Almost a year after its release, Capcom has released a DLC mission featuring series-veterans Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine, called 'Lost in Nightmares'. It tells the story behind the Resi 5 cutscene of Chris and Jill fighting seemingly indestructible Resi bad guy Albert Wesker, which ended with Wesker being defenestrated by Jill. Lost in Nightmares provides the back-story to that scene, explaining what Jill, Chris and Wesker were doing at the mansion.
As I'd thought when I saw the trailer, this is very much a throwback to the early games in the series, particularly the genre-defining original game. Although it is not the same mansion as in the original game, it is owned by the Spencers and was clearly designed by the same architect - many of the locations (and even puzzles) are near-identical to the Spencer Mansion/Arklay Research Facility from the first Resi. I'm not necessarily against introspective fan-service like this if well-executed but I'd sooner developers worked on new ideas for their existing franchises. As well as the location being a throwback, the same can be said of the gameplay. There's a lot of traipsing around the mansion, looking for 'item A' to place in 'slot B' and I think gameplay conventions have moved on from this in the 14 years since the first game was released.
My main issue with Lost in Nightmares's style of gameplay is that it doesn't really suit Resi 5 co-op. The last two Resi games have moved away from the constraints of traditional survival horror and are, rather, action adventure games with a horror theme. Suspense was built in the early games by having only intermittent monster attacks in between the puzzling but leading the player to always think that an attack was imminent as they crept through the corridors. Over the years Resi has given me some great swear-out-loud frights by using this mechanic.
However, the more action-oriented later games don't lend themselves to this style of gaming, in particular the central co-op dynamic of Resi 5. I played Lost in Nightmares, as I'd played Resi 5, with my usual online co-op buddy. It is difficult to build the old-school Resi suspense when you are having an outside-the-game conversation, joking about the location, the not-as-bad-as-it-used-to-be-but-still-not-great voice acting and reading the (many) documents scattered about the mansion using funny accents. That dynamic works fine when you're being bombarded with the undead (witness Left 4 Dead); less so when you're spending 5 minutes between enemy encounters.
In all, it took a couple of hours for us to play through the scenario (but that was more due to our dicking around - it shouldn't take that long), which I think is reasonable value for money (it works out at about £4 in MS money), even if the gameplay is fundamentally flawed.
In addition to the extra slice of cheesy Resi 5 story, the Mercenaries score-attack mode is boosted by the return of Resi comedy relief (well, I think he's funny) beardy Barry Burton and Resi 5's Excelle Gionne (in 'practical' evening dress and heels). Those two are available from the start and an 'A' ranking (apparently) unlocks a few others, including, if that floats your boat, Chris in a 'Tom of Finland' style costume (now that IS scary).
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