Shoot up the bad blood.
Maybe Piers is fed up with Chris Redfield's whiny alpha male attitude. Maybe Helena is sick of Leon's goody-two-shoes personality. Maybe Jake can't stand another annoying word out from Sherry's mouth. There's so much tension in the workplace that maybe the best way to vent all of those unspoken frustrations is by killing each other! Well, at least that's what Capcom would say with their upcoming multiplayer modes for DLC.
This expansion comes with three modes—Survivors, Predator, and Onslaught—with each of them based on surviving the longest while scoring the most points. Being the most like a traditional Team Deathmatch mode, Survivors pits up to six players against each other on an extensively wide map, one of which that I tested had a tunnel system, intersection of roads, and rooftops with turrets. Scoring hits on and killing an opponent both award a bunch of points of course, but it's not over when someone dies. Whenever players die, they come back as an enemy who, if they happen to kill an unturned player, can come back to life. Revenge is sweet, yes?
Predator, my favorite mode, has a combination of cooperative and multiplayer elements. Up to six players take two-minute turns being the gargantuan Ustanak, who chases Jake and Sherry during their playthrough. For a hulking frankenstein, Ustanak is actually quick on his feet and swipe his giant claw at players with ease. Like in Survivors mode, hitting and killing other players as Ustanak or hitting Ustanak as a regular human player scores points. But saving any human players that fall also earns a healthy amount of points as well, so sometimes the best strategy is to back off, shoot the Ustanak from afar, and revive any poor fools that get within the Ustanak's grasp.
The most interesting mode by far, Onslaught, sounds simple at first. Capcom has taken a risk by using this to replace the previously announced Siege Mode, but the result is quite intriguing. It's a one-on-one battle against another opponent, where both of you individually play on mirrored mode in what is essentially horde mode. Your task is to survive and kill as many enemies as possible, hopefully by chaining combos together. Inspired perhaps by Super Puzzle Fighter, however high your combo counter reaches becomes the number of enemies that are transferred over to your opponent's field. That creates an opening for a counter-attack, though, since an opponent has more fodder to send over to you as well, with either a well-placed hand grenade or a pistol shot at an incendiary barrel.
This multiplayer mode pack releases for December 18 exclusively on Xbox 360 (not sure if this is a timed exclusive) for $9, which each mode costing $4 a la carte. An free title update on December 17 will introduce the ability to change the camera to a wider angle and will add the No Hope Left difficulty option. Ada Wong's campaign will also be made available at the very start of the game.
