So the past few weeks I’ve been playing Resident Evil the Mercenaries on my 3DS, which is probably one of the cause of my procrastination on projects I’ve been trying to work on. I’ve gotten the 3DS about a couple of months ago and have to say it’s probably my favorite handheld system I’ve owned now. The only thing that I dislike about it is that the 3DS price drop that’s happening in a couple of weeks. This kinda makes me mad but then again we can afford to buy my daughter her own 3DS when it comes time to that. All the other DS has been foiled by her little hands. The place where you insert the game cartridges don’t work anymore due to pins being bent out of shape so it doesn’t connect with the cards conductor fields. Those DS have seen a good long life span though and has worked for all the time we’ve owned it until a few weeks ago. She has been careful with our 3DS lately so maybe we’ll consider getting one for her at a later time.
Anyway, my view on Resident Evil The Mercenaries 3D is this, quite different than normal Resident Evil games. Although I haven’t played any of the newer Resident Evil since after Code Veronica X, but I do try to follow the series as much as possible. If I’m a fan I should keep up on the series info right? Although after playing this I have been debating on getting the other RE games to just play. So if I read right (from the review sources and wikis) RETM3D is like mercernary mode in RE5, which I’ve not played so can’t take my word on that. The thing that irked me about this game is that after you finish a level it doesn’t automatically takes you to the next level after you clear it. No, you have to go to the level’s list and choose the level you want to do. VERY ANNOYING. Honestly I can understand that if you’ve not cleared a level you stay on that level until you clear but if you have cleared it you have to go into the level menu and choose the level you want to move on to next. I didn’t like that, but I dealt with it.
You get three default characters which are Jill Valentine, HUNK, and Chris Redfield. I’ve played with Chris most of the time (Redfield fangirl) and the other characters are unlockable Claire being the easiest or one of the first to be unlocked. In order to clear a mission you have to get B rank or higher. Ranks goes in order form highest to lowest. SS, S, A, B, C, D. The ranks SS, S, A and B, will give you a star in your map level showing that you’ve cleared this level and can move on to the next level or unlock hidden levels. You fail a mission if you run out of time before you kill a major boss, or if you die. You gain points by the amount time you have left after a major boss level, or you get high combo points. I think my highest combo points was 150. I’m sure there’s higher but that was my highest I believe to have gotten.
Once you unlock characters and have completed all 5 mission levels you are able to use each characters weapons. At least that’s what I’ve read. I’ve cheated and unlocked the characters weapon swap with play coins. I guess it’s cheating but is it really if you’re allowed to do that? Yeah, I learned about unlocking the character weapon swap when I was stuck on 3-5 trying to kill the B.O.W and failing miserably. That’s when I learn of the magic play coins! So for the past few weeks Chris has been running around with Jills or Rebecca’s weapons config. I wish that we were able to custom pick our favorite weapon into the weapon slot though. That would be great. Machine gun, magnum, and shotguns! Haha.
There is DUO mode where you can play with other players to complete very difficult stages you couldn’t possibly think of doing yourself. This is how I finished my first round in the game to get the end credits and unlock the EX level. The EX level just gave me a headache at times but I enjoyed running around like a headless chicken trying to get familiarized with the maps. The characters have two sets of outfits. Their default outfits which you play with from the start and the alternate outfits which may give more stat boost or less stat boost depending on the character and their outfits. These outfits are unlocked by getting certain ranks on level maps or getting medals.
Medals are like achievements, and some are hard to get than others. There’s 50 medals to get and some medals unlock skills that can be used to customize your characters ability to survive in the game. Skills have enhancements on what your character can do. Some skills can be equipped to boost abilities of herbs to heal your character some boost your weapon’s attack damage or handling abilities. Some skills if level up to it’s max will have hidden abilities that helps out the character, and then may unlock other skills that can be used. The skills have 3 levels and you get skill points after finishing a level map. If you die during a level map mission you get no skills. Sucks yeah, but that is how the game works.
The game play you can choose it to be OTS (over the shoulder) or FPS (First Person Shooter) mode. I prefer the OTS mode cause I’m not a big fan of the FPS mode thing. Unless it’s CoD. I’ve played this game a few hours on end and mostly in my bed during the nights where I can’t sleep, like probably tonight after I post this up I will open up my 3Ds and play the game again. I’ve played most of the game up until level 4-4 solo, and then learned about Duo mode can help you unlock levels as well so I played the rest of the levels in DUO mode, some repeating the old levels just to get a higher score. It took a while to do considering that I have to go through over 50 DUO modes to unlock the EX level.
The EX level were a bit challenging considering I got paired up with people that stupidly walk in front of executioners, garradors and crazy maijni’s with chain saws, but there were players that wanted to try to get the clear so they can move on to the next level and that was a pleasurable experience. The only downfall with the DUO mode is that there’s barely no way you can communicate with your partner except with the in-game emotes like whistling and the occasional “thank you” for saving their asses when they’re in a pickle. There has been a couple of times that I was paired up with some people that liked to grief you in the game. They equip their characters with the rocket launcher or the grenade launcher and try to seek you out and kill you purposely. Obviously I think this is the flaw in the game, cause you can’t take damage by your partner’s bullets but you can take damage by their launchers. It’s a very terrible thing but I guess the developers wanted it to be that way. I’m sure the people that does the “griefing” thinks that it’s funny and have nothing else to do with their gaming time but ruin some people’s fun. Things like that makes the game less enjoyable, but here is hoping there’s less of these assholes out there and more gamers that like to see a level get completed.
My experience with this game I enjoyed it very much, I have continuously played this game almost day in and day out and my goal is to get all skill and all medals. So far I’ve got 13 medals to get and about 10 more skills to unlock. It’s a stress reliever to me so when I’m stress out, it’s most likely once everyday, I’ll turn on my 3DS and kill zombies.
