Resident Evil 5 Lost in Nightmares + Mercenaries Reunion DLC Review *some spoilers*

So, the DLC was bout $5. Based on the trailers, I was really excited for it. There were some crazy monsters with these quad-spear things and they reminded me of Lisa Trevor, because they were hunched over and pretty much had no faces.

So I get the DLC (courtesy of my boytoy) and we play it. Nostalgia ahoy, baby! Jill still makes good use of her lock-picking mastery. The mansion had the creepy factor that the game lacked, which I loved. And did I mention the nostalgia? They had some obvious throw-backs to the Remake and there were even subtle ones. It was so cute and made me flail like a deranged fangirl. Internally, though. I didn’t want to scare the boy on the other headset.

Of course, everything has its flaws. For starters, it was short. Yeah, I know. Five measly dollars. But based on the trailers, I expected it to be a bit more action packed. Also, there were 6 of those Lisa Trevor things. They really weren’t difficult to fight at all. I kind of expected a twist or some … crazy way to have to defeat them. All you had to do was shoot their humps, when they went down, use a physical attack, lather, rinse, repeat. They also gave you TOO much ammo for these levels. That kind of detracted from the survival horror aspect quite a bit. There were also maybe FIVE zombies the entire level and they just writhed on the floor like balding, malnourished hobos. One shot to the head and they were dead. Hell, if you wanted to save that bullet, just knife the fuckers. A few jumped up at you from the water, so if you’re easily scared, I just ruined that for you. I think they were just thrown in to somewhat appease the zombie fetishists.

The puzzles contained some throwbacks to the Remake, Resident Evil 4 and 5. You needed a partner for a few things, you played Moonlight Sonata again and instead of a cement block slowly creaking down, you had spikes. Booya, free acupuncture, courtesy of Ozwell E. Spencer, bitches! But, I felt they were too linear. They didn’t really have you guessing or thinking, “Oh shit! What do I do?!” or “I wonder where this goes…”

I also want to know who at Capcom has a crank fetish. Seriously. For all the cranking we did in the game, someone must have gotten off from it somewhere in the world.

We found the dialogue to be slightly different in the varying difficulties. Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe we just weren’t paying enough attention the first time around.

All in all, it was fun. It had the creep factor the RE5 originally forgot to include. I loved how they made subtle and obvious allusions to previous installments. I enjoyed Chris and Jill reminiscing back to the Raccoon City incident. It was fun to play, even if it was short. If I had to grade it, I’d give it a 6.5 out of 10.

Now, as for Mercenaries Reunion – I love it and I’m disappointed.

I love the new characters and costumes. I’m disappointed that you can’t use the older characters/costumes in it. Personally, if it’s really a reunion, Excella and Sheva don’t belong in there. Jill and Wesker do.

But I LOVE how the Majini just rush at you. Seriously, they come in swarms, it’s insane. These Mercenaries levels are definitely more action packed than the originals were. They also moved some of the time thingies around and the enemies are pretty much unpredictable and faster.

Mad Max Chris is a pretty well rounded character. You just need to be careful with his Hydra, he’s more likely to pop the heads off and get the parasite sticking out.

Folklore Sheva isn’t only hot, but she’s actually pretty well rounded. She also starts with 5 golden eggs, which I thought was a cute touch. She has a magnum, a shotgun and … I forgot the other weapon. And I used that more than I used the shotgun and magnum put together. Some sort of machine gun.

Barry isn’t exactly my favorite. He really has nothing for crowd control. He isn’t bad, he has some powerful weapons, but a handgun, a magnum and a sniper rifle aren’t exactly handy when you have swarms coming from all sides.

Excella is probably THE MOST well-rounded character. She has the three burst handgun, which is actually quite powerful. She has a grenade launcher with 12 flash rounds, which is perfect when you’re being swarmed. Switch to that real quick, flash them (pun intended), kick the shit out of a few and run. Then turn around and mow them bitches down with your AK.

Personally, I think if Capcom’s smart, they’ll add more maps to the Mercenaries and make all characters available/unlockable with it. INCLUDING HUNK, LEON, CLAIRE, STEVE, ADA and who else am I forgetting? But seriously. How fucking AWESOME would that be? That’s a diehard fan’s wet dream. Total fap material right there. BRB guys, I’m going to finish this review later. I have some … things to attend to.

~ by voluptuousornamentation on 2010.02.19.