Showdown 1

By far the easiest Showdown, if you know what to do. Weapons and ammo abound…healing items, not so much. Therefore, the most important thing is to avoid taking damage as soon as possible. It’s easy on the first three battles, but it gets harder when fighting Thanatos.

Stage 1: G-Mutant

Lots of powerful weapons lay around: a grenade launcher, rocket launcher, assault rifle and magnum revolver are available to you. I advise you to save the magnum for stage 5. The shotgun will also be useful later (G-mutant is resistant to it.) There are also 5 recovery pills, a very important pickup given the lack of healing items in this challenge.

The G-Mutant is weak to Kevin’s .45 auto, but he will have difficulty with potshots due to the little G-creatures. David can make quick work of the mutant by making Molotov cocktails with his lighter and two newspaper + bottle pickups.

Keep in mind the G-creatures do no damage at all if you shake them off fast enough; just wiggle the stick and they will go away. The biggest problem is avoiding the G-Mutant’s slap attack, since the G-creatures may stun you enough so you can’t escape the attack.

Stage 2: Giant leech

There’s a knife, acid rounds, and magnum revolver bullets laying around.

It is very important that you don’t get hit by the leech’s spit attack, since unlike File #1, it will put you on Poison. Instead, it’s better to use the rocket launcher and kill the leech in one hit.

Stage 3: Regis licker

The most immediate danger are the two lickers lingering around. Their tongue slap and slash attacks are very fast, and the siren doesn’t work in File #2. So, deal with them as soon as possible, preferably with the shotgun; two shots each will stun them for a long time.

Regis licker is weak to electricity, so Alyssa and David will have an easy time. Remember she has invincibility frames when performing her tongue flail attack.

Stage 4: Thanatos I

This is the only battle in Showdown 1 where you can actually get instakilled. Be very careful when Thanatos starts “charging” his claw, that means he’s preparing his IK attack.

Feel free to use your heavy artillery, particularly the grenade launcher. Try to save your magnum rounds for the next stage, though.

Stage 5: Thanatos II

Thanatos loses his IK attack, instead, he becomes a lot harder to hit. Try to shoot at his weak spot: fortunately, characters will aim at it automatically in File #2, making this fight a lot less annoying.

Thanatos is 5x weak to knives, and particularly weak to George’s capsule shooter loaded with AV pills. Be careful if choosing the latter strategy, though: it’s very hard to aim the capsule shooter at his chest.

Your best bet is unleashing all 14 magnum rounds as soon as he’s done with his landing animation, as he’s most vulnerable there. He will be down in no time.