Dino Crisis Review

Dinosaurs depict fairly accurately the predator intelligence, especially the Velociraptor. Unfortunately, it accounts for about 70% of the "enemy encounters", therefore becoming predictable and tedious after a while. One exception is the Theizinos, which charges at you and leaves you with precious few seconds to get your self together and shoot, but it makes its appearance long after the overall impression of the repetitive enemies has set in.

Take that!

Ouch! That must've hurt!

What's more, most of the game is played inside the facility, so there just isn't a way of squeezing T-Rex into tight corridors. As a result, the appearance of T-Rex is highly limited and scripted into the gameplay, which is a damn shame, because I would've loved to see more of it in the game. There's this one scene where a T-Rex's powerful roar blows our heroine several steps back with a gust of air coming from its jaws. Phew, some breath he must've had... This scene, however, vividly depicts the power of the mighty dinosaur, and adds to the tone of the game. Some of the dinos fly (Pteranadon), some are as small as house pets (Procompsognathurs), and they generally exhibit different types of behavior, although, as I said, after a while they become nothing more than tedious nuisance on your way to the next puzzle.

The game's weapons arsenal is again reminiscent of Resident Evil; with a standard selection of firearms including the ever-present Glok 34-35, Shotgun, and Grenade Gun, but with the added bonus of tranquilizing darts that are supposed to er, tranquilize the dinosaurs for a certain period of time (with a little help of An Aid). And anyways, don't expect too much shooting. The in-game weapons simply serve as a necessary tool to get you through to the next puzzle. It's not like Dino Crisis is an actual action game or anything...

The gameplay dynamics, the basic concepts of plot branching, the mixing of items, item boxes, and some of the side quest ethical choices are identical to Resident Evil, which is not a bad thing necessarily, but it does cast a shadow of unoriginality over DC considering it is supposed to be an autonomous project and not a simple replica. Fortunately, Dino Crisis' chain of events follows a constant timeline, meaning that you won't see any "original set in the same time frame as the sequel" mumbo-jumbo from the Capcom folks (logically, they're saving that routine for the sequel). The generally linear storyline branches off into side quests on a couple of occasions, or takes a different turn depending on the choice you make. Even then, the number of environments explored by the player remains constant as you'll get to revisit parts of the map that were the main setting of one of the side quest you've rebuffed earlier.

Wrapping It All Up

Dino Crisis definitely has all the traits of a Capcom classic. Unfortunately, the fact that it is a PSX port and that it doesn't bring anything remotely new into the genre is a good enough reason for it not to score well. Add to that the monotonous dinos and B-Movie voice acting, and my decision not to score it well is even more justified. Fans of Resident Evil and of survival horror games in general will enjoy the usual strong points of Capcom's games, like: great atmosphere and in Dino Crisis' case, relatively deep gameplay, but I guess this game proved to be one PSX1-port-without-mouse-support too many for this reviewer.