16 out of 16 people found this review helpful.
Much More Dinos But Not As Much Crisis
Date of Review: Dec 6, 2000
The original Dino Crisis was slammed for being a Resident Evil clone but it was much more than that. Whether it was intentional or not, the amount of ammo in Dino Crisis was thin on the ground to say the least. The result of this was a game that would be unbearably tense at times. When you entered a room with only a single tranquiliser dart for protection and you can hear an off-screen raptor hungrily growling, you wouldn't have feel the slightest bit safe. Never the less, the gun starved survival horror fans screamed for Capcom to include more ammo in this game and they have; with mixed results.
The original, atmospheric atmosphere of the original isn't present here. Instead, it's more of a blasting frenzy which certainly works but not as well as the original.
To be fair, Capcom have made more of an effort to make Dino Crisis 2 different from their Resident Evil series. There's now a points system, rewarding you for taking down those giant lizards in record time. At certain points in the game, these points can be spent on guns, ammo and health. Now I'll admit this is an excellent feature and certainly will make you think twice before running away from the next blood-hungry pack of dinos. But again, this is another feature that seems to have ruined the survival atmosphere of the original. The feeling in this game is that it's the dinosaurs that are hunted, instead of you.
The controls will be familiar to all you Resident Evil fans out there but there are a few new touches added. The first is a "2nd weapon" option, should you hear the worrying click-click-click of your main weapon as it runs out of ammo during combat. While the use of a knife in this situation is more daft than useful, there will be other times in the game where you need to use it and the "2nd weapon" will allow you to use it without the lengthy inventory menus.
Also you can now fire while running. You can figure out for yourselves how useful this is!
The graphics are, yet again, beautiful. There have been very fine details paid to the scenery here and they make all the difference. Together with the excellent sound effects and occasional "creepy" music (that'll start up when you enter a new room for example), it'll make dino blasting a joy. The voice acting is as cheesy as ever but unless you bought this game to witness the wonderful acting, you won't mind.
Regina and her embarrassing hair have returned but now you can also control a tough-nut by the name of Dylan. During the game, you'll get to control both of these characters. As you can expect, they have different weapons, routes to take and so on.
Another downside is, apart from the lack of horror atmosphere, the lack of replay value. As with most other games of this type, it's unlikely you'll want to come back to it. It's an amazing experience while it lasts but there's not much to come back to.
To sum up, Dino Crisis 2 is a great action game and a worthy sequel. But while it's more survival action than survival horror, it's still definitely worth checking out anyway!
