My copy of this arrived today (Japanese version), just posting some initial impressions, I'll post more in-depth impressions later.
On initial bootup, things seem a tad bare-bones. The main menu lets you chose to play the main Mercinaries game or the Options menu, but you can also play a PLAYABLE demo of Resident Evil Revelations!. I don't know if this is common knowledge, I've not been keeping up, but I did not expect this, I am pleased. I'll post more about that towards the end.
From the outset, you can select either Chris, Jill or Hunk, other characters being unlocked as you progress though the missions (Claire is unlocked after mission 1, in her awesome Code: Veronica attire). It also appears that each character has skills and weapons that you can unlock. You can also select 'Duo' mode which is presumably online, or 'Medals' to view the medals you receive during the course of the game. Each mission is split into separate sections, and you have to complete them all to progress. The early missions are essentially tutorial stages. From what I can tell from, you seem to progress through the missions linearly in single player, though you can replay old missions once completed. You also get separate ranking for each character, which might be an incentive to replay old missions.
The 3D seems to work well, although the main complaint is that your character seems to float above everything else. That sounds a lot worse than it is - it actually looks rather nice, but you can tell that some of the assets weren't really designed to be split up into layers like this. The framerate is a tad strange - I assume it is 30fps, but to my eyes it looked lower than other 30fps games. I did get used to it though, so maybe it was just me needing to take time to adjust. Visually, it looked exactly like the Resident Evil 4/5, maybe a notch below 5. There appears to be no anti-aliasing either. Still, overall it looks rather nice, looks pretty much as expected.
The controls are rather nice overall. You switch weapons and items using the touchscreen or the D-Pad, and your character auto-runs (you walk either by holding B, or with a light press on the analogue stick) presumably because of the action focus of the game. The A button uses a health item.
With regards to the Resident Evil Revelations demo, it's extremely short. It looks a fair bit better than the main game though, with the excellent lighting system that we know about, and the assets are clearly might higher quality. It actually feels strikingly similar to the boat stage on Resident Evil 5, both in terms of look and atmosphere. The atmosphere seem be revolve more around tension than anything else, though I feel it is unfair to come to too many conclusions with with a short demo. The controls scheme is slight modified over Mercenaries - no auto-run here, uses the classic method of holding A to run. The main enemies are hard as nails too, they're not zombies nor plagas or anything else. Overall, a nice tech demo.
So overall, initial impressions are quite positive. There's no surprises here, it's just as fun as Mercenaries has always been, though they have tried to give is a bit more structure with the missions. Quite whether there's enough to Mercenaries to justify making a full game out of it is another matter though, it does still feel like a glorified mini-game, but I guess it depends how many stages are here. A fun stopgap.
On initial bootup, things seem a tad bare-bones. The main menu lets you chose to play the main Mercinaries game or the Options menu, but you can also play a PLAYABLE demo of Resident Evil Revelations!. I don't know if this is common knowledge, I've not been keeping up, but I did not expect this, I am pleased. I'll post more about that towards the end.
From the outset, you can select either Chris, Jill or Hunk, other characters being unlocked as you progress though the missions (Claire is unlocked after mission 1, in her awesome Code: Veronica attire). It also appears that each character has skills and weapons that you can unlock. You can also select 'Duo' mode which is presumably online, or 'Medals' to view the medals you receive during the course of the game. Each mission is split into separate sections, and you have to complete them all to progress. The early missions are essentially tutorial stages. From what I can tell from, you seem to progress through the missions linearly in single player, though you can replay old missions once completed. You also get separate ranking for each character, which might be an incentive to replay old missions.
The 3D seems to work well, although the main complaint is that your character seems to float above everything else. That sounds a lot worse than it is - it actually looks rather nice, but you can tell that some of the assets weren't really designed to be split up into layers like this. The framerate is a tad strange - I assume it is 30fps, but to my eyes it looked lower than other 30fps games. I did get used to it though, so maybe it was just me needing to take time to adjust. Visually, it looked exactly like the Resident Evil 4/5, maybe a notch below 5. There appears to be no anti-aliasing either. Still, overall it looks rather nice, looks pretty much as expected.
The controls are rather nice overall. You switch weapons and items using the touchscreen or the D-Pad, and your character auto-runs (you walk either by holding B, or with a light press on the analogue stick) presumably because of the action focus of the game. The A button uses a health item.
With regards to the Resident Evil Revelations demo, it's extremely short. It looks a fair bit better than the main game though, with the excellent lighting system that we know about, and the assets are clearly might higher quality. It actually feels strikingly similar to the boat stage on Resident Evil 5, both in terms of look and atmosphere. The atmosphere seem be revolve more around tension than anything else, though I feel it is unfair to come to too many conclusions with with a short demo. The controls scheme is slight modified over Mercenaries - no auto-run here, uses the classic method of holding A to run. The main enemies are hard as nails too, they're not zombies nor plagas or anything else. Overall, a nice tech demo.
So overall, initial impressions are quite positive. There's no surprises here, it's just as fun as Mercenaries has always been, though they have tried to give is a bit more structure with the missions. Quite whether there's enough to Mercenaries to justify making a full game out of it is another matter though, it does still feel like a glorified mini-game, but I guess it depends how many stages are here. A fun stopgap.
hope it turns up on Thursday cos my last couple of preorders have been turning up on q Friday when they've been sent out on a Tuesday 1st class?????
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