Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D is the first Resident Evil game for the Nintendo 3DS, released in 2011. It is an expanded version of "The Mercenaries" minigame previously featured in Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil 5 spun-off into a full game, which eschews the plot-based nature of the main campaigns in favor of an arcade-style design.
The objective is to simply kill as many enemies as possible in each stage under the time limit without getting killed. The player must grab time extensions to remain on the stage as long as possible and kill many enemies in a row in order to achieve a big score. The stages and enemies in this version are from both, RE4 and RE5. Improvements to the "Mercenaries" formula includes an online co-op mode and a "skills" system that allows the player to customize his or her character's abilities. The playable character roster consists of Chris and Claire Redfield, HUNK, Jack Krauser, Jill Valentine, Barry Burton, Rebecca Chambers and Albert Wesker.
The game's engine would be used for the next 3DS game in the series, Resident Evil: Revelations.
This game provides examples of:
- Awesome, but Impractical:
- Wesker's dash, much like in RE5. It looks pretty cool and you can fire off a Knee Cannon that can do some big damage on some, but its hard to get a good hit with it, and it takes some health off, especially with Uroboros Wesker's pitiful health recovery rate.
- Chris's "Neckbreaker" might be an instant kill that negates plaga spawns, but the animation is so long that you're better off not using it. The same applies to Jill's "Head Grab".
- Boring, but Practical: Chris' loadout's sniper rifle isn't any bit special looking and is more or less a standard bolt-action rifle but considering it can take down most enemies quickly, including some of the big enemies like a Garrador, there's no reason to forget about it.
- Capcom Sequel Stagnation: An obviously non-canon portable remake of a minigame.
- Composite Character: Between his loadout and his moveset, Krauser's something of a mix between his original incarnation from RE4 and the RE5 characters Sheva Alomar and Josh Stone. His unique bow and arrow makes a return alongside a knife that's stronger than Jill's perhaps as a nod to both his canonical specialty with combat knives and the notably higher effectiveness of knives in RE4 compared to other games in the series. He also retains his two melee attacks from the same game: The two-hit "Kick" and head-busting "Knee" attacks, now-called "Roundhouse" and "Stinger" respectively. However, he no longer has a uniquely higher running speed and more noticeably, lacks his special Plaga attack entirely. Perhaps to compensate, he now has several new melee attacks to match the newer RE5-based combat. A keen eye will notice his knife-based moves (armstun front, leg stun back, and grounded) are extremely similar to Sheva's while his unarmed moves (armstun back and strong stunned enemy/Reversal skill) are outright identical to Josh's. In addition, his loadout now includes a rocket launcher which Josh Stone also had in his loadout
- Co-Op Multiplayer: One of the big additions.
- Cool Mask: A rare justified case with HUNK given his career.
- Cut and Paste Environments: Enjoy the Public Assembly arena? That's good, because you'll be seeing an awful lot of it, along with a few other arenas that are repeated over and over. Extends to the characters as well. Claire's model, for example, is taken from the Code: Veronica portions of Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles.
- Desperation Attack: Every character has a distinct and powerful melee move that can only be used on specific strong enemies when they're stunned. The Reversal skill allows characters to use this move on any stunned enemy type but they have to be at low health first.
- Difficult, but Awesome: The Red 9 on the hidden 9th loadout qualifies as this. It has the best damage output out of any of the handguns but also has the smallest clip size of them. This naturally encourages careful aim to avoid wasting such strong shots as well as more frequent reloads to make sure you don't accidentally get caught with no bullets. Somewhat downplayed especially since there's always the option to avoid the latter situation by instead switching to the 9th loadout's "Two-way" Grenade Launcher.
- Elite Tweak:
- Rebecca's melee with level 3 thunder. While her melee is subpar compared to others, lacking range and raw damage, she does have 2 launching melee attacks. The first one is the head stun, which everybody has as a launcher but due to the fact you can position yourself where you want makes it useful, and the second one is the leg stun from behind, which is a grab and a launcher, thus prevent mutations while still launching what is basically a bomb. The front leg stun also has a chance of activating the explosion where you stand, making it useful for a crowd surrounding you.
- Rebecca's loadout in general is one of the best in the entire game combining a versatile submachine gun with a very powerful grenade launcher. Admittedly the submachine gun isn't that strong on its own which isn't helped by Rebecca also having pretty meager melee damage on most of her moves. However, if you were to equip the loadout on a character with stronger melee moves like Krauser...
- The mastered Medic skill gives the player healing whenever they kill an enemy with a critical hit. Krauser's frontal leg stun, Stinger, is an instant critical hit kill. Give him this skill, and he can instantly neutralize one enemy with 100% success rate and heal himself a bit in the process, making him horrifically tough to kill.
- Faceless Goons: Los Illuminados Zealots from RE4 have faces obscured by hoods.
- Gaiden Game: Hits all the criteria. It's basically an arcade shooter with no plot to speak of.
- Gas Mask Mooks: One of the types included; they're immune to headshots and flashbangs. HUNK also qualifies as a playable example.
- Heavily Armored Mook: The Base-type Majini have armour on random parts of their body meaning you'll have to really pick your targets. Cultists sometimes have skull helmets on but for them that's the extent of it.
- Improbable Aiming Skills: You, with the grenade launchers. Its entirely possible to nail a precise, long range direct hit on any enemy with a grenade launcher. The added splash damage makes this all the more sweet. In fact, with the help of the laser sight, even a Magnum can be used to achieve this effect.
- Incredibly Lame Pun: Marketing and the promo cite how you fight the war on horror.
- I Shall Taunt You:
- Press X to make your character trash your enemies verbally. Provides a power boost with the right skill equipped and nets you a Medal if you perform a total of 30 near an enemy but it doesn't help for Claire or HUNK since their taunt animations last long and you can't cancel them, leaving them open for attack.
- On another note, Chris, Wesker and Barry share the same taunt vocal ("Show yourself!") though with different voice actors. You can also hold the X button and press any direction on the D-Pad to give commands to your partner, or thank them if they heal you up. Yes, you can do this when you're alone, too.
- Mooks: Your objective is solely to kill these guys in uncomfortably large numbers.
- No Plot? No Problem!: There's pretty much no story to speak of. It's just one of eight characters from the Resident Evil series slaughtering zombies by the dozen.
- The Power of Friendship: What else but the Friendship skill. It allows the both of you to regenerate health when in each other's vicinity. Leveled up fully, it makes surviving missions a lot easier.
- Recycled Soundtrack: Once you've completed the main mission mode, you unlock the "EX" set of missions which feature music from the Mercenaries Modes of RE4 and RE5 i.e. The EX missions set in The Village from RE4 have Leon's Mercenaries Theme from the same game playing.
- Rule of Cool: Was Jill in Spain or HUNK in Kijuju in the original minigame? No, but it doesn't stop it from being awesome.
- Scoring Points: The sole objective, you’ll cry when you’re done killing.
- Shock and Awe:
- Claire's Electric Grenade Launcher. Wide radius and can kill a Cephalos or Duvalia relatively easily.
- The Thunderbolt skill. Gives your melee attacks electrical properties. Level it up to the max and every knock-down melee attack will summon an additional lightning bolt that'll do major, if not fatal damage to the victim and any surrounding enemies nearby.
- Shout-Out:
- HUNK's "Mr. Death" alternate costume sure looks a lot like the Batman: Arkham Asylum rendition of The Scarecrow.
- Some of the alternate costumes are variants on the ones seen in RE5, like Barry's (A patriotic recolour of Chris' Warrior costume), Krauser's (Heavy Metal) and Claire's (Sheva's suit with the added bonus of resembling Hunnigan.)
- Slave Mooks: All the enemies are controlled by a Plaga parasite.
- Suspiciously Similar Substitute: HUNK of... Excella Gionne? Yes, actualy. Their loadouts are the same save for the pistol being a different model, and their movesets are actually pretty similar. Head is a high kick, both arm attacks are quick but don't have much range, both leg moves are powerful grabs, with HUNK having instant kills on both while Excella just had one, and the ground melee are both multi hits. They're pretty much, melee and loadoutwise, the same mercenary.
- Tech-Demo Game: Mercenaries 3D was made to test out how a RE game engine could be made on the 3DS. The developers were satisfied with the results and Revelations was developed as a follow-up.
- Took a Level in Badass:
- Hunk's hidden arm and leg blades.
- Rebecca took ANOTHER one after the one she took in Mercs Reunion by bringing a Grenade Launcher and the game's strongest Deathblow melee. With the right setup, little Becky can utterly dominate every single boss in the game.
