Part 3: Episode III: Steam

Episode III: Steam

When last we left our hero, Generic Action Hero #7871, he had an incredibly awkward exchange with Generic Chinese Spy Chick #1722. With that said, let's continue.


Bruce finds himself in an incredibly bland circular shaft with several doors dotting the area. All, of course, electronically locked. I guess Morpheus penciled locking all the doors into his schedule of killing everyone and spreading a highly contagious virus (yet somehow not infecting himself or anyone important).


The shaft has three levels. Let's try the lower one. Thankfully, Dead Aim lacks any stair/ladder/elevator/door loading screens. Stairs do, however, have a slow annoying shuffling down animation. So do elevators, for that matter... Oh well, no doors, at least.


The lower level reveals an open security panel. This controls, what else, but the locks to the doors.



The pilfered guest card key is put to use here.


That use being unlocking the doors back upstairs. Forcing another slow shuffle back to the previous level.


The bottom level has nothing to offer, other than a locked shutter and magically spawning zombies falling from the sky.


Oh well, back up to the top floor. In this generic hallway, we have another gameplay element. Exploding boxes.


You shoot them and they explode, killing things. I'd like to note that all zombies killed by explosion or headshot go flying at about ten yards at a violent speed equivalent of a cannon hitting them from point blank range. No head explosions, however.


Alrighty, then. According to that handy, multi-level map, there's a bunch of guest rooms this way. The hallway across from 202 is locked from this side, so one must make the loop around the front to make it to that end. The rest of the rooms on the way are either locked or terribly generic.

So here's the highlight reel:


Highlight 1: A silenced pistol. This should be anyone's primary weapon. As headshots to unaware zombies are almost always critical and it packs more of a punch than the standard handgun. But we're not here to fight zombies. We're here to get the hell out of this game as quickly as possible.


Highlight 2: Bathrooms. Where were all the bathrooms in this series? Outsourced to Dead Aim, that's where. This game features at least ten times as many bathroom as any other title in the series. It's fucking nuts.


Highlight 3: In the land of savepoints, typewriters are still king.


Highlight 4: An ID Card prompting us to backtrack to that console in the main shaft.


Highlight 5: They told him you couldn't commit suicide by tying a rope to a sphere light fixture and jumping off a sink with three inches of clearance from the ground. He proved them wrong.

Highlight 6: A file in said suicide victim's death grip.

Regular Report No.1162

The grim reality of office fellatio for Umbrella upper management.


"The procedure went horribly wrong when his skin was, in fact, turned into plastic."


"On a scale of one to Alfred Ashford, he scores a nine."


So he's attacked and stolen a deadly virus sample. Stole the company cruise liner. And is holding an auction to the morons with money world wide and now they're considering taking action against him? Is this how far Umbrella has slipped? Back in the day it was "two weeks late with your deadline? Send in the death squad."

Bruce wanders back to the control panel for the locks.



The doors on this level are now open to Bruce.


Another set of nefarious generic locales lie in wait. The only one of note is the "freezing room". Also known as... the freezer... *thundercrash*


Where a multitude of poor souls from all walks of life took refuge only to meet a grim, icy end in temperatures of 10 degrees....CELCIUS! *thundercrash*


There's also a shotgun propped up against the ham, next to the chilled peaches.


You'd think all the corpses in the room would immediately spring to life, creating quite the tense situation, wouldn't you? Well, they do. But only after Bruce is five feet away from the door out and a single zombie struggling to his feet is the only obstacle. Mr. McGiven is only left with little challenge beyond a bit of shrinkage.


Continuing along, Bruce comes upon the opposite deck of the ship from where he began. We'll not be returning to that deck, as Capcom can't be arsed to recreate mild destruction found during that initial FMV.


Instead we get, wait for it...



The initiation of a fetch quest. What is the item to be fetched, you ask?

*drumroll*












A red valve handle! It just wouldn't be a Resident Evil game without one.

There's also an exceedingly pointless file to be read.

Admin Report 9/16/2002

"Yeah, we might want to replace that one. It could be a problem. I'll just keep it on the complete opposite side of the ship, should the need arise. Next on my list of improvements will be a shotgun to protect the honey ham in the freezer."


Bruce backtracks to the other unlocked door in the main shaft. This leads to a load of crummy little guest rooms. Half these rooms are locked. The other half are just horribly dull.


The only thing of note is a new handgun. This one fires in three round bursts. It is utterly useless, as it hits about as strong in three rounds as a single silencer or standard handgun round.

In addition, zombies, when taken enough non-critical damage, collapse to the ground momentarily. Before doing so, they stumble forward slightly before doing a face plant. During this animation, which looks just like a standard zombie taking a step forward animation, zombies are invincible. So your 3-round burst just went to waste.

Oh well, remember. We're running past zombies. Not fighting. Love and peace.



Further into the area, Bruce comes to another console for key usage.


Well, hey. We're back in the pointless Titanic stairs room. I somehow managed to backtracking exploring a new area.

Anyhow, the shutter diagonally across from where Bruce enters is now magically unlocked.


This leads to a bar, "stairs room", and our store room objective.


"Bar Seven Seas" is trashed and full of ghouls. Like any good dive should be. It even includes free files.

Walter's Letter

"Hey bro. How's things? I'm on a big ass boat! Cheese is yellow."



Including such notable faces as:






"Yeah, I work for that company that made all the monsters and got a suburb nuked killing thousands of innocents. But I get to work on a really cool ship!"


"PS. 4 Itchy Tasty."


Before we go, Bruce spies the obligatory silly shaped key of the game and more implied backtracking at a later date.

Moving right along to that storeroom. I actually had to shoot a zombie along the way. Crazy, I know.


Well, there's our valve. But more juicy diaries await our hero's prying eyes.

Freight Crewman's Diary

Then maybe you could have omitted the enthusiastic "Yes!" Just a thought.


"Other than the astronomical mortality rate."


Maybe because Umbrella is embarrassed to have placed their presentation room next to the fucking boiler.


Did nobody watch the news? They NUKED A FUCKING CITY over this company's fuck ups with this stuff. That doesn't happen every day.



"What kind of asshole does that? Telling me to work?! Who does he think he is? My boss?"


Oh yeah, there's that wily handle. Almost forgot about it during the chronicles of slacker gophers in ship holds.

Bruce proceeds back out. Something stops him in his tracks...







SURPRISE MONEY SHOT'D!



Or when Cold Cuts Attack. Tonight on Dateline NBC.


And then, as quickly as it had happened, there was silence. And Bruce was left alone with the poor horizon texture.


Bruce offers no bewildered sentiments to why a gigantic hand made of Slim Jims just smashed through a window and bitch slapped him. He's too busy focusing on his soon to be stolen valve.


That was the worst insult I have ever heard. What is wrong with you people?! Can't you just make fun of his dick size or masculinity or something like normal spies?


Then again, that may be asking too much.


"It's clipping through my hand quite nicely."


I'm not sure if he was making a bad pun about the giant hand that slapped him or if it was just incredibly awkward delivery of the line... I think the latter is a safe bet at this point.



Fong Ling wanders off like the most badass spy you've ever seen 1-up a hero... by stealing spare parts for a maintenance hatch...

Tune in next time for unnecessary character swaps, unfathomably shitty monster redesigns, and electrifying twists!