Lost in Nightmares

Introduction

I finally played through all of Resident Evil 5. What a mess... but why did I bother? I played bits and pieces of RE5 all the way back in the early 2010s. I remember playing co-op with a friend on the half-days we got during high school finals week. Who needs to study when a new Resident Evil game is out? But all these years later and after all the revivals I've been through with the series as a whole, I finally trudged my way through Resident Evil 5 on my own. Pieces began to fall into place right away, my brain instantly remembered that fetid African village from the intro and as I played, the ridiculous and painful boss fights all came back to haunt me. Visuals like shooting rockets into a volcano, fighting a zombie octopus on the edge on a freighter, the very of-its-time quick-cutting, in and out of slow motion cut scenes all came rushing back. But a lot didn't too, the marshlands, Uroboros, and Jill seemed entirely new. I thought I'd only played bits and pieces back in the day and now I've confirmed it, my friend was definitely playing some without me…

Another Resident Evil title that has evaded me over the years has been Resident Evil itself, the 1996 version, the first of its kind. A couple years ago I played through the original 2 and 3 a couple times but for some reason didn't dive into 1. I remember having it installed and maybe making it into the dining room but then never picking it up again. I think part of the problem, and the elephant in the room, was Resident Evil Remake. While 2 and 3 eventually got remakes, they are truly different games in terms of presentation and content when compared to the originals. The RE1 Remake is literally one of the best remakes ever made and probably a top 5 game for me, all time. So, over the past decade whenever I wanted to tap into the true essence of survival horror, I'd reach for remake not the original.

Now it's 2026 and coming off the wonderful time that was playing through Resident Evil 4 HD project, I still had that Resident Evil itch. The original trilogy had just come out on Steam, enticing me to give it another playthrough, but what sat in my library, still unfinished, was Resident Evil 5. I thought to myself: "it's now or never". It has the same action-horror DNA as 4 and a similar control scheme, so let's see how it goes.

Resident Evil 5

A Bridge Too Far

In 2005 Resident Evil 4 stood out amongst its peers, forging a path forward for campaign-driven, action-horror games. A short 4 years later, Resident Evil 5 quickly fell behind its peers, casting off nearly everything 'Resident Evil' in favor of the stylings of other mainstream titles. Flashy cutscenes and co-op features could not make up for what was lost. RE4 took a giant step towards this precipice, making bold changes to the core structure and feel of a Resident Evil game while still holding onto its survival horror roots. RE4 got away with it. RE5 severed ties with those roots while taking another step and as a result plummeted off the cliff. The release of this mainline entry marks the date where Resident Evil as a franchise lost its way and its identity. Of course, this is all just my opinion.

RE4 already took a massive leap away from the original trilogy's formula, so what did RE5 do differently to earn this criticism? First and foremost, for me, is a collection of interwoven mechanics that are all but lost at this point in the series: inventory management, item boxes, save rooms, the merchant, exploration, and back-tracking. With the longer, more linear campaign structure of RE4, the item boxes and tight inventory constraints were lost but what we got back was the most iconic merchant of all-time. I mean you could be a stranger to this all and you'd still know what I'm referencing. With RE5, there's no item boxes, no merchant, just a menu, a really bland menu. And there's no save rooms or typewriters! It's extra aggravating because save room-esque music plays over that menu sometimes, reminding us of how good we used to have it. RE4 held onto exploration and backtracking a little bit, but it wasn't the same. Now with RE5 there is absolutely none of that and that fact leads into my next downgrade: level design. RE4 had three very iconic levels, they each had different strengths and weaknesses but at the end of the day you remembered the village, castle, and island. RE5 takes a similar linear campaign approach but forgets to create any memorable locations. You get generic African village, bland laboratories, some caves, and I don't know what else. Oh, and they butchered the inventory/status screens of old. Gone is any personality or style, replaced with a transparent 3x3 grid... it's sad, totally adequate, but sad.

Combat

Following in the steps of RE4, RE5 is a combat-focused experience. It takes on the prior's general layout, simply chaining together combat scenario after combat scenario. Unfortunately, the combat feels slightly worse to play and the scenarios are less memorable or innovative. Guns just don't have the same punch anymore; they're all a bit wimpy feeling. The memorable stuff is memorable in a negative way. Lots of turret sections or bastardizations or previous enemy types, how dare they turn lickers into this unrecognizable, mob enemy! There's a good bit of innovation with the melee combat system with more contextual attacks and combos with your partner. And I'd say that is the game's strong suit, being up close and personal with the action, forcing the player to switch weapons and utilize the variety of melee options.

Story

I'm usually not too wrapped up in the stories of Resident Evil games. I like when it's fairly simple, like let's work to escape the city, let's find Chris, etc. That big picture context can then be underpinned by some conspiratorial nonsense that adds flavor. But here in RE5 it's all conspiratorial nonsense all the time. Chris happens to be deployed to a country in Africa that happens to have a weapons dealer there who happens to be associated with a pharmaceutical company who happens to be associated with an old friend Wesker who happens to have an old friend, Jill Valentine, mind-controlled and doing things and this is all happening in this region, I guess. So, the game is really just Chris following on dotted line to the next dotted line and so forth and you're just along for the ride.

I also just hate the style that this game goes for. The cut scenes and the characters are just so obnoxious, check out the motorcycle Majini one above… Fast cuts, overuse of slow-motion, it’s sweaty and grimy but also a sleek and shiny Matrix wannabe. Why is Wesker dodging bullets? Since when are we mind-controlling people by putting a red orb on their chest? It's all really silly and clashes so hard with the grimier parts of the setting and story. If you've seen Black Hawk Down, there's a lot here that apes that tone. Trapped in a city with violent inhabitants, dead soldiers, Humvee sequences etc. But it's hard to criticize the story and plotting because at the end of the day I just enjoyed and praised RE4 and that plot was pretty dumb too. So, whatever, it's all Resident Evil gibberish and I don't really know what I'm talking about. I don't want to search too hard to figure why I don't like it and then turn around five years later and enjoy it… I don't think that will be the case, I really don't like this game, but you never know.

Lost in Nightmares

Another comment you'll often see regarding RE5 is that Lost in Nightmares, a mini side campaign, is the best part of RE5 or what RE5 should've been. I find this so funny, because while I kind of agree, this campaign is such an afterthought. It tugs on nostalgic threads by placing Jill and Chris in another Spencer mansion with eerily similar architecture and thinks that that is enough effort. What a joke. This hour-long stroll includes backtracking, puzzle solving, traps, and original trilogy-esque door transitions! Wow! All in all, it's totally fine, but man, to me, it feels like Capcom developers were so lost at this point.

Verdict

★★☆☆☆

Overall, I'm probably being a little harsh on the game but also I didn't really enjoy it. It's a significantly worse version of Resident Evil 4 in almost every way. Like everyone says, it's probably a lot of fun with a friend in co-op, that's how I originally played it. As a solo experience though, in 2026, I'm not feeling it.

Resident Evil

Eerily Similar

While aesthetically very different from its remake, I was surprised by how structurally similar these two games are. I don't know why, 2002's Resident Evil is the remake after all. Needless to say, jumping into the 1996 original gave me an eerie feeling of familiarity. The gameplay basics of exploring the mansion, solving puzzles, finding key items, and encountering the undead are all there. I was able to blow through most of the game as nearly everything is a stripped down, simplified version of what appears in REmake. Puzzles are more basic and the mansion just has less rooms overall. Also, crimson heads aren't a thing, so after a first pass through the mansion's halls feel particularly vacant. It's cool to experience where all these tried-and-true survival horror game mechanics first coalesced though. And while it wasn't novel for me, I tried to keep my mindset in that realm, realizing that this game is a first of its kind and just enjoying the game for what it was trying to do at that time in history.

Visual Presentation

Commenting on the visuals of a game from 1996 is a strange endeavor. I did not go through the effort to procure period appropriate hardware, like a CRT TV so that I could experience the original vision in glorious 240p, scan lines and all. I opted for the easy route and stuck with my 1440p, 144hz monitor. Now if you blur your eyes and take a couple steps back the pre-rendered 240p backgrounds scaled up to 1440p don't look too bad, but, in my opinion, there's a better option. This is where some modding comes into play. When I did my most recent playthroughs of my 100% legally obtained copies of RE 2 and 3 I used the relatively popular Seamless HD mods. These textures packs upscale the backgrounds and do much more to create quite the seamless, modern experience. Each of the original trilogy entries now has a mod pack, but at the time, I think, 1s wasn't done yet, so maybe that's why I held off at the time. Regardless, it is complete now and that is what I used to make this 1996 game more palatable on my 1440p monitor.

Like I mentioned before, the original trilogy is now purchasable on PC through Steam and GOG. And with those releases resources for players to find the best Resident Evil experience keep on surfacing. Recently I discovered this website, Mulderland, where someone has gone through the effort to create what are essentially fan-made, remaster mod packs. I never knew this was something I needed but wow, what a great idea. For the RE trilogy they put together Classic REbirth, Seamless HD, and many more little fixes and QoL stuff. This was exactly what I was looking and I can confirm everything worked without a hitch. It ran perfectly via Steam, textures were upscaled, and I was able to use my PS5 controller via the Direct Input option within Classic REbirth. But with all that setup-talk out of the way, what did I actually think of the visuals? Ehh, they're ok. Overall, it's just really bland feeling. I have a hunch that at this resolution with the higher res textures, a magnifying glass is put on stuff that was never meant to be seen this way. It's a lot of blank walls, flat lighting, empty corridors, and repeating wallpapers. On one hand you could say it's all very eerie and weird, but for me it was mostly just boring. Some backgrounds are really nice though, check out the one screenshot above. It has unique lighting with the moon and the lamp and a nice number of details on the desk. These touches make it stand out amongst what is mostly drab and naked interiors. For me, Resident Evil as a whole was visually uninteresting but it's hard to "follow up" your own predecessor which happens to be one of the greatest remakes ever made.

Verdict

★★★☆☆

I'm glad I tried the original Resident Evil. This is definitely a situation where which one you played first matters. For some this is probably the definitive version. But for me it's a really cool historical artifact that REmake makes completely obsolete.

Reflections

It's incredible how much the series changed in a relatively short period of time. Resident Evil 3: Nemesis was released in 1999 and in a short ten years later, we got Resident Evil 5. After playing through 5 and being absolutely overwhelmed be the shear amount of silly nonsense that game throws at you, I had this deep desire to return to something simpler. That's where the original Resident Evil came in and boy did it deliver on simpler. The contrast between these two titles is staggering. Seeing Jill fall backwards as she was confronted by a singular zombie seems so quaint after the watching Wesker do his thing in slo-mo for the last hour of 5. Lost in Nightmares cracked me up too as 5 tried to turn back time and be a survival horror game, even if it was just for one hour. It's also interesting how Capcom has handled the modern RE titles post 5 and 6. They've seemed to strike a middle ground. Nothing quite as basic as the original, they had to put a huge goop-monster at the end of 7. And nothing quite as consistently over the top as 5, they put that walking simulator doll house in Village. Regardless, REmake will probably always stand as the pinnacle of survival horror, while 4 might just be as good as the action horror gets. The modern remakes and mainline entries, strike a nice balance pulling the series out of the 5/6 action-slop era, but also haven't established themselves as genre-defining classics. But maybe time will tell a different story, I am due a replay of RE2 remake after all...