Physical/Melee Attacks¶

Melee attacks once again make a prominent return to the Resident Evil series. You could even say they are more important than ever, given the brand-new stamina feature. Like past games, you can do a melee attack at any time by pressing the right trigger (Xbox360, PS3), but doing so on a staggered enemy is key!

Stagger Types¶

To help you understand the tables below, it is important to note when an enemy is staggered and what it means. To put it simply, an enemy is staggered when they are reeling from your attacks. There are different types of enemy stagger as well, and not every melee option needs a stagger.

Setting up staggers will become second nature to you with practice. For light staggers, you can often just perform a quick shot or some quick manual shooting before closing in. For heavy staggers, the flash grenade is always an easy option, but so are regular (double) physical attacks. Head staggers are fairly self-explanatory and of course require some amount of skill. And last but not least you will undoubtedly come across plenty of grounded enemies as you play the game.

Environmental Context¶

Some melee attacks are special depending on where you are. For example, some light stagger melee attacks will, depending where you are, turn into a different melee attack. For example, if you are standing near a railing, Leon will likely slam a foe’s head into the railing instead of doing his normal melee attack. Pretty cool, huh?

On that note, you should also know that certain attacks change depending on what weapon you have equipped at the time. For example, if you use Leon’s knife you will get different melee attacks compared to when you are using his gun.

And finally, if you can get behind an enemy without him knowing you are there, you can perform a free heavy stagger melee attack. Good incentive to be sneaky, if you can!

Countering¶

There are also counter attacks in the game as well. To do these, you must be near an enemy who is about to attack you. The split second before you are hit, the counter icon will pop up, giving you little time to counter so be ready to hit the melee button!

Ally Save¶

There are times when your ally may be grabbed by an enemy and you have a chance to help them. Naturally shooting their assailant will do the trick, but you can also get close to them and press the circle button (PS3 players) or the ‘B’ button (XBOX360 players) to do a melee attack to free them. Note that these ally save melee attacks do not cost any stamina to perform.

Jake's Hand-to-Hand¶

JAKE is a special case in the melee department. He actually has a separate melee system when you select his Hand-To-Hand “weapon”.

Once you do, you have a completely new melee system in front of you. Check out your Hand-To-Hand moves below:

• Your basic hand to hand attack is done while holding the left trigger like any other weapon and using the fire button. This results in a two-hit combo followed by a powerful elbow. This will often stagger or down any regular foe. This move uses no stamina.
• You can charge up your first melee attack and use it from a distance. Simply hold the left trigger down and then hold the right trigger. With an enemy in view, a small red icon will fill up above them. Let go of the right trigger to have Jake charge them and do a powerful open-palm punch.
• After your chest punch, you can press the melee button again to do a variety of moves, including more punches, a leg-sweep and a finishing ground blow. It’s important to note that the first chest punch will likely send an opponent flying, meaning that further moves should be reserved for groups of enemies. It’s very easy to take out multiple foes with these moves, but it uses up a lot of stamina.
• While doing a charged-up combo, you can additionally evade if you wish by pressing a direction and the dodge button. After evading, you can continue the combo.
• If you charge up against a grounded foe, Jake will perform a backflip-kick.
• You can additionally do a quick shot with your hand to hand as well where Jake will get down low and do an open-palm uppercut, often grounding a foe afterwards. Note that you can hold the left trigger after doing this and the proceed to do additional charged melee moves afterwards! This little goodie lets you avoid sending an enemy flying with a chest strike, if you wish.