The battle between the used games market and game publishers heats up a few more degrees courtesy of Capcom.
In Resident Evil: The Mercenaries for 3DS, there will only be one save slot that–if I’m understanding the GameStooge article correctly–can’t be deleted or reset. This apparently means that if I bought the game new, unlocked everything and traded it in, whoever bought the game used would be stuck with my game save. They won’t be able to experience the game themselves. If RE: Mercenaries is anything like the Mercenaries mode from Resident Evil 5, a big chunk of the fun in that mode was unlocking additional characters, skins, and levels yourself. Capcom by pulling this stunt has effectively made the game less fun (in my opinion) if you buy it used.
Of course Capcom claims no nefarious intent with this save method. Capcom Community rep Shawn Baxter stated: “RE Mercs was treated like an arcade fighting game. You unlock characters, levels, etc and they just stay unlocked as they would in an arcade machine.” (See his entire statement on the GameStooge article).
I’m sorry, but I’m calling shenanigans on this. I never played a fighting game at the arcade where every character in the game wasn’t available. Unless I’m mistaken in the arcade version of Tekken 6, and the arcade version of Super Streetfighter 4 certain characters were on timed unlock, meaning that after a certain amount of time passed, a new character becomes available. Its mostly a means to keep folks hyped about a game; primarily the console release, since traditional arcades are all but dead here in the States.
I’ve always said–If companies want to slow down the used market, they should make better games, and offer better deals. Places like Kmart, Amazon, and Best Buy offer deals on some games that make it almost a waste to wait for a title to come out used. They don’t have to resort to removing the fun out of a game if you buy it used. If Capcom and other publishers keep this silliness up, they might find their games collecting dust on the shelves–new and used.
