Mercenary mode in Resident Evil 5 is a fun mode from previous versions where you try to survive waves of mobs and bosses and try to score as many combos (knockdowns, stomps, kills, etc) to rack up as many points as you can before time runs out.
You get points from mercenary mode just like playing through story mode, and you’re graded on how many mobs you can kill before time runs out. The only catch is that you can’t use the weapons that you’ve collected, each character starts with specific weapons and items, making your character choice very important.
I have compiled some tips to make your progress through mercenary mode a little bit easier:
Use Chris – Chris has the shotgun with 20 shell capacity, need I say more? The shotgun is a deadly weapon in the mercenaries mode, able to hit multiple enemies at once, and able to take out most enemies with one shot within the proper range. The shotgun is great for bosses as well, since it stuns most of them long enough to get in a melee hit, which you can usually keep doing over and over on most bosses. Chris’ Safari outfit in mercenary mode is nice too, since he has two rocket launchers for those hard bosses.
Only use your most powerful weapon – The first thing I do on any level is get rid of my pistol and pistol ammo. This is kind of an exploit, since the game only gives you ammo based on what you and your partner are carrying, so if you drop your pistol and your pistol ammo, you’ll only get the ammo for your primary weapon, which will make things much easier.
Get all of the time bonuses first – The second thing you need to do on any level is get all of the regular time bonuses, killing as much as you can in your path. Get familiar with the level so you can find the quickest route to them. This is much easier in co-op, and what I generally do in co-op is split up the map and find a good place to meet up and get on a good defense once the we have the bonuses.
Use the same character or weapon type in co-op mode – The same rule above applies to co-op mode. If both you and your partner both have the same weapon type and get rid of the secondary weapon, both of you will only get that specific weapons ammo. This is especially powerful when both using Chris’ shotgun. Even if you don’t pick the same character, pick characters with the same weapon types. The unlockable Wesker character for example has the Hydra shotgun, so you could play him with Chris, or the machine gunning Jill with Sheva, etc.
Use the combo bonuses sparingly – The “combo time” bonuses (the bonuses in the chests) give you more points for your combos, so make sure when you get one that you try to keep your combo number as high as possible, as these can make or break your score sometimes.
Try to get 40,000 points on every level – 40,000 points (or 80,000 points in either co-op mode) gets you an A on every level, which will unlock another mercenary character to play with.
Use animation time to your benefit – For example, when you’re climbing a ladder you can open your inventory and be ready to use an item right as soon as you hit the top. This can be done while reloading, jumping down, climbing, etc. You can’t actually perform the action until the animation is done, but this can save you valuable seconds, and you’ll soon find out how important those seconds can be in the middle of a nasty swarm of mobs, especially when trying to heal.
Flashbangs are useless? Not quite – The flashbangs might seem useless, but they actually kill several enemies instantly. Flashbangs kill the guys that transform into bigger infected, like the wormheads, the armored infected (the ones that turn into flower looking creatures), and the hornets that fly around after you kill their body.
