I found this picture... and I just had to use it. I'm sorry.
Writer's Note: This is a review of a Downloadable Content for the full game Resident Evil 5. If you haven't already, please go there first.
Versus mode was a piece of DLC that was announced just before Resident Evil 5's release, and then put forward a couple weeks after. Naturally this irritated people as it shows disrespect for the consumer, but that's not what we're here for. Versus mode is a set of four extra gameplay modes that can host anywhere from two, to four players, and in all these modes the players will be competing against eachother for a hefty sum of points. These modes include Slayers and Survivors, both of which are Free-for-all games that can be played with two, three or four people. Then there is team variations of both those modes that require the full four people, and the teamwork works just the same as the main game.
For avid Mercenaries players on the main game, Slayers will be familiar (as will Team Slayers). It is much the same concept here. Get high combos, kill all the enemies and gain as much points as you can. Although now you have a couple extra factors. These being that you're competing to do better than the other players at Majini killing, you can respawn after death,
and the person (or team) in last will receive a double-score bonus until they're at least in third. It's a lovely concept indeed, and one I like to go and try out every now and then but the problem is that the competition creates unbalancing issues in your strategy. Time is very important here as well but in the opposite way. You want to be killing as many enemies as you can, but can't let the time limit extend unless you need that extra time to get ahead. This mode would be fine and all, but often times it turns out you're casually plucking away at enemies and you're in the lead, then suddenly once the time runs out the other team jumps ahead by tens of thousands of points. After the game is over, you look at the scores to notice they had bunches more enemies at their hands. This unbalanced traffic of the games' mobs causes much more frustration than you would want, and it's obvious that Slayers wasn't altered much to make up for competing enemies. Balancing issues are also evident in that the Slayers and Mercenaries loadout are the same. So while any character could kick ass in Mercenaries, the different strategy here in Slayers doesn't transfer well over to these same weapon sets.
Then we have Survivors, or of course Team Survivors. The objective here is to damage other players for points. Now, while hurting, and then punching a player in the face to kill them is worth massive points, Capcom made the right decision for points by making every shot you land give you points as well, not just kills. With tank controls like this game has, a decision like this was genius. The more powerful the weapon you're using on the person, the more points you get for each hit, and headshots count for 1.5x the normal amount of points. And thankfully here, character loadouts are different. You start with either a pistol or machine gun, some grenades, ammo and a healing item to start you out. Tougher weapons are gained by finding them across the map, taking them off dead players or killing big bosses in the map for their drops. Yes, the normal enemies are still running around to make your day worse, and they will drop ammo and other items for you like crazy, so they are a target if you need some goodies; But they won't give you points. Player kills will.
Unfortunately these stages for Versus are the same ones pulled directly from Mercenaries. The problem here for Survivors is that some of these stages have certain dead ends, so a team could literally climb up a ladder to a dead end, and they basically win the match, because they can gun down
anyone who climbs up. It's severely unfair and, while a sniper rifle will help this on some stages, it's impossible to fight against this tactic on most maps. And, even with the nerfed loadout we still have unbalanced characters. You'll basically find yourself picking the people with fire grenades as a start. Setting a player ablaze will cause them to flail their arms about in a burning animation for a few seconds leaving them open to fire (haw haw, get it?) while flash grenades are useless cause your giant "1P" logo can be seen through the flash anyway, and frags must be ridiculously close to a person to do any real damage. More balance problems comes in that, if you're getting your ass kicked you're gonna have crap weapons while the other people have all the best ones, and soon you'll find yourself unable to get better ones and as a result, unable to put up a fight. So again, Survivors is very unbalanced but that doesn't prevent it from being fun.
What prevents it from being fun is the players that play it. Resident Evil 5 brought over with it, the ability to change to the RE4 control scheme, and this brought a nasty trick with it. With one instant, a player can literally be aiming to either side without going through any turning time whatsoever. So a player can literally run beside you, and you won't even see them turn at ALL, then you find a shotgun in your skull blasting you to bits. It's terribly cheap, and with the tank controls you simply can't fight it. Pretty soon you'll find yourself having to get rid of the comfortable side-strafing ability to use the control scheme for this unfair, brutal tactic that near breaks the game. It's hard to tell if this was an intended trick by Capcom, or if it's a glitch because this same ability was president in Resident Evil 4, and it could acceptably be used to your advantage; But here, it's just a mean, cheap tactic to use and if you ever find SOMEONE who doesn't do it, you'll find a bit more fun to be had.
The other reason these players ruin the game is that they abuse a "quick-rocket" glitch. The rocket launchers are instant-kills, but they're slow and bulky, it takes a second to haul the thing onto your shoulders and aim properly and that's why normally they'd take careful planning to use against someone. Except for this glitch. It allows a player to quickly whip out the rocket and fire it at you in less than half a second. So basically, they look at you and you explode. It's frustrating, cheap, and the worst part is, out of these two major issues Capcom has shown no interest in fixing it, the bastards. Oddly enough, you'll find that these players always choose to be the Jill character. So now she's ruined for me and playing as her feels dirty.
And if it isn't cheap, glitch-abusing players, you'll find yourself stuck with people that are just downright stupid. You'll often have people that join into a lobby, and don't realize that the teams are unbalanced. It seems they don't know that you have to have two people on either team and they refuse to switch, which holds up the whole lobby. Once in game, these are often the same players that won't listen to you as a partner. Requesting healing items, ammunition, anything you desperately need will go unheard to their ears. You'd think that kind of teamwork would have carried over to them from the real game.
FINAL SAY:
Versus was a fun experience when I was naive and first came into it, but I soon realized the terrible reasons I was losing, paid more attention to it and I very rarely win a match using legitimate fair tactics. With unbalanced gameplay, glitch-ridden combat and far too many things that have been blindly overlooked, unless you have a few friends that play nice this won't be worth your five dollars. Feel free to pass on this. I kind of wish I did. I could have spent my 400 points on something much better. I simply can't enjoy this mode. Unless you're a person who thinks using glitches to win is okay (and if you are you're scum) then don't buy this.
For avid Mercenaries players on the main game, Slayers will be familiar (as will Team Slayers). It is much the same concept here. Get high combos, kill all the enemies and gain as much points as you can. Although now you have a couple extra factors. These being that you're competing to do better than the other players at Majini killing, you can respawn after death,
and the person (or team) in last will receive a double-score bonus until they're at least in third. It's a lovely concept indeed, and one I like to go and try out every now and then but the problem is that the competition creates unbalancing issues in your strategy. Time is very important here as well but in the opposite way. You want to be killing as many enemies as you can, but can't let the time limit extend unless you need that extra time to get ahead. This mode would be fine and all, but often times it turns out you're casually plucking away at enemies and you're in the lead, then suddenly once the time runs out the other team jumps ahead by tens of thousands of points. After the game is over, you look at the scores to notice they had bunches more enemies at their hands. This unbalanced traffic of the games' mobs causes much more frustration than you would want, and it's obvious that Slayers wasn't altered much to make up for competing enemies. Balancing issues are also evident in that the Slayers and Mercenaries loadout are the same. So while any character could kick ass in Mercenaries, the different strategy here in Slayers doesn't transfer well over to these same weapon sets.Then we have Survivors, or of course Team Survivors. The objective here is to damage other players for points. Now, while hurting, and then punching a player in the face to kill them is worth massive points, Capcom made the right decision for points by making every shot you land give you points as well, not just kills. With tank controls like this game has, a decision like this was genius. The more powerful the weapon you're using on the person, the more points you get for each hit, and headshots count for 1.5x the normal amount of points. And thankfully here, character loadouts are different. You start with either a pistol or machine gun, some grenades, ammo and a healing item to start you out. Tougher weapons are gained by finding them across the map, taking them off dead players or killing big bosses in the map for their drops. Yes, the normal enemies are still running around to make your day worse, and they will drop ammo and other items for you like crazy, so they are a target if you need some goodies; But they won't give you points. Player kills will.
Unfortunately these stages for Versus are the same ones pulled directly from Mercenaries. The problem here for Survivors is that some of these stages have certain dead ends, so a team could literally climb up a ladder to a dead end, and they basically win the match, because they can gun down
anyone who climbs up. It's severely unfair and, while a sniper rifle will help this on some stages, it's impossible to fight against this tactic on most maps. And, even with the nerfed loadout we still have unbalanced characters. You'll basically find yourself picking the people with fire grenades as a start. Setting a player ablaze will cause them to flail their arms about in a burning animation for a few seconds leaving them open to fire (haw haw, get it?) while flash grenades are useless cause your giant "1P" logo can be seen through the flash anyway, and frags must be ridiculously close to a person to do any real damage. More balance problems comes in that, if you're getting your ass kicked you're gonna have crap weapons while the other people have all the best ones, and soon you'll find yourself unable to get better ones and as a result, unable to put up a fight. So again, Survivors is very unbalanced but that doesn't prevent it from being fun.What prevents it from being fun is the players that play it. Resident Evil 5 brought over with it, the ability to change to the RE4 control scheme, and this brought a nasty trick with it. With one instant, a player can literally be aiming to either side without going through any turning time whatsoever. So a player can literally run beside you, and you won't even see them turn at ALL, then you find a shotgun in your skull blasting you to bits. It's terribly cheap, and with the tank controls you simply can't fight it. Pretty soon you'll find yourself having to get rid of the comfortable side-strafing ability to use the control scheme for this unfair, brutal tactic that near breaks the game. It's hard to tell if this was an intended trick by Capcom, or if it's a glitch because this same ability was president in Resident Evil 4, and it could acceptably be used to your advantage; But here, it's just a mean, cheap tactic to use and if you ever find SOMEONE who doesn't do it, you'll find a bit more fun to be had.
The other reason these players ruin the game is that they abuse a "quick-rocket" glitch. The rocket launchers are instant-kills, but they're slow and bulky, it takes a second to haul the thing onto your shoulders and aim properly and that's why normally they'd take careful planning to use against someone. Except for this glitch. It allows a player to quickly whip out the rocket and fire it at you in less than half a second. So basically, they look at you and you explode. It's frustrating, cheap, and the worst part is, out of these two major issues Capcom has shown no interest in fixing it, the bastards. Oddly enough, you'll find that these players always choose to be the Jill character. So now she's ruined for me and playing as her feels dirty.
And if it isn't cheap, glitch-abusing players, you'll find yourself stuck with people that are just downright stupid. You'll often have people that join into a lobby, and don't realize that the teams are unbalanced. It seems they don't know that you have to have two people on either team and they refuse to switch, which holds up the whole lobby. Once in game, these are often the same players that won't listen to you as a partner. Requesting healing items, ammunition, anything you desperately need will go unheard to their ears. You'd think that kind of teamwork would have carried over to them from the real game.
FINAL SAY:
Versus was a fun experience when I was naive and first came into it, but I soon realized the terrible reasons I was losing, paid more attention to it and I very rarely win a match using legitimate fair tactics. With unbalanced gameplay, glitch-ridden combat and far too many things that have been blindly overlooked, unless you have a few friends that play nice this won't be worth your five dollars. Feel free to pass on this. I kind of wish I did. I could have spent my 400 points on something much better. I simply can't enjoy this mode. Unless you're a person who thinks using glitches to win is okay (and if you are you're scum) then don't buy this.
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