OVERVIEW: Dino Crisis

A young scientists has been researching on a promising new form of Clean Energy, before he could make an extraordinary discovery the government decides to discontinue his funds. In a last ditch effort to prove everyone wrong, he did one last experiment. The research was called The Third Energy. After a critical error the lab exploded killing Dr. Kirk. Or so they thought. Years later there had been reports that Dr. Kirk is very much alive and is now at an secret lab in the middle of an island, continuing his research. Now a group of Elite Special Agents has to go in and extract him.

Dino Crisis was released for the Playstation in 1999. Created by Shinji Mikami, the creator of the Resident Evil series, Dino Crisis took everything about Resident Evil had and just replaced Zombies with Dinosaurs. Everything in this game is pure Resident Evil. The controls. The camera. The horror. In Resident Evil the zombies are slow and they would just shamble along, easy to run past. Their are a few monsters that are fast but, at least of my remembrance of the classic games, it was not much. In Dino Crisis the Dinosaurs are faster and smarter. They can whip their tail to knock you down. Then they would jump up top and try to kill you. It's much harder to run away from a Raptor than a zombie. Ammo is limited and it takes more ammo to kill one dinosaur than to one zombie.

Regina and Jill Valentine
should be in a game together

 I OWN AN ISLAND

The team that is brought to the island to retrieve Dr. Kirk is a small cast of characters. Cooper, Rick, Game, and the character you will play as, Regina. Cooper is a field expert, Rick is tech support, Gale is team leader, and Regina is the weapon specialist. When they arrive Cooper is missing and instead of waiting for him they head to the lab. Once they arrive they see that the place is empty. As Rick heads to the control room, Gale and Regina scouts the area. Upon searching they see a body on which it is ripped to shreds. Gale and Regina decides to split up and she finds the first puzzle.

Puzzles in this game is varied, but all have the same pattern. Some is simple and some not so simple. The easiest one is the first few. Line colors here, black out the letters there. As time goes on it becomes harder and much more bigger. The Key card Puzzles are the hardest of the game. It requires you to write down the letters and crack a code. It's simple enough and it does get longer. Taking notes is a big part of this game. If someone that never played Dino Crisis before will think you were just doodling. If someone that has played Dino Crisis knew what it was. Taking notes in games is downright gone now. The other lost ability was getting lost. Sure, you can get lost in a new game, but before you release what to do next a arrow will point to your next location. It something that I actually missed. It was rewarding to find that hidden room or key card that continues the game.

THAT DON'T LOOK VERY SCARY

After solving the first puzzle, you come face to face with the first dinosaur, the Velociraptor. The Velociraptor just looks at you and when it's about to attack running down the hall can be both frustrating and thrilling. Because it's got the same controls from Resident Evil it's kind of hard to run in a straight line. You keep, or at least I kept, bumping into walls. If you do manage to run straight with the raptor right behind you, it's thrilling and nerve racking.

You are pretty much fucked

When you leave the area you will come upon a loading screen just like in Resident Evil. However, unlike Resident Evil the raptor can jump clean over the fence causing you to run again. Simply leaving the room won't help you. If you happen to be inside they will just burst through. Sometimes a dinosaur will just jump out of nowhere and they will attack you. In order to escape the Danger Zone (song in your head now) you would need to push all the buttons as fast as you can, kind of like quick time events before that became a mainstay. If the dinosaur shoves you you, you can lose your weapon and you would need to pick up it up again. There's no quick select, you you would need to go to the menu, get your weapon, load up any ammo you have, and hope for the best. Where in Resident Evil Stop, Aim, and Shoot is fine, in Dino Crisis it's not. The dinosaurs are much to fast for that. I can get the technology at the time was limited, but if they ever bring back Dino Crisis, the Stop, Aim, Shoot aspect of the game has to go. It just does not fit in the world of Dino Crisis.

WHERE DID YOU GET THAT?

Another thing that is like Resident Evil is the inventory. You can only hold so much. Each item has a limit and that limit is small, depending on the difficulty. In order to store each stuff there is emergency boxes. There are three types of boxes. Red, Yellow, and Green. Red for Ammo, Green for health, and yellow for a both. There is a catch though, you would need emergency plugs. Emergency plugs allows you to open a box and take what you need to that particular color. The upside to it is that when it becomes open, it stays open. Another downside is that they are more rare than ammo and health. Like everything else, the emergency plugs also has a limit to what to carry.

I did jump at the scene the first time through

THEY'RE MOVING IN HERDS.

Besides Raptors, there is a Tyrannosaurus Rex, Compsognathus (or Compys), Therizinosaurus, and Pterodactyls. All the dinosaurs will kill you and they each have a way to avoid and kill them. It's beset to keep a look out and be careful because you you may never know what might attack.

Dino Crisis is just Resident Evil and Jurassic Park in a blender. There is a lot to like and a lot to hate. Capcom also released two sequels. Dino Crisis 3 was so bad that we have never heard from another game again. In the copy that I have it comes with a bonus disk, The Resident Evil 3 demo. Not only is it better than Dino Crisis it controls better despite the fact that it's the same classic Resident Evil controls.