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Though it has some startling moments and a few fun sections, it's mostly just a mediocre version of a mediocre game.
The game popularized a new genre, which video
game players call "survival horror" and PC game players call
"Alone in the Dark clones." Dino Crisis was one of the many games
that followed the Resident Evil formula to the letter - its main selling point
being that it was from the same designers. Almost a year and a half after its
release on the PlayStation, Dino Crisis has been released for the PC. And
though it has some startling moments and a few fun sections, it's mostly just a
mediocre version of a mediocre game.
The primary difference between Dino Crisis and
Resident Evil is the story. Whereas Resident Evil took its setting and its
story from Night of the Living Dead, Dino Crisis takes its setting and story
from Jurassic Park. You play as Regina, part of a military rescue team sent to
a top secret research facility to investigate an accident. The facility, in
which a new form of energy is being researched, is located on an island.
Something has gone wrong, and the island has been overrun with dinosaurs. In
fact, the plot is so much like Jurassic Park that late in the game, one of your
teammates exclaims, "It's just like that movie!" Your team isn't much
help, needless to say.
Other than the story, the game is identical to
Resident Evil. You run around the research facility while picking up items,
shooting things (dinosaurs, in this case), and solving puzzles. The game is
played from a third-person perspective, and the camera angles change to create
suspense. As in most games that borrow the concept of Alone in the Dark's cinematic
camera angles, much of the suspense in Dino Crisis comes from the fact that you
simply can't get a good look at things that are attacking you. Unfortunately,
the winding, narrow corridors of the facility aggravate this issue and can make
the combat frustrating. You'll be grateful for the few scenes in the game in
which the camera actually trails behind you.
The graphical problems of Dino Crisis are made
worse by the fact that the game does little to take advantage of the superior
PC hardware. It looks like an old PlayStation game. The characters are blocky,
and the backgrounds are pixilated almost beyond recognition at times.
Furthermore, the backgrounds occasionally slightly shake, and textures move
like liquid. This irritating effect is not unlike the jittery animation found
in the cartoon show Dr. Katz: Professional Therapist, and it may make you take
those epilepsy warnings seriously.
Like Resident Evil, the course of Dino Crisis is
basically a series of door puzzles interrupted by the occasional fight scene.
The door puzzles in this case are uniformly easy - when you find the key to
open a new area, it will be very obvious where to go next. And where Resident
Evil would often give you some sort of exciting sequence to break up the
monotony, Dino Crisis doesn't give you much to do other than run around the
facility looking for keys and codes to open new areas. The worst parts are the
crate-pushing puzzles. For some reason, Regina can push a crate only once, and
once it's pushed, it's stuck in its new locale. One crate-oriented maze in the
latter section of the game can actually become a premature end, and the weird
save-game function (you can save only when leaving certain rooms) makes the
game's occasional dead ends all the more frustrating.
The combat isn't much better than the puzzles.
The dinosaurs act exactly like the zombies from Resident Evil, only they're
faster. Shoot them a few times, and they'll fall down. But they might get back
up again! This behavior makes sense in the undead, but it's less creepy with a
big lizard. You'll also notice very few distinct types of dinosaurs. Your
primary opponent is always the same dino, a sort of generic large
lizard-looking thing. And while your first encounter with a Tyrannosaurus will
give you a good start, your second and third probably won't. Besides, you don't
actually need to kill these beasts - you can always just run around until an
escape route opens.
Had Capcom decided to put more effort into a PC
version of Dino Crisis, the game would have been slightly better. It would
certainly look better, and all the standard problems with video-game-to-PC
translations, like the absence of a save-anywhere function, would have been
absent. But it's doubtful that Dino Crisis would have been more fun. The problem
with Dino Crisis is that even though it is an exact replica of Resident Evil,
it lacks the creepy atmosphere that made Resident Evil so popular in spite of
its problems. Like Resident Evil, it has bad voice acting and frustrating
camera angles. Unlike Resident Evil, it isn't scary. If you love dinosaurs and
you love Resident Evil, you'll likely get some satisfaction from Dino Crisis.
But those players outside of that limited demographic will find the game to be
generic at best.
Trailer
System Requirement
Processor= 733MHz
RAM= 128MB
Graphics= 32MB
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