Resident Evil Mercenaries Mode Comes to iPhone

Capcom's first online multiplayer iPhone game, complete with zombies.

Mercenaries mode was surprisingly popular after the release of Resident Evil 5. This straight-forward mode for Capcom's big survival horror franchise just throws players into an arena, tosses a mess of enemies at them, and challenges them to kill as many as they can in the span of a few minutes. It's simple, intense and a way to get a quick fix of Resident Evil's action from a title that you'd otherwise have to sink hours into a campaign mode.

In Capcom's mind, this arcade style Resident Evil experience is perfect for portables, which leads us to the upcoming Resident Evil Mercenaries VS. for iPhone. It's basically the same mode you've played before (assuming you've played it on consoles), only modified so it works with the touch screens on Apple's handheld devices.

Resident Evil Mercenaries Vs. is a complex port of the console game. Of course it's not quite as good looking, but it's still a third-person shooter where you kill zombies and monsters in a few minutes time. The game is unique, however, in that it's Capcom's first online capable iPhone game, with up to four players jumping into a match via wifi, or locally with Bluetooth.

Resident Evil Mercenaries Vs. works with the touch screen, but it takes more than a few minutes to figure out what you're doing. Like Resident Evil 5, your character can't move and shoot, so when you're stationary the virtual analog stick controls your aim. When you're not using a weapon the virtual analog stick moves your character around. Players have to toggle this with an on-screen button, as well as negotiate a few other buttons that control their knife and how they interact with the environment. When a player gets close to an object like a ladder or some ammo, a button pops up that indicates what they can do with it. It works, sure, and it is like the console version, but maybe it would be better to have the context sensitive actions occur automatically, or at least function in some way that's more intuitive than a button prompt that pops up.

Check out all our new RE Mercenaries VS screens.

Additionally you can control and interact with your inventory via an expanding menu on the touch screen, reloading weapons, using items, and even trading with your partners. The only problem with this in the build I played is that the menu takes up a majority of the screen, forcing you to block your view while you awkwardly select an item and decide if you want to equip it, give it to a friend, or drop it. Perhaps it'll be as fast as a controller in time, but it felt awkward during the few moments I got to play.

While it doesn't have a specific release date, Capcom is hoping to put the game out sometime in February. Price hasn't been officially announced, but I'd expect it to run somewhere in the five or six dollar range based on their past games and the marketplace standard for an intricate, fully 3D game.

IGN Logo
blog comments powered by Disqus