Capcom managed quite the paradoxical feat when designing the past two main entries in the Resident Evil franchise: It built the games' combat on fundamentally flawed ideas without making them fundamentally flawed. While other third-person shooters prioritized smooth, streamlined action, Resident Evil 4 and 5 deliberately hobbled the player's adroitness, and made holding off the oncoming zombie (or Ganados, or Majini) hordes a cumbersome chore. And it worked.

By severely limiting the player's locomotion, those core Resident Evil titles maintained the delicate balance between power and vulnerability -- a necessity for a great horror title. There was method in your sluggishness, as the player was forced to consider both short-term and long-term survival with every enemy encounter. Each indolent battle had context in a much, much larger campaign, and for that very reason, Capcom made a bad thing good.

Unfortunately, every last shred of that context has been stripped away from Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D.