Review: Resident Evil 5 "Desperate Escape" DLC Review

Just two weeks after the first Resident Evil 5 DLC pack, "Lost In Nightmares," comes the 2nd DLC pack, "Desperate Escape." Once again we get a chance to revisit the mystery of Kijuju and even get to view it from a different character's perspective. Was it anywhere near as good as the last one? Hit the jump to find out!

Desperate Escape is a completely isolated scenario from Lost In Nightmares. Rather than being a prequel to the RE5 story, it takes place smack dab in the middle of it, directly following Jill's rescue. As Chris leaves Jill behind to complete his mission, she teams up with BSAA West Africa member Josh Stone as they escape from the Tricell facility, which is of course saturated with majini. Along the way Josh and Jill must send an extremely important message to Chris and Sheva and somehow acquire a helicopter. Needless to say, the story is very bare bones here.

Desperate Escape is definitely all about the action.  And high kicks.

Gameplay wise, Desperate Escape is very different from the previous DLC content. While LIN was all about wandering around a creepy atmospheric mansion, DE is about shooting Majini, and you will shoot a lot of them. Right from the beginning the game spawns seemingly unlimited amounts of enemies of various types to stop the duo, and it never lets up. Players are given a wide variety of weapons to find as they make their way through the mission as well as an overabundance of ammo. Of course along the way it will send out some boss type enemies to keep you on your toes, and the scenario ends with a "survive for x amount of minutes" type of predicament.

Moments before busting into a dance routine.

Your appreciation for this DLC will come down to one thing, and one thing alone. If you really enjoyed the combat presented in Resident Evil 5, you will like this DLC. It offers very little in terms of story content, but it does deliver a nonstop flow of baddies for you to put bullets into. There is some very light puzzle solving along the way, but keeping in with the theme of action, they involve rockets. You will see lots of explosions, fire lots of bullets, kill tons of enemies, and be finished in an hour.

At least the character models are pleasant.

While the DLC shouldn't be considered bad, it does feel a bit shallow after the last pack, which was well worth the $5 asking price and more. I almost feel like this pack exists to offset the lack of action and shooting in the first pack, which would explain it's non-existent story and lack of inspiration. This should have been bundled with Lost In Nightmares for about $6 to $9, as you simply aren't going to get much out of this.

MSRP: $5.00
CASRP: $3.00

CouchAthletics.com doesn't rate games with stars or percentages; we tell you what the game is worth to us. We paid for the game just like you will, or won't. We're telling you what we paid, and how much we feel the game is worth.