Lost in Nightmares
By Chris Cesarano
Buying the Resident Evil 5: Lost in Nightmares downloadable content is a lot like, um… Let’s see, what kind of comparison can I make on a website that I use as a portfolio piece when applying for jobs?
Paying for Lost in Nightmares is a lot like paying for pornography. At first it seems like a great deal, but by time you’re finished you aren’t really sure if you wasted your money or not. In fact, you aren’t even sure if you wasted your time or not. The only difference is you’re pretty much done with a porno ten minutes in, making it all the more questionable. The Lost in Nightmares content will at least last you the entire time, even if the acting isn’t as good as whatever porn you were watching beforehand.
Anyway, the initial run of Lost in Nightmares is decent enough, but I can’t help but wonder if it was a waste of five dollars or not. Five bucks may not sound like a lot, but consider that said amount of money could buy five whole McDoubles. Then again, that would be a lot like paying for pornography as well.
Man, it’s easy to waste five dollars.
Lost in Nightmares is one big attempt to please fans of the early franchise. I don’t mean to say this because it’s in a mansion, I mean to say this because it’s true. You fight like four or five enemies directly, all the same guy, and then have to run away from three or four while setting traps to kill them. Then you fight Wesker.
The emphasis on puzzle solving isn’t a bad thing, but once you’ve played through once you pretty much get the pattern. What may have taken twenty or so minutes before can now be completed in five. There is a door where Chris says “Jill should be able to pick this lock”. Oh, I get it, because she’s the “master of unlocking”. That’s clever. When a spike trap was about to descend on her I was expecting someone to make a “Jill sandwich” quip. I’m kind of disappointed they didn’t include one, which goes right back to being disappointed in what would have been a disappointment. It’s Borderlands all over again.
Those are all just small little nods, though. I would have been fine if that was the furthest it had gone. However, every time you open the door the game has to enter a first person view, proceed on through and then pull back once you’ve entered the room. It is an attempt to imitate the old style of the first game, which was done because the Playstation was a crappy piece of hardware that had to load all that new data into memory. There’s no reason to do it here and is actually incredibly jarring.
To further their attempts at referencing themselves, Capcom includes the exact same “itchy-tasty” diary from the first. Yes, it was an incredibly awesome find in the first game. It’s not an awesome find in a completely different location where it doesn’t belong. Especially since there’s no zombie bursting out of the closet after you’ve read it.
Oh, and remember, there’s a hidden easter egg to change the camera angle to be set like in the first game. I shit you not. Seriously, I love the first game as well, but that camera and control scheme was not its strong suit. Over the shoulder is a much better camera.
Don’t get me wrong, Lost in Nightmares is certainly fun, but it’s no mind-bending puzzle and it isn’t an exact replica of the first mansion. Your first playthrough will take roughly an hour, but once you know what to do I’d say even half an hour may be a generous estimate.
So did I get my five bucks worth? I dunno. It’s a lot less glitched than Left 4 Dead’s Crash Course campaign, and feels like some actual effort went into it. I mean, there’s a brand new enemy! All one of him! It also has two new characters for Mercenaries, though I wonder why anyone would even want to play as Excella. At best this just makes for a nice additional prelude chapter for any time you plan on replaying the game. Which, of course, has some questions on its own. Do you really want to play through Resident Evil 5 again? Are you sure you want to deal with all of those Quick Time Events? Wouldn’t it be better just to play Resident Evil 4 again on the Wii?
In the end, $5 isn’t a bad price to be asking for in comparison to most other DLC prices. However, I can’t help but feel that it would have been nicer if there were more to it than a weak attempt to please all the fans that bitch about “how much better” the old ones were. As a result the campaign is actually really short, and aside from a few big baddies the only real fight is one with Wesker. And really, who wants to fight that prick any more than you already have to?
P.S. Jill Valentine has a nice ass for a fake chick.
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