Dino Crisis 3 Preview

Capcom is taking a decidedly different approach with the third game in the Dino Crisis series. In the new game, the industrial and jungle settings of the two previous games have been replaced with a massive spaceship named the Ozymandias, which, like the ship in the film Event Horizon, was originally lost, only to reappear hundreds of years later with almost all of its crew missing. With such a setting, you might not expect dinosaurs to play a huge role, but Capcom has conjured up some skinless space dinosaurs that will relentlessly hunt down the members of SOAR (Special Operations and Reconnaissance) who are sent to recapture the ship. Over the course of the game, you'll discover that the Ozymandias is now fully controlled by its computer, and that it will do anything to destroy intruders or potentially threatening targets on its way back to Earth.

Interestingly, Capcom has also thrown in a few gameplay changes to accommodate the change in setting. Each member of SOAR is equipped with a jetpack that not only lets him or her reach high ledges and other seemingly inaccessible areas, but also becomes quite valuable in combat. Whenever a group of menacing space dinos or the even more hideous space slugs start attacking, you can use the jetpack to maneuver quickly around the creatures to avoid being pounced on. In addition, the jetpack can be used to hover above your enemies and fire from a relatively safe distance, but some of them are capable of leaping pretty high, so you'll still need to be careful.

Thankfully, the default weapons for at least two of the team members--Patrick Tyler and Sonya Hart--are pretty powerful and can easily take out dinosaurs with three or four bursts of fire. It's also worth pointing out that these weapons can be charged to unleash an even more devastating attack, but the resulting effect is different for each character. For example, when Patrick charges up his weapon, a targeting beam will appear just before the weapon releases a large ball of energy. Conversely, when Sonya uses the charge function on her weapon, it releases several beams of energy that bounce around the environment.

In addition to the primary weapons, each character has a supplementary weapon called a "wasp." Essentially, wasps are little robots that you can use to increase the amount of firepower being unleashed on an enemy. Unfortunately, you have a limited number of wasps, and they only last for a few seconds, but they're still incredibly useful. Indeed, in some instances, you have to use them to restore specific ship functions or unlock doors. You can equip your character with different wasps by finding various power-ups scattered throughout the ship. The default wasp is called the tempest, and it simply flies around and fires lasers at any targets in the immediate area. The juggernaut wasp moves along the ground and can collide with enemies multiple times to inflict generous amounts of damage. Then there's the inferno wasp, which basically flies into the air and creates an enormous explosion that can kill just about anything in the immediate area.

Space Puzzles

While the playable characters in Dino Crisis 3 are already pretty strong to begin with, you can actually upgrade them over the course of the game. Whenever you kill an enemy, you'll earn elimination points and tactical points. The number of elimination points you have is represented by a meter in the top right corner of the screen. When this meter is full, you can no longer earn additional tactical points, and you have to go spend what you have at a terminal. The terminals, which essentially function as shops, let you purchase additional items, such as health packs or ammunition, and upgrades for your character that will increase the number of hit points he or she has and the number of weapons and items he or she can carry. You'll find that these upgrades or items aren't all that necessary in the earlier portions of the game, but they become quite valuable later on, when dinosaur attacks become more frequent.

The game doesn't completely revolve around combat. Like in the previous games in the Dino Crisis series--or even the Resident Evil series, for that matter--most of the puzzles in Dino Crisis 3 simply involve finding the correct switch to open a particular door. In fact, that's pretty much the bulk of the game, at least for the first hour or so. In some cases, you can determine where to go by looking at the somewhat difficult-to-read map and searching for the portion of the ship that happens to be highlighted. It's not entirely clear if you'll be given other hints, since the game is still in Japanese at this point, but there are other times when there's no clear indication of where you're supposed to go, so you'll have to do a little exploring. In addition, since many of the rooms inside the incredibly shiny ship look quite similar, you'll occasionally find yourself running around in circles. Again, part of this may have to do with our inability to read Japanese, but it certainly seems like something Capcom may want to address before releasing the game.

Another potential problem is the camera. At certain points in the game, the camera can be manipulated manually, allowing you to move it into a useful position. However, throughout much of the game, the camera cannot be moved, and you'll often find yourself struggling to move into a part of the room where the camera provides a better vantage point while you're under attack. In addition, it can be difficult to find certain doors simply because you can't see them--when do you find them, it's usually by accident. There's a first-person camera option that helps alleviate this problem, but you can't move around in this mode. Hopefully the camera will be tweaked a little more before the game's final release.

As far as graphics are concerned, Dino Crisis 3 appears to make good use of some of the Xbox's special-effects capabilities. As previously mentioned, most of the rooms on the ship are very shiny, almost ridiculously so, and there are plenty of cool little futuristic effects. The character models and the dinosaurs look decent at this point, but we haven't seen all that much variety on the dinosaur front in the time that we've spent with the game. Dino Crisis 3 is currently scheduled for release in North America in September.