Monday, May 26, 2014

Hello Stranger, What Are You Buying?

The Resident Evil games have been pretty predictable these days when it comes to unlockable features after completing the game -  it's the usual offering of Mercenaries mini-game and bonus costumes. These are some of the series mainstays since the beginning and the theory of why fix something that isn't broken is a logical reasoning why Capcom never bother to come up with something different for each new game.

Jill wonders where The Mercenaries have gone on Revelations?

So naturally I was very intrigued when I unlocked the Raid mode upon completing Resident Evil Revelations as this was the first bonus mini-game that isn't the Mercenaries since RE : Code Veronica. All I knew prior to playing the game is that the story mode doesn't feature co-op but Raid mode does though you still have the option of playing the game solo if you like. 

After playing Raid mode for a bit, I quickly discovered it's nothing more than the same story mode with the cutscene removed and co-op mode tacked on. As the main game is designed for portable play, each chapter were made to be very brief so these chapters are now individual missions that you can play separately on Raid mode. The objective of each mission remains largely the same but now there are no cutscenes or loading time to interupt the game-play, thereby allowing co-op play. It's almost as if the main game was meant to have co-op play as there are always a NPC character in each stage but yet it was strangely omitted.

So in the end, it turns out Raid mode wasn't a brand new mini-game as I would expect and the Mercenaries isn't featured in this game probably because Capcom expects you to buy the standalone Mercenaries 3D game also  released on the Nintendo 3DS. Nicely played Capcom, you always know what your fans want (or don't want) and give it to them. At a price, of course.

You wanna play Mercenaries on the 3DS? Be prepared to pony up the cash

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