At last a proper Resident Evil level with all the puzzely goodness and cranks all you old school survival horror fans could shake a shield shaped emblem at.
Lost in Nightmares takes place during the main story of Resident Evil 5, more specifically during the cut scene where you find out how Jill supposedly died at the hands of Albert Wesker. You begin at the doors to a very familiar looking mansion setting on a mission to find the owner of the Umbrella Corporation and question him on the events that had taken place throughout the original series. This of course is not an uneventful jaunt to take an old man into custody however as the house is littered with traps and puzzles. The only thing missing is an abundance of enemies to fight, but don’t let this deter you as the atmosphere and setting of the level are enough to give you a sense of fear about what could be around the next corner.
When the enemies do appear it is of a specific type which the game dubs the guardian of insanity, personally I call it the big mutant reaper with an anchor guy, but that is neither here nor there. Throughout the first section you seem to find an abundance of bullets for your meagre weapons and this may make you feel safe but in fact you can empty several clips into these G-Virus created monstrosities and they seem to just shrug it off. There are weak points but I won’t spoil it for you.
The puzzles as mentioned are back and just as annoying as ever with a lot of backtracking and shambling around as you try and locate a section of a puzzle that you should have picked up at the start. This isn’t a bad thing as I feel it is a part of the survival horror series that has been lacking in the recent editions of the Resident Evil franchise.
Along with the new addition to the story there is also a new mercenaries section and new costumes to unlock which makes this a very complete DLC pack, in fact Capcom for once have shown the competitors how it is done. Don’t rush out content so that you can maximise on profit by giving out levels that should have been available on release.
I can’t recommend this enough to fans of the series, it has everything you could want and just a little bit more and the lack of enemies doesn’t detract from the game play but rather enhances it. I honestly can’t wait to see what they do with the next DLC that should be out next month. If they keep the standards this high then I think making a profit will be no problem even at the low price of 400MS points.
One thing I will say is that if you don’t have Resident Evil 5 yet then if you can wait for just a little while the gold edition of the game will be available with all of the content included in the game, but if you have it already then Lost in Nightmares will freshen the franchise all over again for you.
VideogameUK verdict: 7.5/10
