A gripe I had about not working was the simple fact that my weekends had lost meaning, since they were just like every other day in which I wasn’t working. This past week, I finagled out four solid working days, and a good bit of hours to alleviate the grind, so suffice to say, my weekend had some meaning again, especially since I’m slated to work the next day or two starting tomorrow. So what do I do all weekend? Aside from watching Alice in Wonderland, pretty much absolutely nothing, but play XBOX all weekend long. But most importantly, it was going through the second of the two Resident Evil 5 downloadable missions, Desperate Escape. And for once, we have a game that lives up to its title.
Unlike Lost in Nightmares this game takes place in the RE5 present, basically what is going on with my virtual squeeze, Jill Valentine, after she is freed from Wesker’s brainwashing. She teams up with Josh Stone, another reoccurring character from the game that the player never really comprehends how he gets from point A to B to C, and so on, until this. And aside from a few melee attacks, the game plays just like Chris/Sheva and Chris/Jill. And most importantly, after using Josh as a springboard, Jill busts out with the statuesque pose that I admire.
But anyway, the title of the sub-quest is very much accurate – by the time you get to the end, it’s been such a difficult fight, that the escape most certainly feels an air of desperation. The computer is merciless at sending hordes of Majini after you, and the clock doesn’t seem like it’s moving when the shit begins to get real. Whereas I was able to get an easy-run of Lost in Nightmares down to about 24 minutes, Desperate Escape takes me about an hour so far. LiN has quite literally up to nine actual defeat-able adversaries, and with DE, my highest count has been like 209. The enemies just seem to come forever, and it’s on a whole other world of challenging than LiN could possibly imagine to be.
I like to get all the XBOX achievements of games I like, and it took me no time at all to get the five bonus achievements from the first download package. However, with DE, I’m stuck at 4/5 accomplished. Simply put, the fifth achievement, of beating the mission on Professional, the highest difficulty, is currently way out of my grasp. I like to think I”m a pretty good RE5 player, and it has little to do with my skills in this instance; it’s the AI of the other player, in my case it’s Josh, since I choose Jill, that anchors the difficulty to the point of near impossibility. The AI is very loose with ammo consumption and will gladly empty a clip into a clearly identifiable bullet-proof vested adversary for zero damage. Not to mention their reaction time is borderline handicapped, and has a tendency to eat a blow before realizing that I’m on the other side of the moon, but in Professional mode, one blow is pretty much all it takes to kill the player.
In short, Desperate Escape is hard as shit. I can’t even fathom beating it in Professional, because it’s obvious that I’ll need the assistance of another human being, preferably someone of comparable talent as me to not job the KiSS Demon to Norman Smiley, but the sad thing is, I don’t know anyone who really wants to play RE5 anymore. Maybe I’ll have to relegate myself to doing what most others are doing, going on to message boards, and asking people for help, for exactly the same reasons I’ve listed.
