Dino Crisis 3 Preview
We fend off hideous space dinosaurs in a look at Capcom's new action game.
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.
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- GameSpot Score5.4mediocre
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