Dino Crisis 2 (PlayStation) review "To say I was impressed with the original Dino Crisis would be an extreme understatement, and would probably be a travesty to my feelings of the game. I enjoyed playing the original immensely, despite the fact I found it to have some flaws. Of course, I am one of those people that can find flaws in any game, but that does not take away from the fun factor I experience with these games, at all. I definitely enjoyed playing the original Dino Crisis, because it took everything I liked about Resident..."

To say I was impressed with the original Dino Crisis would be an extreme understatement, and would probably be a travesty to my feelings of the game. I enjoyed playing the original immensely, despite the fact I found it to have some flaws. Of course, I am one of those people that can find flaws in any game, but that does not take away from the fun factor I experience with these games, at all. I definitely enjoyed playing the original Dino Crisis, because it took everything I liked about Resident Evil, and added dinosaurs to the equation. It was definitely a very fun game play experience, that I definitely enjoyed playing.

However, I was not too impressed with the sequel, at all. I expected great things from this game. How could I not? I mean, just look at the game. It was the sequel to one of my favorite Playstation games! However, Capcom decided to take everything I liked about the original game and threw it right out the window. The survival horror game elements of the original has been replaced with a much more action like setting. Now, I am all for this, but not in a Dino Crisis game. The game was not even that fun to play, to boot.

Simply put, I was extremely disappointed with this game. I expected to be blown away by it, and I got blown away with how dumb it was. Wow, you can now collect items and dollars which allow you to buy items. Hmm.. what good does this do? I admit it is a novel idea, but the series should always be about exploration to begin with. I was used to the exploration elements that every other game in the series and Resident Evil series provided, so I was disappointed to see that Capcom decided to scratch it in favor of an all new system. I am all for innovation, but maybe that was a bit too much innovation here. I woulda lived with the same basic game play system as the original Dino Crisis, but sadly it was not featured here. Oh well.

The story line to the game is fairly interesting. After returning with the doctor, the U.S. government decides to start performing experiments with the 'third energy' (the energy the doctor was using.) Unfortunately, they failed to take proper safety precautions. While performing an experiment in the Midwestern United States, an experiment laboratory, along with a military facility, and a small town have all vanished through a portal. The remains are nothing more than a mere jungle. So, Regina and her new comrade, Dylan, prepare a special boat armed with a portal generating device to follow the missing into this strange world. I like this, and I also liked how it tied into the story line featured from the original Dino Crisis game.

One of the things that was most hyped about the original Dino Crisis in terms of graphics was the fact that the backgrounds in the game now were real time 3D instead of prerendered, like the ones featured in the Resident Evil series. After all that hype, guess what happens? They go back to the prerendered backgronds! I almost laughed myself to tears when I turned on the game for the first time and saw after all the hype, that the game went back to the prerendered backgrounds. However, I liked the backgrounds in the Resident Evil series, so I definitely liked the backgrounds in this game. They looked crystal clear and were very well detailed.

The result of the game going to prerendered graphics is an increase of the quality of the character and enemy designs in the game. The characters themselves look great, and are very well detailed. The enemies, which are basically the bad ass dinosaurs, look amazingly well done, as they are very well detailed and look great. The dinosaurs definitely have a great look to them, as they are much improved over the dinosaurs from the original, and the dinosaurs from the original did not look half bad to begin with!

The music in the game was pretty well done, as it definitely fit the feeling of the whole game quite well. The music has this fast paced and frentic beat to it that really gets you into the feeling of the game, and I could really not ask for any more from a video game in terms of music than that. The sound effects are great, I especially liked the voice acting in the game. The voice acting for Regina was especially good, and I enjoyed it very much so. The rest of the sound effects are your basic action game fare, but they sounded pretty good nevertheless.

The control in the game may seem complex at first, but you will probably soon get used to it. The menu system is easy to navigate, and I especially like how the menu bar on the top right hand corner showed you a bar of how much health you had left, it definitely added a lot to the overall game play. I did not like that the control in terms of moving your character around is a lot like the Resident Evil series, because you need to move up to go forward, up and left to go left, etc. It gets annoying quickly and definitely takes a while to get used to. It is easy enough to auto aim your weapon, press R1 to raise it and Square to aim and shoot it. Simple enough. I was really satisfied with the control of the game.

There is a lot of fun to be had in this game, and it all starts with how innovative the game actually is. This game is really nothing like the original. You still need to kill the same old dinosaurs, but there is a whole new method to gaining items now. You no longer find weapons and keep a limited inventory of items, now you can use Extinct Points to gain new weapons by purchasing them. The more Extinct Points you have, the better weapon or item you can get. It really is quite simple, but I do prefer the original method. How do you get Extinct points? Simple enough, you perform combos on enemies.

The game is nothing like the original in terms of basic style. While the original featured a lot of survival horror elements, this game is a lot more like a 3rd person shooter than a survival horror game. Some may like the changes, but I did not. I did not think they needed to completely change the style of the game, as I always equated Dino Crisis with being survival horror, not action. The game is fun, but I wish Capcom would have thought of this ahead of time, so I would not have to waste my time playing through this mess.

The game would have been a lot of fun and very addictive to play had it been a survival horror game. Sadly, that was not the case with this game. The game had all the elements it needed to be a classic game with addictive replay value: the amount of secrets packed into this game would be enough to make the average game player go screaming for a strategy guide for help with finding all the secrets. So, of course I felt the game could have used better replay value, but it has all the elements it needed. I just did not find this style of play to suit the game, at all.

The challenge level of the game is definitely an interesting subject. The game is pretty short, and there are not a lot of puzzles to begin with. But the puzzles that are included are pretty simple and basic. However, the dinosaurs and other enemies are quite challenging and will scare the crap out of you sometimes. So, I was definitely at mixed feelings when it came to determining what to rate the challenge level of this game. I will say it is short, fairly simple, with some tough battles.

Overall, I could not help but be disappointed in this game, sadly. I expected it to be one of the all time greats, and it turned out to be a huge disappointment. I guess the style of play is what did it for me, I just did not want to play another boring action game, and that is what this game basically is. I'd rather play a boring survival horror game any day of the week! At least there aren’t as many of those to choose from..

Community review by psychopenguin (March 22, 2005) A bio for this contributor is currently unavailable, but check back soon to see if that changes. If you are the author of this review, you can update your bio from the Settings page.