Beating Resident Evil 5 grants the player access to the infinitely enjoyable Mercenaries Mode in which you fight against both the clock and a horde of zombies. Capcom decided to expand on that experience with the new Versus Mode DLC pack. You get two new multiplayer modes: Slayers, and Survivors, each of which can be played either on teams, or free for all.

Slayers tasks players with killing as many infected as possible before time runs out. Once the clock hits zero, the match is over, and the player with the most points wins. You can slow your opponents’ progress by killing them, thus forcing them to respawn, and lose precious killing time. Survivors is almost identical to Slayers in that there are still zombies all around, except that you earn points for killing the other players, not the zombies. Essentially, the two new game modes are identical to Mercenaries, except that other people are playing with you, and it’s scored differently. To make matters worse, it’s a little difficult to find a match. Each time I sat down to play, it seemed like a fair number of people were playing, but then when I went to join a match, either the game was full, or I was instantly disconnected. So, I started hosting games of my own. I would pick a game type, and a map, and then I’d wait…… and wait…… and wait…. and then one person would join…. then more waiting…. .you get the idea.

To be completely clear, this five dollar download doesn’t provide any new maps, characters, or weapons. It just allows you to play multiplayer variants of Mercenaries mode. Capcom really dropped the ball here. This DLC stinks of laziness, and greed. To charge $5 for a rehash of a mode already on the disc…. ugh…. this is what I’ve been afraid DLC would degenerate to since day one. There’s almost nothing new here. All of the assets and maps are already there on the disc. The netcode to connect two players already existed - that’s how online co-op is possible in the single player campaign. The gameplay very closely resembles Mercenaries mode, except it’s not as fun. The control scheme and slow paced, stop and pop gameplay don’t lend themselves to multiplayer very well. To be clear, these new gameplay modes are not on the disc already - they just borrow very heavily from stuff that is on the disc. Had Capcom spent some time tweaking the gameplay, or making the multiplayer experience more unique, this might have been a good purchase. Alternately, had they released the new modes for free, and created some multiplayer specific maps designed with these new game modes in mind, I might feel good about Versus Mode. All things being what they are, I just feel like Capcom stole five bucks from me, and I’d like it back.

-Mike Kurz

Tags: Capcom, DLC, Resident Evil, Resident Evil 5, UGH

Subscribe to the Check Your HUD RSS Feed