Dino Crisis was a slight departure for Capcom. At release, Resident Evil was hot. Zombies were popular in gaming in general. Dinosaurs were still untapped though. Sure, gamers saw a few entries in the Jurassic Park franchise but for the most part, dinosaurs were still lukewarm. The prehistoric creatures simply had not set gaming on fire like they did theaters. Capcom must have seen this as a challenge as they set the thunder lizards as the main antagonist in Dino Crisis.

Dino Crisis did things differently

Set in 2009, we are introduced to the Secret Operation Raid Team (SORT) and their agent, Tom. Must be a code name or something. Apparently, there is an evil scientist, that was long thought dead, working on a secluded island. It is the projects this scientist is working on that you are concerned with.

Four additional SORT agents are sent to the island, Regina, Gail, Rick, and Cooper. There are storyline forks offering different paths for you to take – each with different consequences. Choose wisely here.

It turns out that the secret weapons SORT was investigating are not what they thought. They are dinosaurs. The secret facility has been ravaged and you are tasked with finding out what happened.

Stepping out of the Resident Evil shadow

There are quite a few similarities to Resident Evil in Dino Crisis. That is just par for the course. Where things go differently are the environments. Instead of pre-rendered backgrounds, here everything is made of polygons and 3D. Gamers would see a similar setting in a soon to release Resident Evil game, Code Veronica on the Sega Dreamcast.

The dinosaur variety was on the sparse side though. Dino Crisis did get the tenseness and scares down quite well. We fought larger than life dinosaurs in the past, but those battles never caught the scale of these creatures. In Dino Crisis, you are made quite aware of the size difference and just how deadly these creatures can be.

Gone were the slow moving, lumbering, zombies. Dinosaurs can move and move quick. The larger ones can do immense amounts of damage as well.

The past and future of Dino Crisis

Dino Crisis was originally released on the Sony PlayStation console. It later saw release on Sega Dreamcast and Windows computers. Sequels would see release on PSOne and go onto see the series end on the Xbox console.

Carl Williams

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