Resident Evil 5 Gold Edition (Headbutts and evening gowns)

The Resident Evil franchise has gone through a lot of changes over the years. From it's humble beginnings as an homage to Romero-esque zombie flicks, it's evolved over the years into an shooter wrapped in a zombie-esque skin. (Try not to visualize that last sentence, it's kinda gross.) For those of you who long for the good old days, Resident Evil 5 Gold Edition returns to its roots. Well, sort of.

Gold Edition consists of all the contents of the original game along with two new missions, Lost in Nightmares and Desperate Escape, as well as two additional Mercenaries modes,Versus and Mercenaries Reunion. Since I already reviewed the original game when it was first released, I won't rehash any of that again, instead I'll point to my original review. Suffice it to say that nothing in the original game has been changed (for better or worse depending on who you ask).

If you've played the original Resident Evil game, it's hard to play through Lost in Nightmares without experiencing the strongest sense of deja vu. You control either Chris Redfield or Jill Valentine, the protagonists from the first game, and navigate a mansion that's eerily familiar. Gone are the abundance of weapons, ammo and even enemies you'll find in the main campaign. Instead, Lost in Nightmares harkens back to the series' roots with a focus more on puzzles and surviving stronger but also fewer (really, only a handful of) enemies. This flashback only takes a couple of hours to complete, but because enemy and weapon placement is somewhat random, there is a small replayability factor.

In contrast, Desperate Escape follows closely in Resident Evil 5's footsteps with (relatively) a lot of ammo and (not-so-relatively) a lot of enemies. Your objective this time around is to escape a Tricell facility against unrelenting waves of enemies. To make a zombie movie analogy, if Lost in Nightmares is Night of the Living Dead, then Desperate Escape is Dawn of the Dead, or more accurately, the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead. While this mission also contains some slight variations from playthrough to playthrough, the challenge on the higher difficulties is enough to make the masochist in you come back for more.

The two modes included in the Gold Edition that have the most replayability are the two new Mercenaries modes. The Versus mode pits you against other Resident Evil 5 players with the objective to rack up as many points as you can by either killing the enemies on screen or killing other players, depending on the mode you choose. Mercenaries Reunion is exactly the same as the Mercenaries mode from the standard version of the game with 8 new characters to play with. And for those of you who like to melee enemies into submission, specific team-ups in this mode will unlock alternate melee moves for some of the characters. Have you ever wanted to see Chris Redfield do a faux-dragon punch? Well now's your chance.

In a way, Resident Evil 5 Gold Edition tries to cater to both the fans of the old school survival horror as well as the newer action oriented gameplay. It's still more action than survival horror, but at least the developers are acknowledging the history of the franchise with an eye to the future.

Rating

If you already bought the standard edition and don't want to double dip, luckily Capcom decided to release all the extra content as downloadable content. But if you don't already own the game, 50 bucks for the original game plus all the extra modes is a steal. Even the downloadable content packs are reasonably priced for the amount of gameplay you get. So this one is a definite "buy".