Resident Evil 5: Untold Stories
	Genre: Action Adventure (Survival Horror) Developer: Capcom
Publisher Region Released Capcom NA 03/10/2010 Capcom EU 03/10/2010

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Staff Review

Review by Gary Hartley
June 27, 2010

Those of you who play far enough into Resident Evil 5’s campaign to see the huge pile of bodies stacked up in the middle of Wesker’s cargo boat might wonder where they came from. The corpses were probably lifted from the first wave of infected villagers to assault Jill and Josh in Desperate Escape.

Splintering away from the main plotline, Desperate Escape follows directly after Jill’s rescue by Chris and Sheva, and how she arrives to assist the pair endgame. It contains an approximate headcount of seven billion infected Africans and several open prayers to anyone who’s listening that more ammo will be found soon, and a bigger gun even sooner. Joined early on by BSAA captain, Josh, the pair start to make their way though a semi-constructed HQ. The construction site is open plan, huge, and is littered with sniper spots, searchlights and fixed machinegun emplacements. Within seconds, you’re surrounded by angry infected locals who want to bludgeon you with shovels, pickaxes and evil looking machetes. Within minutes, you’ll find struck-down Manji mutating messily into monstrosities of twisted flesh that act like a carapace. They effortlessly shrug off bullets and threaten to eat you whole. Survive this, and the next wave comes with powered-up Manji lifted from Resident Evil 4. They obscure their faces, and wield chainsaws.

You’ll get at least three of them mixed in with the almost endless supply of the normal enemies, who are still more than capable of caving your head in with a bit of telegraph pole or farming equipment. These long-running battles are intense: you could be fighting back-to-back with your partner for a few minutes only to have to splinter away when a half-naked madman charges at you, chainsaw swinging at your throat. They won’t go down easy. Later, one of you might have to make slow progress through the never-ending throngs while the other takes to the high ground with a sniper rifle and clears machine gun nests in between trying to keep their friend alive. Let up for a second, and the nests can be re-manned, and you could be dealing with a lot of incoming lead. Take your eye off your partner for too long, and they might find themselves flooded by sheer number or assaulted by hidden ogres with mammoth axes.

The two hour plus mission ends with a desperate fire-fight on an isolated platform, giving you sparse cover, whatever ammunition you were able to save after the slog through a small army, and a frantic battle against everything the game can possibly throw at you. Dynamite and Molotov cocktails rain from above, along with flaming crossbow bolts. In between wave after wave of Manji come beret-clad monsters waving mini-guns and wearing metallic backpacks full of ammo They clamber over the barricades you use for cover, kick open the doors you try and shelter behind and give you not a second of rest. When you beat the onslaught -- if you beat the onslaught -- it’s as much a relief as it is a victory. It’s a fantastic numbers game, and those numbers are immeasurably stacked against you, ensuring your trigger finger is always itchy, and your resources worryingly monitored.

The other half of the download, Lost in Nightmares could not be more different.

Lost in Nightmares might as well be a neon middle finger issued to everyone complaining about how far Resident Evil has strayed from its survival horror roots. Set in an isolated mansion belonging to an ex-Umbrella kingpin, the layout will be instantly recognisable to long-time series fans. The front door is eerily similar to the one that Wesker warned you not to open back in 1999, and a dining room very much like the one on display once housed a puddle of gore Barry Burton once openly worried about being “Chris’ blood”. That room under the stairs is still there, minus a storage chest, and that piano still needs playing to advance. There are cranks that need finding (and one-liners about how sick Redfield is of hunting down cranks), crest pieces needed to open things and comments from Valentine about how rusty her unlocking skills have become. Behind it all is a very smug Capcom.

Because by surrounding you with such a familiar setting, they know you think you know what to expect. Long stretches of corridor display lines of windows, illuminated by flashes of lightning. They play on your expectations. They draw this out, keeping you forever on edge because you think you know what’s coming. Any second now, the windows will burst and the zombie dogs will go for your throat. Any second now, the giant snake, Yawn, will slither out of that fireplace. Any second now, the slimy green hunters will clamber across the ceiling and swipe at your scalp. I’m certainly not going to ruin the suspense with any definite answers.

But it will come. And it will take you by complete surprise. No amount of pre-warning will save you from that.

Lost in Nightmares insists on teamwork with your AI or meat partner, and an uncooperative player is a dead player. It’s mercilessly stingy on ammo, downright mean with hardier firearms and it forces you to make every bullet, every grenade, every action, count. One second, you’re battling off death with your meagre resources and then next you’re playing bait. Trapped in a dank sewer, devoid of equipment and luring twisted evil into what you hope will be their demise. Locked in an expansive library with an angry Albert Wesker that seems to know what you’re about to do before you even do it.

Untold Stories, as a whole, is a fantastic package that allows you to experience both sides of Resident Evil 5‘s extremes in their very best light. Whether it be a genuinely effective slice of creeping terror or constant, desperate war against uncountable odds, it delivers. If you care about alternative unlockables, like outfits for Chris and Sheva as well as more playable characters for the extra mode (like the heart-warming inclusion of one Barry Burton) then your current lack of purchase is all the more vexing. Why do you vex me so?

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