quit, while others decide to at least organize an attempt to get Vincent fired from his position in the company so the town could be peaceful again.
  • Gas Mask Mooks: The Umbrella Trashsweeper unit and their leader, the UT Commander. Notably, the Trashsweepers appear to be regular humans... until you encounter them, in which they have longer than normal human arms, they hoot, shriek, and move in a gorilla-like fashion with far lower intelligence than what a trained commando, let alone normal human act (although they are used numerously to ambush the protagonist), and upon being killed, they inflate, releasing what appears to be (harmless) gas.
  • Giant Spider: The usual oversized arachnid foes shows up again in Survivor, with an area in a sewer containing three Giant Mook spiders the size of boats.
  • Guns Do Not Work That Way: Overlooking that it was only ever chambered in a smaller 8mm round to start with, even if someone did go to the bother of rechambering a Nambu Type 14 to fire 9x19 Parabellum, the pistol was not built to handle the higher-pressured cartridge, and in reality it would blow apart on the first shot.
  • Heel Realization: The first Survivor assumes that the amnesiac protagonist is Vincent after seeing Andy's journal and photo one third through the game. Subverted, he is Ark Thompson, a private investigator sent by Leon to investigate another Umbrella BOW project.
  • Hide Your Children: Averted with Lott and Lily Klein, although both survived in the end.
  • Human Traffickers: In the Prison level, Ark can come across the diary of a prisoner from Zaire, which reveals where Vincent and his men obtain "volunteers" for their T-Virus tests - recruiting youth across the world, sending them to Sheena Island as workers where they're highly paid and allowed to have fun in the island's casino, movie theatre and arcade, and delivering them to the Umbrella HQ at random. Said diary mentions how the prisoner's cellmate from China got sent to "the mountain facility and was never seen again", as well as listing assorted names from Europe, Russia, Japan, and various countries, and later on Ark can obtain Vincent's diary revealing the prison escape is a failure with Vincent ordering the escapees massacred.
  • Identical Stranger: Ark Thompson really looks like Vincent, to the point that one of the remaining citizen of Sheena Island, Andy, really want him dead.
  • Impossible Item Drop: Survivor have Ark collecting shotgun and grenade rounds by killing T-00 Tyrants, despite these monsters being unarmed save for their fists, and doesn't seem to be carrying any equipment on them.
  • Invulnerable Civilians: It is possible to shoot at Lott or Lily during the game, but the bullets wouldn't affect them in any way.
  • It's the Only Way to Be Sure: Sheena Island is set to self-destruct to contain the infection and destroy the evidence.
  • Klingon Promotion: Vincent apparently did this to get up the corporate ladder.
  • Laser Sight: The dark forest from Survivor have Trashsweeper snipers in the dark, and you can shoot them down before they ambush you by observing the red laser sight.
  • Light Gun Game: The GunCon support was removed in the North American version of the first game due to a backlash against light gun games and first person shooters by moral guardians as a result of the Columbine shooting at the time (it was still featured in the Japanese and European versions). Played straight with the rest of the series.
  • Mêlée à Trois: The events of Sheena Island have Umbrella Trashsweeper units on a mission to exterminate all evidence of the T-Virus outbreak, where they'll eliminate both humans and zombies. Choosing the Trashsweeper path at the start (the Arcade) will turn most of the game into a three-way-war between Ark, the Trashsweepers, and the zombies and monsters.
  • New Work, Recycled Graphics: Survivor recycles a lot of enemy assets from Resident Evil 2, and it even uses Sherry's run cycle as Lily's; it's even easier to notice compared to the one Lott has which had to be newly programmed and looks very awkward.
  • People Jars: The Sheena Island Umbrella Lab has a room filled with T-00 Tyrants in tanks. The Hypnos T-Type tyrant is also introduced in a stasis tank, and escapes in the next immediate area to battle Ark.
  • Poor Communication Kills: Played with, but justified ultimately. Ark believes he's Vincent after reading Andy's journal which commented on taking a picture of Vincent and him growing angry and finding his picture nearby, leading him to believe he's the villain when in truth, he was maintaining his cover to prevent Vincent finding out, leading Andy to believing he was Goldman himself. While Lott knows who he is, his constant running away and being hostile to Ark is later explained when he reveals that he was the one who ratted out Ark's presence to Vincent. He's been afraid of Ark taking revenge on him and has been hostile in an effort to look out for Lily. If anything, good communication would have helped out, but it was actually a series of constant misunderstandings at the wrong time.
  • Promotion to Parent: Lott, after his and Lily's parents are zombified.
  • Respawning Enemies: Survivor have numerous areas where zombies will respawn constantly, if an area is re-entered after killing them. Notably the theater, restaurant, and a few areas in the Umbrella HQ. This applies only for zombies however, thankfully stronger enemies like Lickers and Hunters will remain dead.
  • Rooftop Confrontation: The Final Boss battle, the Hypnos Tyrant's final form, is fought on the Umbrella HQ's Helipad. As Ark you battle the monster while Lily and Lott makes their way into the heli, and if you win the following cutscene have Ark boarding the vehicle and taking off.
  • Quest for Identity: Ark lose his memories in the backstory of Survivor, and spends much of the game trying to uncover who he really is.
  • Regained Memories Sequence: Near the end of Survivor, Ark finally meets his contact, the child Lott Klein, who tells him who he is, at which point Ark remembers everything — he was a government agent investigating the T-Virus outbreak in Sheena Island, and the villain is actually Director Vincent Goldman, the Umbrella Branch Leader overseeing operations in Sheena Island.
  • Riding the Bomb: How the Hypnos T-Type Tyrant is finally defeated - as Ark, Lott and Lily boards a helicopter and takes off, the Hypnos is revealed to be still alive and clings on the helicopter's side trying to attack Ark. Said monster is holding on a missile, and Ark fires it sending the monster exploding in mid-air.
  • Story Branching: Survivor zigzags this. The overall narrative is the same, but the second time the game branches into three possible routes, you receive a personal Arch-Enemy in the form of Vincent Goldman, Andy Holland, or the UT Commander. Vincent's route, however, has him talk about the Cleaners appearing on the island, meaning all three are effectively happening simultaneously, but only the character whose route you've selected will become an antagonist in your current playthrough and will later be killed by the Hypnos-T.
  • This Cannot Be!: Pretty much uttered verbatim ("This... can't... beeeeeee!") by the UT Commander when the Tyrant kills him.
  • Too Dumb to Live: The people of Sheena Island decide to brag to Vincent about how they have evidence against him that they'll use to get him fired, this results in him unleashing the T-Virus as revenge.
  • Unique Enemy: Much like Resident Evil 2, again you can encounter giant moths in precisely one area. There's only two of them in an optional route which is entirely avoidable.
  • Unusable Enemy Equipment: The Trashsweeper mooks in Survivor uses machine guns and sniper rifles, which cannot be collected if they're killed. Possibly justified since they're Artificial Human - the weapons are designed only to fit their genetic codes.

Resident Evil: Survivor 2 – Code: Veronica contain examples of:

  • Actionized Sequel: Due to being an arcade game, Survivor 2 does away with the exploration/resource management aspects from the first game, becoming a purely action experience.
  • All Just a Dream: One of the game's unlockable report documents reveals that the events of the game were part of a long dream Claire had while she was napping on her trip to Antarctica in Code: Veronica.
  • Boss-Only Level: The 5th and final level, Airport, is just the Final Boss fight with Tyrant.
  • Degraded Boss: Weaker versions of the level 2 boss, the red "Alpha" Hunter, start to show up in later levels as regular enemies. A weaker version of the level 1 boss, the giant spider, also appears as a Trick Boss in level 4 before your fight with Alexia.
  • Flunky Boss: Alexia has a pair of infinitely respawning cerberus dogs helping her in her boss fight.
  • Implacable Man: The Nemesis can't be hurt by any weapons until the Final Boss battle.
  • "Instant Death" Radius: You score an automatic critical hit against any enemies at point-blank range, which is enough to kill most normal enemies.
  • Giant Spider: Clair and Steve fights oversized arachnids as enemies, with two particularly massive King Mook spiders serving as bosses.
  • Limited Loadout: You can only hold one special weapon at a time in addition to your default infinite ammo pistol.
  • Made of Iron: Nemesis is Immune to Bullets, and even the linear launcher (which killed Alexia in one shot) takes over 20 shots to bring him down.
  • New Work, Recycled Graphics: Uses a lot of character models and other assets from Code Veronica.
  • Rogues' Gallery Transplant: Claire never met Nemesis in Raccoon City, and is very unlikely to have encountered Jill afterwards and talked about it, so how she knows about him and why he's chasing her in her dream is anyone's guess (other than the character's popularity, ala Pyramid Head).
  • Stalked by the Bell: Survivor 2, due to its arcade nature, gives each level a time limit. Let it run out, and Nemesis comes for your blood. In the 4th level (the game's final full level), Nemesis starts out chasing you from the very start of the level. In the 5th level, the 5 minute timer is a countdown to until the base explodes.
  • True Final Boss: If you manage to collect the jewel from each level, Nemesis will show up at the end after you defeat Tyrant. You get the linear launcher which allows you to finally do damage to him, and engage in an extended boss fight with him. All of his attacks are a One-Hit Kill, but since he doesn't have a Dash Attack like Tyrant and his rockets are relatively slow, it's pretty easy to avoid them by circle strafing.

Resident Evil: Dead Aim contain examples of:

  • The Beautiful Elite: During his tenure at Umbrella, Morpheus became obsessed with beauty, spending inordinate amounts of cash on surgery and treatment, and after getting scapegoated by Umbrella for causing the Raccoon City outbreak, finally flew off the handle, used whatever resources left behind by Umbrella, and began plotting an absolutely insane scheme to rid the world of "ugly people" and create a haven for those he considered beautiful in Africa.
  • Boom, Headshot!: While the first two games avert this (shooting zombies anywhere on their body has the same effect regardless of weapon choice) in Dead Aim, however, a little spot around the top of their forehead counts as a nice, splattering headshot, saving ammo and popping zombie skulls like popcorn if you do it right.
  • Captain Ersatz: Dead Aim was based on a rejected proposal for Resident Evil 4, with Bruce McGivern and Fong Ling being obvious stand-ins for Leon S. Kennedy and Ada Wong.
  • Chinese Girl: Fong Ling, a PLA agent investigating Morpheus' terrorist attacks.
  • Colon Cancer: The full Japanese title of Dead Aim is Gun Survivor 4: Biohazard: Heroes Never Die.
  • Implacable Man: Tyrant Morpheus will NOT stop stalking you in the boss battle.
  • Dirty Communists: While China is one of the good guys, they promptly attempt to dispose Fong Ling as they finally have ceded to Morpheus' demands.
  • Emergency Transformation: Morpheus injects himself with his stolen sample of T+G virus due to being critically injured from a frag grenade explosion, transforming into a Tyrant. Due to the unique nature of the particular variant of the virus used, he manages to retain his intelligence and personality.
  • Energy Weapon: The Charged Particle Rifle in Dead Aim, the only weapon that can damage Tyrant Morpheus.
  • Gender Bender: Morpheus Duvall after he becomes a Tyrant seriously looks like a female, to the point of growing breasts. This is most likely the virus responding to Morpheus' narcissistic personality.
  • Ghost Ship: The Spencer Rain.
  • Immune to Bullets: Tyrant Morpheus, due to generating an electromagnetic deflector shield. You can only damage him with an experimental railgun.
  • Inconsistent Dub: While Dead Aim has perfectly understandable English voice acting, the official subtitles almost never match the spoken dialogue, as if translated directly from the Japanese script without the audio for reference. This even applies to the opening text scroll, which is shown in English on-screen in all releases.
  • Innocuously Important Episode: Dead Aim gives the impression of being an unimportant Gaiden Game with only a token mention of Umbrella and Raccoon City, but Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles's existence, along with the general plot of it, 4 and 5 retroactively makes the events of Dead Aim this. There were a lot of rich folk aboard the Spencer Rain looking to buy some Umbrella B.O.Ws, all of which ended up dead or zombified by Morpheus' spiteful rampage. Had this not happened, Umbrella might have made enough bank to defend themselves in court, or at least delay proceedings long enough to rebuild.
  • Irony: For all of his talk about beauty and perfectionism, the final form of Duvall is a massive fleshy blob with his blood soaked, skinless head occasionally conveniently pop up for the player to shoot.
  • Kill Sat: Used to try and kill Fong Ling in Dead Aim after China pays off Duvall to try and not turn their country into a radioactive zombie wasteland. Pretty strange considering the game is set in 2002 and the Chinese managed to obtain orbital bombardment weapons well before the United States in this game!
  • Miracle-Gro Monster: Morpheus becomes subjected to this when he suffers heavy damage. The virus within him causes him to grow into a huge blob that engulfs the entire ship. His growing body makes impact with the missiles on board, causing them to explode and killing him for good.
  • Pin-Pulling Teeth: Fong Ling does this at the beginning of Dead Aim, inadvertently saving Bruce from Morpheus.
  • The Scapegoat: After Raccoon City, the blame publicly was laid on Morpheus' shoulders. This being Resident Evil, Morpheus didn't take it well at all and went completely bonkers.
  • Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!:
    • Despite Fong Ling being marked "obsolete" and almost disposed by the Chinese government, she is determined to continue her mission as she believe Morpheus will not stick up to the end of his deal. She is right all along.
    • Bruce Mcgivern saving Fong Ling despite losing a significant amount of time to disarm the T-virus warheads.
  • Third-Person Shooter: Dead Aim was sort of a hybrid between this and an FPS. The player could move in the third person perspective, but would have to switch to first person whenever aiming.
  • We ARE Struggling Together: Morpheus is holding both major cities in China and the United States at hostage with T-virus loaded warheads if they do not pay him a sum of $1 Billion. Both countries clandestinely insert their best agents, Fong Ling and Bruce Mcgivern respectively to eliminate Morpheus. However, the two countries did not rule out cooperating with each other, possibly due to "conflicting interests." This is even Lampshaded by Fong Ling when she first faces off with Bruce. However, once Ling was almost killed by a Chinese orbital weapon, she and Bruce finally worked together to foil Morpheus's plans.
  • Whole-Plot Reference: As both involves agents from opposing sides of the bloc, united by uneasy cooperation, thwarting a terrorist attack in a naval setting and both ends with the agents escaping with a closed-up dinghy, Dead Aim is an obvious one to The Spy Who Loved Me.
  • You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Once China has given in to Morpheus' demands, they attempt to eliminate Fong Ling with a Kill Sat as her presence is now obsolete.

 
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Alternative Title(s): Resident Evil Survivor

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Resident Evil: Gun Survivor

A spinoff brand of the Resident Evil franchise, Gun Survivor is a series of light gun games produced by Capcom between 2000 and 2003. Unlike traditional gun shooters, which are usually on-rail shooters as well, the Gun Survivor titles allows the player to explore the game's environment freely, making them much closer to first person shooters.

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