To very little fanfare, and seemingly low-interest from the rest of the video-game loving internet, the first of two mini side-missions for Resident Evil 5, Lost in Nightmares, broke this past week. This is how I spent my Saturday evening, a little under the weather, sick with Bulldykefluenza. And within two hours, I had beaten the mission once on Normal difficulty, and once on Veteran difficulty. This morning, I tackled the game on the subsequent unlocked Professional difficulty, thus resuming my self-proclamation as an elite Resident Evil 0wner.
Overall, it was fresh and new, and no doubt packaged beautifully, but let’s be straight here – it was too damn short. Start to finish in the blink of an eye. But I can’t balk that much; despite the fact that I did have to pay to download it, it reunites me with my beloved Jill Valentine.
When it comes to fictional video game women, Jill Valentine has always been my absolute favorite of them all. Don’t ever believe me if I ever proclaim otherwise, and feel free to call me out on it, if I ever declare that I love someone else, because then I’ll certainly be like “oh yeah, Jill, how I could I forget Jill?”
Jill Valentine was never designed to be the crazy sex-pot, obviously catered, fan-service character.* She was designed with substance and character, but still with a rockin’ polygon body anyway. Her character is tough, self-sufficient, and the most attractive aspect, intelligent. She can pick locks and play the classics on the piano in the same adept way she could pop a slug in between the eyes of a zombie with a Beretta.
*I’m wasn’t a fan of RE3 Jill’s outfit, nor was I that thrilled with Samus-catsuit-Jill in the main RE5 storyline
But back to the mission itself, it was short. As mentioned above, I finished it twice in the span of two hours, and I’m pretty sure that once I get a full grasp of things, I can cut completion time down to somewhere within the neighborhood of 35 minutes. There are very few adversaries in this mission, and there is a really scant weapon selection. In fact, the most difficult part of the game actually has you not actually using any weapons, which is why it’s the most difficult part of the game.
It felt more like a replay of the first Resident Evil, and was meant to make you think of it often, based on all the reminiscent dialogue between Jill and Chris throughout the mansion wandering, and they even went as far as to recycle many of the same traps, and even floor plan of the original Resident Evil mansion. And if that wasn’t enough, they went for broke, when you stumble upon a journal entry that is concluded with the unforgettable quote “itchy… tasty“.
Overall, I was kind of “eh” with the content as a whole. But it was a good diversion for a few hours, and I suppose a few hours worth of amusement is worth the $6 equivalent of Microsoft points necessary to purchase the expansion. The sad thing is that I don’t think it was quite enough to completely tear me away from Mass Effect, and I can already see myself going back to that fairly sooner than later. I guess I just wanted more Jill Valentine in the end.
