Lost in Nightmares, Capcom’s first of two new episodes for Resident Evil 5 takes the series back to its survival-horror roots. Along with a crazed, anchor-wielding enemy, the game takes on the look and feel of past titles of the series.
I don’t think I’m alone when I say that it felt like Resident Evil’s “pure horror” roots were ripped out of Resident Evil 5. To be fair, the game was a lot of fun and the series’ dramatic transformation into a more Gears of War-style cooperative action shooter worked for the most part. But as a fan of horror movies and Resident Evil’s survival-horror origins, I felt oddly betrayed by the game’s emphasis on explosions over suspense. When I sat down to play the first of the two new episodes coming soon for Resident Evil 5, titled Lost in Nightmares, Capcom explained that the return to horror in the episode is a direct response to fans’ reactions to RE5’s departure from the genre.
“A lot of fans thought Resident Evil 5 was too much action and not enough survival horror,” admits Capcom’s product marketing manager Matt Dahlgren. “And Lost in Nightmares (the first new episode available) is our response to that. After the original game shipped, we took a lot of fan feedback into account before creating the new episodes. There are two main ways people play Resident Evil: there’s the slow and suspenseful way, which is the more traditional Resident Evil experience, and there’s the more action-packed experience, which was featured in Resident Evil 5.”
My time with Lost in Nightmares kicked off in the middle of the episode, where Jill Valentine and Chris Redfield stormed the sinister-looking mansion of Umbrella CEO Ozwell E. Spencer, a decrepit, but evil old man in a wheelchair. You may remember Spencer and his creepy mansion from Resident Evil 5 where they were shown briefly in a cutscene. It’s here that Jill and Chris have a particularly memorable encounter with Resident Evil antagonist Albert Wesker. Lost in Nightmares will allow you to play that previously non-playable scenario and everything leading up to the fight with Wesker.
Playing as Chris with Jill by my side, we worked our way up the mansion, starting with the cellar, which turned out to be infested with rats, rotting corpses and hunchbacked killers wielding massive anchors. The hunchbacks, the main villains in this scene, proved to be lumbering but extremely powerful enemies that were harder to slay than the chainsaw wielding freaks from Resident Evil 5. The first time he leapt out of the cellar’s shadows, he instantly killed me and my partner with a single devastating blow.
Something that I noticed right away while playing Resident Evil 5: Lost in Nightmares was the overwhelming sense of claustrophobia I got due to the narrow, dimly lit hallways of the mansion’s basement. The cramped nature of the cellar combined with the scarcity of ammunition available convinced me that this episode is definitely more “horror” than RE5 — I genuinely felt like I was running through a haunted house from a cheesy, old horror film. And that’s a good thing. I only got to play ten minutes of Lost in Nightmares, but the full episode will take you about two hours to complete.
Lost in Nightmares will be available for download on February 17, 2010 on Xbox 360 and February 18, 2010 on PS3. Costume packs will also be available at that time, and if you can wait a bit longer you can get Lost in Nightmares plus the second new episode, Desperate Escape, on March 9, 2010 when they’ll be packaged together with the full game for retail in the Resident Evil 5: Gold Edition.