LEVEL 3 - DINO CRISIS MENU

Dino Crisis is a survival horror game, created by Resident Evil masterminds CAPCOM who are probably my favourite games company. i mean, Resident Evil, Street Fighter, Devil May Cry, Dead Rising, and now Dino Crisis?! That's so many great games!

Dino Crisis sees players take control of Regina, part of an elite team on a secret mission to secure Doctor Kirk from a suitably evil and sinister island laboratory. What should be a simple puny science nerd abduction is complicated by the presence of DINOSAURS! Upon finding the facility strangely empty and deserted, Regina is ambushed by a raptor! The game is then afoot, with Regina having to complete the typical survival horror formula of puzzles to access new areas while managing resources to survive against persistent enemies. Progress involves significant backtracking, meaning players have to judge whether they should spend valuable ammo killing an enemy or simply try to avoid them to run to the next area. This is complicated by the fact that enemies are speedy dinosaurs, when sprinting they're quicker than Regina can run and most importantly more agile - as Regina is moved using tank controls. For those not familiar, tank controls are an antique control scheme where your character can only move forwards or backwards, adjusting their direction requires coming to a halt before rotating left or right. This makes quick and precise movement quite difficult, especially for players not familiar with these controls. This makes direct combat a last resort, which Regina thankfully has a few tools to avoid. As the facility is explorinated, the power in the security system will gradually be restored. This allows Regina to turn off and on the laser gates throughout the facility, if she's fast enough then she can trap dinos behind them without using any resources at all! Which is a big win. A common type of loot found is anaesthetic aids, and when two are combined using the game's mixing system three anaesthetic darts can be crafted. These can be fired using the shotgun, and sticking a dino with a few of these sends them to sleep temporarily - allowing Regina to slip past all sneaky-style. Anaesthetic darts can be further doused in anaesthetic aid, until only a single dart is required for naptime and said naptime lasts a lot longer. These were invaluable for my playthrough of Dino Crisis, given how tough combat was i found myself using these far more than any other weapon in the game. Other weapons do have their uses though, if you know that you'll need to backtrack through an area a lot then killing the resident evil dinosaur will save you a lot of resources in the long run, as opposed to reading it a lengthy bedtime story each time you see each other.

The stars of the show are of course the dinosaurs, there are a few types that Regina will face in her adventure. The first are Raptors, speedy chompsters that will introduce players to the mechanics. Next are Pteranodon, flying bastards who pick Regina up and throw her to the floor. They can also have the nasty side effect of making her drop her equipped weapon, causing her to scrabble after it. They're only found in the outdoors areas (duh), and can generally be avoided as long as Regina keeps running - as their dive attack is locked in position once they begin it. Next is Compsognathus, who are just lil guys to be honest. These were the only dino type i didn't take any damage from over my playthrough, they're quick but hesitant to attack and can just be run past - as they're found in packs it's a massive waste of resources to deal with them. Just let the little dudes be. Subsequently is Therizinosaurus, sort of. At the time Dino Crisis was conceived not a huge amount was known about them, and most of it turned out to be wrong. They were actually herbivores for a start, and were generally pretty goofy looking. What was correct is the big big claws however, which the Dino Crisis-verse Therizinosaur uses to GORE Regina. They've also got a potential instakill attack, trampling Regina underfoot if the ai feels particularly mean. They also have the tendency to move in pairs, which makes dealing with them that much more challenging. Next is the Blue Raptors, who are like the Raptors but blue. With higher health and damage. Finally, T-Rex. This is the BOSS DINO of the game, not fought but ran away from in specific scripted events. Shooting it is basically useless and it's just downed a truck full of monster energy so cannot be put to sleep.

It's interesting to compare Resident Evil and Dino Crisis, as both are survival horrors but have fairly different ways to approach the survival horritude. An obvious difference is that all of the enemies in Dino Crisis (except Compsognathus they really are just little guys) are much more lethal than the zombies found in Resident Evil - who typically go down with a couple of pistol shots to the head or a good shotgun blast. Even the starting Raptors take well over 10 pistol shots to kill, with late-game enemies like Therizinosaurus being TANKY. This forces players to consider their options and avoid combat more, this is the same vibe Resident Evil encourages but to a greater degree. This also makes it a bit more horrory in the survival horror way, as being helpless in combat means you're more likely to be tense and trying to avoid it at all costs. There are also a few jumpscares to be found, a particularly famous one involves the T-Rex crashing through an upper floor window to try and gobble Regina up. These and other such instances are good, they break up the creeping tension with a burst of adrenaline. i also got caught out by almost all of them. Speaking of horror, there is something uncanny about the transition sequences. Due to hardware limitations at the time, all rooms in the game are separate - travelling between them causes a brief loading screen of the door opening in a pitch-black void and Regina walking through. While these are 100% due to hardware limitations they do add to the atmosphere, there's a sense of the unknown and uncanny as you walk through this floating door in a perfect darkness.

Similarly to how Will says, and i quote, 'It made me feel like a child again' (about Alekon) - Dino Crisis has a similar effect on me. Give me a limited amount of fuzzy polygons any day and i'll be happy. And if those fuzzy polygons are shaped like dinosaurs? Perfection. Throughout my whole playthrough i was trying to think of a 'Dino Crisis of Faith' joke and i couldn't figure one out.