Its RE...'with' dinosaurs....and 'without' alot of the fun.
To be honest on my first hour of playing I could see the resemblance, and throughout it does contain RE signature gameplay such as the controls, animations and even gun sound effects. But to be honest I don't remember RE being this dull and lifeless.
Dino Crisis starts off like most survival horror games start out, you've just arrived at what seems to be deserted facility in a small squad of three, theirs the black comic releif, the tough guy leader who would probably suit the nickname Sarge because of his cliche' attitude and then theirs you the anit-hero babe with a butt the shape of an orange you just want to digg-in to!!....Ermm moving back on very swiftly, you play as Regina who through the bland script and average voice acting seems to be some sort of saucy anti-hero type character that doesn't seem to take much of situations seriously and is more than able to make a sly joke or two.
What I've just written is basically the whole teams bios, there all incredibly boring to the point that i couldn't care if any of them in fact were to become Dino chow. Rick is probably supposed to be the slightly imature but caring cliche' bomb you usually find in a movie of this type, and while he does sort of contain that role he also leads to that annoying black guy who you just want to shoot, well actually the same go for the whole roster of '4' total main characters. The script as I said is incredibly boring and lifeless and doesn't even give you some personalities to play as never mind likable characters.
Off the characters and onto the story, while the story is prominent throughout it again is mundane and also rather predictable to the point where you could basically forsee the whole game after the first few hours of gameplay and script to endure. It has the team to search and rescue (only to take hostage though) the elusive Dr Edward Kirk, I can't quite remember why and can't be bothered looking it up, but thats the main motivation for the story. Of course Dr Kirk being a doctor falls into the mad scientist category and again couldn't care less if he dies or lives or cures cancer hes just that bland. Oh there of course still trying to find out how the dinosaurs came to be in our time too but your first guess as to why will probably be the right one.
Now onto gameplay, which at first I enjoyed because it is rather similiar to RE and practically copys the control scheme, though in this you can walk while aiming...not shooting...just aiming...a little usless indeed but that does set it apart from its freaky cousins at RE HQ. Of course aswell, instead of fighting off hordes of BOW and accidently infected monstrosties you are handed a couple of dinosaurs to fend off, and while they do indeed offer a different battling style being agile and very very aggresive, the little variety in dinosaurs and the general lack of them leads to yet even more boredom. Also a twist from the Re series is the switch off puzzle solving and creature blasting, in RE you did a fair share of both but in the end of course the battling with foes came out on top due a nice amount of weaponry and boss' to overcome with. Dino Crisis however does the complete opposite, the dinosaurs themselves seems like there going extinct yet again because theres so little of them around, not like it matters due to the annoying scarcity of ammunition you'll come across, but back to the twist this time around 80% of the time your solving puzzles, and if I maybe didn't get my point across with the percentage, let me type for you that there is 'alot' of puzzles in this game, and while some can be fun and unique the majority consist of simply looking for a passcode to type in, which results in an insane amount of backtracking that would make RE seem completly linear!! Another huge annoyance with the puzzles is that you don't save the files you read anymore, once you've read it, thats it, you'll have to memorise if there was anything important to note, you of course can still write it down yourself but after RE having the files a figure point of the series and having them with you wherever made the game rather enjoyable maybe just to read on some of the victims experiences again it actually seems like a real annoying step back for the survival horror series.
Back to the combat, another fault ( I no this whole review seems like I'm just pissing all over Dino Crisis, but I suppose its because I am) is the lack of weapons, there is only 'three' different weapons throughout the whole game, you may come across some customisations for them but they don't do anything drastic besides increase the power so don't expect to be able to play around with how your weapons work. Though instead your given a variety of ammo, such as the shotgun having shotgun rounds aswell as tranquilizer darts too, but that honestly doesn't make up for it...I want to make a species extinct again not give a nights sleep! There is also no boss' etheir, sure theres some sort of boss at the very end but it hardly matchs up to...well any other boss' in survival horror, it was more or less just a quick interactive scene to set the ending.
So as the gameplay goes its rather bland and while I'm all for exploration and puzzle solving, not when its on this calibur.
Onto to sound, now that at least can bring it some merit since like most survival horror soundtracks this one is rather good and help set the mood and atmosphere, though it does have some annoying tracks here and there that sound like they belong in a 1930s hammer horror movie. The voice acting isn't exactly atrocious, just totally put down by a bore-fest of a script, though Gails voice actor doesn't help by being actually rather bad.
But Regina's Jennifer Hale sound alike does seem like she had potential to make Regina another survival horror heroine that can be memorable with the likes of Jill Valentine and Aya Brea.
Graphical that too is definatly an upside, even if it just ps1 and where up the rising quality of the ps3, I still enjoy the pixilated graphics just for their cool $tyle and probably because its the type of graphics i grew up with. Decent animations too that look like they were pulled right out of the original RE trilogy with all the weird hand gestures and the like.
Onto to reply value, now for a ps1 game, taking on average around 7-10 hours on your go thats pretty impressive, but unlike most CAPCOM games theres not at all that much reason to go back. I found it boring in the majority of my first run, but still had hope that some unlockables weapons and characters would really help bring some well needed fun into it. But sadly theres nothing like that, no special weapons, there is 'one' minigame but its boring beyond beleif and also only has Regina playable (this has got to be one of the only CAPCOM games to feature only one playable character!). There is three very different costumes to unlock, but didn't really appeal to me honestly didn't tink that Regina suited em all that well. There is at least a total of five endings to unlock and do vary some such as certain characters dieing and other characters getting away and some real difference to maybe have you motivated to see them all, but to be honest the endings is the only reason for me to even contemplate playing through it again.
Plus a major difference between RE and Dino Crisis is the enviroments, in the Re series you traversed through a number of varied enviroments with RE1 having the infamous Mansion to an underground aqua tank to one of Umbrellas many secret laboratorys, in Dino Crisis you travel through the some facility throughout the whole game...once you do the equivalent of moving to a next area, its just a different floor of the facility and contains all dull shiny stuff that you've seen for the past 3 hours.
This truelly is survival horror at its worst, its very unbalanced in what makes survival horror great, too much puzzle solving, so much backtracking I'm surprised the carpet in the facility hasn't been worn through, an absolute bland infested story filled with everything that bland stands for and some of the most dull combat ever to embrace a survival horror title.
But still, it does have some fun hidden deep within...I just can't seem to find it, and it certaintly ain't due to RE4 taking me away from the survival horror origins since i still play on the RE classics from time to time and still love every second. No this game isn't just RE with Dinosaurs, its RE without everything that made RE great.
Final Score-6.0