Dino Crisis

As the creator of the Resident Evil series, Shinji Mikami knows a thing or two about Survival Horror. With Dino Crisis, he delivers a game that leaves out the horror but retains the creeping anxiety of his previous works. Resident Evil players will be familiar with the game’s interface and controls and will be able to jump right in. However, Mikami stretches and twists expectations just enough to keep things fresh and to advance the genre a few steps forward.

The story of Dino Crisis involves a small team of Special Forces types who are sent to a remote island to retrieve a renegade scientist who is performing some sort of mysterious Top Secret experiments. When they arrive, they find the laboratory overrun with dinosaurs and the target scientist missing. The narrative follows their attempts to find the scientist and escape from the island alive.

At first this appears to be a warmed over Jurassic Park rip-off but as the game progresses Mikami presents an interesting quantum physics explanation for the dinosaur’s presence. He skillfully designs the game so that the solution to the dinosaur mystery interweaves with the missing scientist and the escape from the island.

Dino Crisis’ game play focuses on navigating through the experimental facility that is infested with many hungry dinosaurs, including a troublesome T-Rex. Ammunition and First-Aid are in short supply and death can come mercilessly quick. In fact, Mikami does not even provide a health indicator. Damage is realistic and one or two slashes from a Raptor will pretty much end a person’s life. Because direct confrontation with the giant lizards is almost always fatal, clever thinking is required get out of dangerous situations. In addition to the deadly creatures, the facility has an elaborate security system that must be hacked into and disabled. This provides for some very well designed puzzles that are logical, internally consistent, and genuinely fun to solve.

Graphically, the game dispenses with Resident Evil’s pre-rendered two dimensional backgrounds and instead makes the leap to a completely real-time three dimensional polygon environment. This allows for some expressive camera movement and gives a good sense of moving through a real space, rather than the old feeling of navigating across a slide show. Because the game was originally created for the Sony Playstation, the polygons are necessarily low in detail. However, this is not a noticeable defect as they are representing the relatively sterile architecture of a research lab. Overall, Dino Crisis’ visuals are nicely polished for its Dreamcast release.

The music and sound for Dino Crisis are also well done. The music is unobtrusively moody with bursts of intensity during moments of action. Sound effects for the game are crisp and realistic. From the scrape of a raptor’s claw on a steel girder to the 20 ton stomp of a Tyrannosaurus, Dino Crisis has the same lush sound design you would expect from a Hollywood production.

Dino Crisis shows the possibilities for game play found in creating a realistic space with real-world rules and allowing players to think their way out of difficult situations. With smart puzzles, a believable environment, and a tightly focused goal, Dino Crisis brings the survival in Survival Horror to the forefront.

Sega Dreamcast
Capcom
2000

game review by J.B. Fleming, 2001