Still Scary, Still FUN!!!....

Damn, I haven't done a game review in a long LONG time, so hopefully I haven't lost my touch...Okay...

Shortly after typing my review for DC, and then afterwards playing the game more thoroughly, I realized how blind I had been to this game, and was looking too closely at its menial flaws, to realize how good this game really is (thus this re-type, which has taken me awhile to get around too;).

This game has been horribly sold-short, in my opinion, and everybody complains about a lot of the same shortcomings this game has (not enough ammo, not enough guns, bad controls, too much like RE, too few dinos, gameplay frustrating, plot, etc.)--except that they're NOT shortcomings, they are actually what makes this game stand out among a lot of other survival horror games, and I think, allow it to proclaim the prize as being the first TRUE survival-horror game.

I will address each of these shortcomings and any others left out as follows:

Plot: Dino Crisis takes place on a tropical island, where a top-secret research facility is looking into a new kind of energy source. A spy for an intelligence agency for a certain nation has infiltrated the facility and has identified the world-reknowned scientist who is heading up the project, who was supposed to have died in a horrific lab accident several years ago. The government sends in a specialized, four-man team to retrieve the doctor and discover the nature of the power source that he is looking into. But doing that is a LOT easier said than done...

Upon arriving on the island, the team discovers that all is not right, and soon realizes that they have walked into a prehistoric deathtrap, and are forced to fight for their survival while also trying to unravel how this all happened, finding a way to escape the island while their bounty is evading their every move, while the hunters have become the hunted...

Controls: The basic RE-based layout we know and love: Up makes you go forward, pressing left or right makes you turn said direction; hold back to walk backwards. Circle takes you to your menu. X is your action/fire button (in conjunction with R1), and L1 is auto-target. Hold Square to run. Yawn. A few twists do spice up the controls. R2 makes Regina (the main character) do a 180-turn, an absolute GODSEAND in this game (and is later implemented into future RE games), and the ability to move while aiming your weapon, a very useful ability to one-up any unexpected surprises. On the whole, a very simple, easily grasped system. Of course, mastering it takes practice, but is worth it.

Whiners: All right, let me just go ahead and clarify this. The controls are just FINE. I hate it when everybody whines about how uninspired, crude, and hard-to-use the controls are for most games like this. You know what I say (in my best Dennis Leary impression): "Shut the f**k up, next!" Really. Everybody nags and nags, we get it already, you don't like the controls. What do you expect, Capcom made it, so don't be surprised when a LOT of their survival-horror games are similar in control style.

While it may be very basic and bare-bones, it's also very SIMPLE to learn, and in the case of alot of their games, very efficient. Maybe the game designers can help it, and maybe that can't, big deal. The controls aren't bad at all, especially on this game, and are a major upgrade to the standard RE control scheme, with a few twists. Besides, in the words of a wise man: "Many complain. True masters don't. They know it works." I could go in to how true that is, but I'm not here to preach about how people b((ch needlessly about the controls, but let's just move on...

Plot/Nuances: This game came out shortly after RE2, and everybody touted it as a rip-off, but I would think of it as rip-off in the same way that Syphon Filter is a rip-off of Metal Gear Solid. On the surface it may look that way, but appearances are DEFINITELY deceiving, especially for this game (and Syphon Filter, a fine, and very HARD game). It also got bashed on for being a rip-off of Jurasic Park. I could care less. I would much rather play this game than watch that movie (or any of its sequels).

Sound: I like the plot, personally, and the voice acting is a major improvement over the atrocious dialogue in the original RE (something I think we can ALL agree on). All of the characters are fleshed out very well, and they all have their own little personality quirks. Overall, the VA is excellent. The game has little music, but what of it there is, fits in very well, being anxious during tight moments and pretentious in moments of exploration. Usually silence is the only sound coming from your speakers, but that's usually broken by the snorts and heavy foot-falls of your reptillian enemies. The sounds are spot-on, and complements the graphics nicely. A lot of people complained that the guns didn't sound very loud, and maybe they're right, but personally, after Leon blew off my eardrums after using the Custom Shotgun in RE2, I welcomed the toned-down gunfire.

Graphics: A major upgrade in comparison to other previous Capcom games, as all of the in-game environs are depicted in 3-D, from the lowly desk, to the ultra-detailed computer console, the detail and realism shine through, and also allow for camera movements, partially eliminating static game screens while moving about. This is especially impressive for the survival-horror department, surpassing the pre-rendered backgrounds on any given RE. The characters are also highly detailed, and are richly colored, and the dinos are also very articulate, although admittedly bland looking in terms of color. The CG is very pretty, but fairly limited in use in the game itself (opening, a little in-between, the end). Personally, I'm glad they didn't have that much of it, as the graphics were good enough to stand on their own without being supported by glitzy CG (which some games STILL do these days, even recent Capcom games).

Gameplay: What do I say? This is the source of the majority of the complaints about this game. But a lot of these complaints are really due to a lack of understanding about the game (and the mindless complaints from people wanting to kill everything in sight, well, they made a game for you--it's called Devil May Cry, now shut the hell up).

The first major complaint was the lack of ammo. This statement is completely true, but granted the NATURE of Dino Crisis, this argument completely invalidates itself. I came to appreciate this came for this reason:

I love RE2, it's the reason I bought a Playstation, but even now, I look at it and realize how EASY it is. Even on the hardest difficulty (Normal), you can still blow through the game and kill damn-near everything in your path, and find a bunch of healing items, but this game remedies that problem by making ammo scarce, and having some of the enemies you kill respawn at times. Everyone complains about this. What did you expect? You thought you could just go through and own the game RE style, right? WRONG!!! Capcom changed the rules on you, and made you THINK for a change in a video game, but for those of you who don't like making strategies and learning how to deal with situations by means OTHER than brute force, you went on your tirades about how much this game sucked because you were actually being CHALLENGED for a change. Ugh, don't make me laugh (or should I say cry).

Just today I picked this game up and started playing it again, and I realize how rock-solid it is, even in comparison to the Next-Gen games of today. Of course, I remembered what I learned from this game: Run away. A lot. Save your precious little ammo for later on when you'll NEED it, then savor in blowing away dinos, but just don't go overkill. Unfortunately, one of my friends who started playing it as well, is going to find out the hard way that if you kill everything in sight early on, you'll regret it DEEPLY later on, IF he makes it that far...

The next issue is on mixing items. This was another aspect of the game that was very interesting, and while a little perplexing at first, once understood, allowed for a high-degree of freedom to create healing items or weapons as you saw fit. You can mix healing items together to make them stronger, like a Hemostat, the weakest healing item in the game. Using a special item called an Intensifier, you can mix it with the Hemostat to increase its potentcy by one rank, creating a Small Med Pack. Using another would increase it to a Medium Med Pack, and so on. Using recovery aids also increase health item strength dramatically, and using multipliers will allow you to double your health item count.

And of course, we come to the Darts. Tranquilzer darts are perhaps the most underrated weapon in this game. Sure, Small darts aren't at all powerful, but mixing them with other darts, or Intensifiers, or Anesthetic Aids, increase their stopping power dramatically, and are the most effective means of disabling dinos without having to waste ammo. You can even use multipliers to create even MORE darts. You can even mix darts with healing items, and if you mix it right, you can create Poison Darts, THE most powerful weapon in the game, killing ANYTHING in one hit.

Of course, you don't have a lot of these items to use, but they are abundant enough, and you'll need to be careful of your mixing, whether or not you want to be offensive, making a lot of darts, or defensive, making a lot healing items.

And then there are the E-Boxes. Wall-mounted storage units that hold items. A lot of these are located throughout the game, but not all of them can be accessed. Each box can only be opened by using Plugs that are hidden in the facility, and some boxes require multiple plugs to open. Also, each box comes in three colors: Red, Green, and Yellow. Red boxes hold ammunition, darts, and Aids to create or strengthen darts. Green boxes hold healing items, and Aids to create or strengthen healing items. Yellow boxes hold a mix of both. The thing about the boxes are that, unlike RE, they aren't all connected together, although you CAN access boxes of the same color in other locations from another similarly-colored box (you can access red boxes from anywhere in the facility from another red box, and the same goes for the green and yellow ones). Also, just because a box may only contain certain items when you open it, doesn't mean that you can't put healing items in a red box, or ammo in a green box, or whatever in a yellow. It's rather ingenious, and is another aspect of the game that provokes strategic thinking.

The puzzles. Anybody that complains that they're very difficult...I agree. They aren't simple at all, and require some logical thinking, and some reasoning, and some paper and pencil for some of them, but that's okay, that's what they have game guides for (or the internet). Anybody that says they can breeze through the mindgames this game lays out for you is a far better man than I (or a liar).

Weapons. Well, at least they didn't bother insulting us with a knife. You only get three guns in the game. A handgun, a shotgun, and a grenade launcher, all portrayed realistically (the handgun is a Glock, the shotgun a Spas-12, and the launcher a Heckler&Koch). All of your weapons can be modified, and each are capable of firing two different kinds of ammo.


Overall, this game has been needlessly slammed for many so many trivial things, that everybody failed to realize how GOOD it was. Oh well, greatness is usually postumous (I know that's spelled wrong), but there are always the greatful few who can appreciate something for what it truly is.

And in this case, a damn good game.

Merry Christmas.