Rating of
3/5
Frantic, Flawed, and Still Fun
dbarry_22 - wrote on 07/06/12
Even though it has several flaws, Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D has enough in its arsenal for fans of the series to have a lot of fun. This game brings a fast paced, kill as many zombies as you can before the time runs out mentality to stages from Resident Evil 4 and 5. There's no story, no real objective to complete, just pick a stage and rack up the points.
Depending on the stage, the amount of points scored determines what rank you obtain. That's pretty much the only motivation you have to do well, trying to get a 'S' on a particular stage. Unfortunately, in order to score extremely high, it takes a specific strategy. Whenever you kill a zombie using a melee attack, you gain 5 seconds more to kill more and more zombies. The game ends up being how fast you take out your enemies knee caps so you can go up and hit them with your foot or fist for the kill. There are a few more powerful enemies which take a more powerful strategy, and keeping a combo going while taking them out can be challenging. Personally, I played the majority of the game with the friend using co-op. Not all the stages have it, but most of them do and it enhances the experience.
Here are some of the other flaws to the game. Enemies sometimes freeze, disappear, reappear, and jitter. The first several stages of the game teach you the mechanics, but are pretty much worthless after the first half hour of playing. The game has online play for co-op purposes, but of course you can't talk to them, so unless you get on your phone or some other service that allows voice chat that makes things difficult. Upgrading and obtaining skills gets to be more of an annoyance than anything, because you need them to score high but to upgrade them you have to use them, which makes it seem like your almost grinding. If you have the 3D on and you're playing online, the battery on the 3DS sometimes goes before you're done playing for the evening. Oh, and I don't think it's worth the $40 original price tag, fortunately I found it on sale.
Yes, it is just an expansion from a mini-game in Resident Evil 4, but this game is frantic and fun trying to get really high scores. It's fun to play with a friend and can bring 10 to 20 hours of solid entertainment. If you like Resident Evil and can find the game on sale, it's worth playing, especially if you have some time to kill on the road or something.
3/5
