Hello everyone!
Today, I’m very excited to talk to you about an awesome saga that has been forgotten. I’m referring to none other than Dino Crisis. Some of you youngsters might have never heard of it, but don’t worry! I will tell you everything you need to know.
Dino Crisis started as a survival horror game developed by our friends over at Capcom. The first installment came out for Playstation in 1999 and was directed by Shinji Mikami, who, as you might know, also directed Resident Evil.
The saga is composed by three main games, the first two launched for the original Playstation and the third one was an Xbox exclusive. In general, the first two games had great reviews, the first one as a survival horror RE-type game and the second one as a crazy shooter. The third one pretty much sucked.
Capcom recently renewed the Dino Crisis brand, so hopefully this means that at some point, we will get more of this saga.
In this post I want to talk about the Dino crisis games, so everyone gets to know the saga before (hopefully) someone at Capcom decides the games need a new installment/remake (they are getting quite efficient at remaking old games).
So let’s dive deep into it.
Dino Crisis 1
The first game had many similarities with Resident Evil. The game created a very tense atmosphere and had many common elements with RE, such as “opening door loading screens”, jumpscares with velocirraptors instead of zombies, fixed camera, puzzles and clunky controls.
As in Resident Evil, you need to push the square button and a direction to run, and to shoot you need to push R1 to aim and shoot. Of course, shooting and running are two incompatible actions.
Even though the controls of both games were not great, they add to the atmosphere, you need to be on point, since the game does not help you at all.
The game’s main character is Regina, a special operations agent that of course is sent to a mysterious island to investigate. What does our girl ‘Gina find there? A fuckton of dinos. Her goal is to fight through a research facility to discover its secrets and of course, survive.
To not be labeled as Resident Dino, Capcom marketed the game as a “panic horror” game, due to having more consistent visceral terror, with quick intelligent and violent enemies. In the end, it was a standard “survival horror” game. A very good one at that.
The main difference with Resident Evil is the usage of 3D environments instead of pre-rendered backgrounds, which was the standard methodology used by RE games at that point. Game critics seemed to like the addition of 3D environments, for some reason they considered that they added credibility and enhanced the perception of fear.
Dino Crisis was a commercial success. It sold over 2.4 million copies. The game was in general praised. One of the main criticisms was that the enemies were 90% raptors. While I agree, I also think that this fact makes the moments with other dinosaurs incredibly special (looking at you fucking T-Rex that traumatized my childhood).
I played this game as a child, I was 12 at the time and I was fucking scared. The game created a very tense atmosphere and I couldn’t play the game for more than 30 min at a time, otherwise I would freak out. The game looked and played great at the time, and even though it had many similarities with the Resident Evil saga, it had its own flavor.
It’s quite easy to download an emulator and play the game. It has aged a bit, and can be challenging to configure to play smoothly, but overall, I think that both Resident Evil and Dino Crisis can still be enjoyed nowadays. Here you can see some gameplay.
Before moving on to Dino Crisis 2, quick shoutout to Dino Crisis Man, a very passionate twitter user that loves the saga.
Dino Crisis 2
All right, so the first one was a survival horror game. The genre, at that point in time was quite overpopulated: in 1999, the first three RE games, the first Dino Crisis and the first Silent Hill had been published. It was a relatively new genre, which got many fans, but as I said, there were a lot of incredibly good games.
The genre would continue to grow with 2000’s RE:Code Veronica, which was published for the new consoles. On the other hand, Dino Crisis 2 was also launched at 2000, for the original Playstation, and this game was quite different.
Dino Crisis 2 was not a survival horror anymore, it was an action-adventure game that was completely different from the previous installment, at least, gameplay-wise. Sure there were still dinosaurs, some scary moments and our girl Regina, but the rest was incredibly different.
For starters, controls got much better. You could move and shoot at the same time, movement was much more fluid and shooting was the main focus of the game. Also, we got a new playable character, Dylan, the blond dino killing stud. In the game, you controlled both Regina and Dylan, switching between characters at specific points of the story.
After the events of the first game, some crazy scientists have transported a research base and city to another time, along with all its inhabitants. To save these retards, Regina and Dylan are sent there. Of course they will find plenty of dinosaurs, so Regina’s expertise from the first game will come in handy.
The game is nothing like the first one. The focus is on killing dinosaurs and doing it with flavor. The game rewards killing dinosaurs in sequence, without getting hit, giving you “Extintion Points” for each slayed dinosaur. These points can be later spent to buy new weapons, ammo or healing items.
Before going any further I need to tell you something. Dino Crisis 2 is one of my favourite games of all time. I remember that I had so much fun just shooting dinosaurs and doing long combos, to get even more awesome weapons. The game had a lot of weapon variety and in general, felt INCREDIBLY SATISFYING. You could feel the impact of your weapons on the enemies.
Another important part of the game was the story. I remember being quite fond of the story, it was way better than I was expected and it is a shame it never got a proper continuation (don’t want to spoil anything, but the game ends in a pretty fucking intense cliffhanger).
It was published for the original Playstation while everyone was looking at the new generation (PS2 came out that same year). I believe it is one of the best titles PSX has to offer and a great culmination of that generation. I have installed an emulator and will for sure, replay this game, once I figure out how to run it smoothly (right now, gameplay is ok, but cutscenes are heavily distorted. Any advice, please let me know in the comments! I’m using RetroArch).
Here you can see some more gameplay, of this awesome, incredible game.
Dino Crisis 3
First things first. I have not played this game, so my input will be limited.
Dino Crisis 3 was published by Capcom in 2003 for the original Xbox. The gameplay, as expected, involves fighting dinosaurs, but get this, they are not really dinosaurs, they are some weird creatures created from DNA extracted from dinosaurs. The game takes place on a space station and is not a direct continuation of Dino Crisis 2.
So, Dino Crisis 2 was incredible and ended up in a cliffhanger. Dino Crisis 3 might build on top of that right? NAH. It is just a random space dino killing game. No Regina, no Dylan, no real dinosaurs.
The game received pretty poor reviews. One of the main issues everyone had with the game was with the camera. It seems like the movement of the characters was way faster than in the first two installments, so the camera changed frequently and created a lot of confusion, making the player shoot blindly. IGN said that the players had to shoot targets that were 80% of the times out of their sight. Here you can see some gameplay.
It was an incredibly bad move to make this game suck that bad. The first two games were very good and the saga needed more content. But they launched the wrong game to the wrong console. And the sad thing is that that is the last we heard from the saga.
Dino Stalker
I was not aware that this game was considered canon in the Dino Crisis lore, so I will thank the reddit user that pointed that out!
Dino Stalker, also known as Gun Survivor 3: Dino Crisis, is a first person shooter developed for Playstation 2. It launched in 2002 and is the third installment of the Gun Survivor saga. This saga is a shooter spin-off based on Resident Evil. In this third game, the developers base the story in the Dino Crisis Saga.
The game was designed to be played with the official PS2 gun, the GunCon2. I remember playing Time Crisis a lot with the first GunCon, I was not even aware that there was a second gun (and as I’ve seen, further entries in the Time Crisis saga).
The game focuses around a young man called Mike Wired, whose plane is destroyed, but is able to eject from it. Just when the guy is close to escaping, he gets shot by another plane. For some reason, he gets transported 3.000.000 years into the future to an island where a voice tells Mike to look for a girl named Paula. Also what does he find in the island??? Freaking dinosaurs!
Dylan and Paula from Dino Crisis 2 appear in the game, and the player has many weapons to use. You can move freely (which I don’t know how it is managed if you play with the gun) and have a time limit to complete every mission.
From what I’m reading, it seems that this game was not well received, having pretty mediocre reviews.
Here you can see some gameplay.
What now?
The Dino Crisis fans just want new content. Either a remake (like RE2-3 had) of the first two games, which would be awesome and the most likely option, looking at how great the latest Capcom remakes were, or just a new entry, following up on Dino Crisis 2. That last option would be great, but I find it highly unlikely, mainly due to the amount of time that has passed.
So let’s hope Capcom hears us and provides some new Dino Crisis action soon!
TroncoGaming 