A lot of gamers who survived the Resident Evil series probably spent just as much time playing the game's unlockable bonus mode, Mercenaries. Instead of a drawn-out survival horror experience, Mercenaries has always been much faster and more action-packed. Now that mode, a fan favorite, will be coming to the iPhone with online multiplayer through Game Center. Resident Evil Mercenaries Vs. is Capcom's first iPhone game with online multiplayer. Using Game Center, you'll be able to match up with friends or strangers to battle an endless swarm of zombies within a tight time limit. In a surprising twist, the zombies are really just obstacles-- your real goal is to kill the other players. You can play as either Chris or Jill from the Resident Evil series, and the action all takes place in just one arena for now. If Mercenaries Vs. is a success, Capcom hinted that they could add more characters and arenas. The arena we played was the village from Resident Evil 4, and the enemy zombies were those same diseased peasants bearing pitchforks and axes. The bag-headed chainsaw maniac from RE4 also makes an appearance as the Menace, and he's more likely to show up if you're in last place, to spice things up for the rest of the group. In either two-on-two team battles or four-player free-for-alls, your goal is to get a high score by killing zombies and other players. For local multiplayer, two-player rounds are available through Bluetooth, with A.I. stepping in as the other two players. Chris comes to the party with a pistol, shotgun, and grenade, while Jill has a pistol, sub-machine gun, and a flashbang. Green herbs and restorative spray can also be picked up from fallen enemies. To increase the length of the round, you'll have to find statues that will delay your impending rescue by helicopter. Using a context-sensitive control scheme from Resident Evil 4 on iPhone, we were quickly able to raise and topple ladders, scramble to the rooftops, and dispatch enemies. The beta build we played was very choppy, and the onscreen frames-per-second indicator hovered in the 10-15 FPS range. We don't expect the FPS counter to be in the final version, and we're also hoping the final game performs a lot better. A few other neat extras round out this app. You'll be able to play a single-player training mode, which is actually a score attack round with A.I. opponents. There's also a coin shoot mode, where you can target the blue coins dangling from string around the level, just like in Resident Evil 4. Despite the choppy preview build, we couldn't be happier that Capcom is taking Resident Evil online on the iPhone. Only having one arena and two playable characters is a bit limiting, but Mercenaries mode on the consoles is known for being endlessly replayable. If more options arrive down the line in the form of updates, we can see this being a pretty spectacular online shooter. Look for it to hit the App Store in February. Source: http://www.slidetoplay.com/story/resident-evil-mercenaries-vs-hands-on-preview
That's some cool shit, but Capcom can afford to spend a little more upping the graphics and animation on this, Street Fighter 4, and other titles.
looks as bad as RE4 :S and the controls seem to be the same, another bad thing. well, i guess capcom doesn't like to put much effort to the iDevices :S sad.
Insta buy if it has a 4 player co-op survival mode. I really hope they do the controls justice too...
Looks and sounds like they moved some of the zombie and their voices from the other Resident Evil game over to this one to do come short cuts. I'm a Huge fan but at the same time I can tell when a company is trying to pull a fast one to make a quick buck, and this game seems to be one. Hopefully this game is just a demo to which things will get changed and other things added.
Is it just me who thinks they are just milking the franchise now? I mean, PvP with RE controls, seriously? It's hardly survival horror anymore.
I hope this comes out before Resident Evil Mercenaries 3DS because that's what I'll be playing when it comes out.
Ugly... Capcom CAN do great conversion (Ghost Trick for example), so why that ? For the i4, they can make the same RE as the DS version; the same. So, why not ? Very bad news...
The graphics look about a year out of date, the controls are probably just as sucky as the previous RE game. Things could change, but I'm honestly not expecting them to. Come on Capcom, if you're going to bother to make the game, then at least put a decent amount of effort into it.
How do you know its final? Slide to plays preview clearly shows and tells that the build is not final... It was choppy and had an onscreen FPS count showing 14-16 FPS, which I REALLY hope is not final lol
That build was not final, but it was probably close to final and only needed abit more optimizaion...