Resident Evil: The Mercenaries

Mercenaries started out as a bonus game in Resident Evil 3, moving the focus from the series’ traditional reliance on scares and ammo management to a score-based fragfest. Its move to the 3DS is more than just a straight port, as we discovered at Captivate 2011.

The most significant enhancement comes in the form of the new skill system. These perk-like abilities let players change the way the game plays and feels. There are 30 of these total, including things like faster reloading times, becoming more effective when running low on health, and even imbuing attacks with lightning. Before each round, players can choose up to three of these skills.

The game’s co-op focus is being played up as well. If you coordinate your attacks with a friend, it’s possible to perform special moves. “By using these attacks, when you link them together they become very powerful, so it makes it easier to get those high scores,” says Masachika Kawata, the game’s producer.

For example, we saw an encounter where Krauser uses his bow to stun an enemy and then stab it, at which point Hunk performs a jump kick while the zombie reels back. Hardier enemies can absorb more damage, which means it’s possible to link even three moves. This was demonstrated by Krauser attacking a zombie with a roundhouse kick, Hunk slashing at it with a knife strike, and then Krauser finishing it off with a drop kick. Capcom says these are tough to perform, but that the potential boost in score makes it worth the effort.

In addition to these kinds of combo attacks, having a co-op partner around makes the game generally easier. Players share kill combos, and it’s easy to split up in a map and build it up in short order. While not as flashy as those specialized link combos, players can help each other out by knocking an enemy back with a shotgun blast, setting a partner up for a devastating finishing attack.

The skill system does change the game, and it’ll be fun to experiment with various combos. In the hands-on demo I played, they were bundled in preset groups of three. I found the melee thunderbolt skill to be particularly useful. My gameplan usually involved leading a group of zombies into a cluster and then finding an outlier. I’d shoot that lone zombie in the legs to weaken it, and then unleash a melee finisher, knocking it into the mob. The thunderbolt skill would charge up that zombie with electricity, which transferred to any zombies it touched.

To complement the game’s arcade action, players can now move while firing weapons, reloading, and using health items. To say that this makes the game less clunky is an understatement. Finally, Mercenaries feels like the action game it’s always wanted to be. An optional first-person aiming mode rounds out the enhancements, making it easy to fire off shots with terrifying accuracy.

Mercenaries has always been a fun diversion, but the introduction of the skill system and the other various tweaks make it a viable destination point.