With RE5 already on sale in some release date-breaking stores in Japan, we bloggers only have a very breif period of time to report on the games features like they are "news". So here is what will likely be the last new thing you hear from me about the game; it has the same Mercenaries mode as RE4. 

This is the best thing I've heard about the game in a while. I love RE4's  Mercenaries mode (which is part of why I liked Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop), so to see the mode (and J.J.) make a return puts a big smile on my face. More importantly, the mode appears to feature something I didn't think I'd see in RE5; NO MANDATORY CO-OP! With that, my biggest complaint about the game has essentially been fixed, if not just for this one mode. 

I easily spent more than eighty hours playing RE4 Mercenaries, which is ten times as longer than RE5's reported playtime. The news that the game was so short had me bummed at first, but now that I know it has Mercenaries for sure, I don't care about the campaign's length. I'll put at least another eighty hours into RE5 with this mode alone. 

[via Kotaku]