One of Resident Evil’s Weakest Spin-Offs Deserves a Modern Reimagining

Resident Evil spin-offs run the gamut of quality, but many of them aren’t great, especially when compared to the totemic heights seen in the mainline entries. A handful of these offshoots are the weakest games to bear the title’s legendary name and are often forgettable as a result. Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D is one of these such games and came out exclusively on the Nintendo 3DS just months after its underwhelming launch. Like the system itself, it was a weak shadow of its former self and too expensive. Time has not been kind to The Mercenaries 3D — although the visuals are somewhat impressive for the hardware — but it serves as inspiration for what Capcom should do with its recent six Resident Evil games. With three remakes and three new entries under its belt, now seems like the perfect time to make another stand-alone edition of The Mercenaries. 

Making one big version of Resident Evil’s The Mercenaries seems like an obvious next step. Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, Resident Evil Village, Resident Evil Requiem, and the three remakes have a sizeable bestiary of enemies with not much overlap, something that also applies to its wide array of environments and bosses. Putting in all of the recent protagonists (and some antagonists) would also offer even more replayability, given their different abilities and weapons.

Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D Was a Decent Idea

When combined together, it’s hard not to be optimistic about the possibilities. Imagine roundhouse kicking Lady Dimitrescu as Leon S. Kennedy or sniping Regenerador parasites as Jill Valentine. Perhaps the levels would also shift around to accommodate the more methodical styles of Ethan Winters and Grace Ashcroft. Even the various viewpoints could further change the experience, as Village and Requiem have even shown how well a single Resident Evil can work in both first-person and third-person. And, of course, there is always still VR, something Capcom nailed in RE7, Village, and the Resident Evil 4 remake.

All of these variables seem like they would easily combine together and create one immaculate “best of” package that celebrates Resident Evil’s decade-long hot streak. The Mercenaries 3D, somewhat attempted this but wasn’t able to go far enough. It was mostly created on Resident Evil 5’s foundation and only had small bits of Resident Evil 4 peppered here and there. RE5, with its messy combat that poorly straddled the line between action horror and straight-up action, was not the ideal game to build the whole experience around, but the current batch of Resident Evil games have managed to have a better balance of those styles and their stronger controls would make for a better base.

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Resident Evil Requiem’s Combat Is Too Good to Not Come With a Mercenaries Mode

The Mercenaries 3D also didn’t have the replay value a game like this would need to live; useless in-game achievements and a scant amount of alternate costumes were just not enough. A new version of The Mercenaries would ideally have multiple ways to live on besides basic high score chasing. Capcom already has an existing library of costumes for the many Resident Evil characters, all of which would make for a decent way to hook players. Combining cosmetic rewards with gameplay-centric ones would be key, too, since new weapons and loadouts would make for solid prizes that would further change how players engage with each level, echoing how unlockable weapons work in the more traditional entries. Village’s The Mercenaries mode also provided even more meat here by having a round-based structure that allowed for heavier customization and the ability to buy upgrades. 

Another Resident Evil: The Mercenaries Is More Fitting Than Another Bad Multiplayer Entry

There are many ways the modern Resident Evil games could fit into a Mercenaries package. Regardless of how they are cobbled together, though, they would undoubtedly be a better fit for the franchise when compared to the multiple multiplayer Resident Evil games Capcom has put out in the last decade. Umbrella Corps, Resident Evil Resistance, and Resident Evil Re:Verse are just three of the ways Capcom has attempted to jam multiplayer into the modern era of the series, and they’ve all failed for the same reasons: They’re poorly made and not true to the series.

These flops have been the spiritual inverse of the lauded single-player offerings because they don’t get what makes Resident Evil Resident Evil. They’re poorly balanced and not scary and would fizzle out even faster if not attached to such a storied franchise. Even though a modern Mercenaries game would likely be a single-player offering, it would probably have a longer tail and be more replayable than any of these multiplayer installments. Resident Evil’s gameplay is fantastic enough to keep players coming back and doesn’t even need to use multiplayer as a crutch, despite Capcom’s repeated insistence.

Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D is a forgettable game with a sound idea at its core: take Resident Evil’s popular Mercenaries mode and build a whole experience around it. Capcom severely underdelivered with that second part, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t still worth pursuing. With more powerful hardware backing it and around a decade of decent to excellent Resident Evil games, Capcom is in a better position now to realize the potential it left languishing on the 3DS. 

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