Gone are the days of the prerendered survival horror. People are satisfied these days for the swinging camera angles and ambient lighting effects only capable in full 3D. Well Dino Crisis (by the masterminds at Capcom) was the first survival horror to utilise full 3D, the box boasts “a powerful new 3D engine” and powerful it is. You play Regina, a commando sent to retrieve a certain Doctor Kirk from a secret research facility. Upon arriving at the island you and your team mates Gail and Rick discover the island is crawling with dinosaurs and must find a way to make your escape.

That 3D engine mentioned before is incredibly powerful, the camera swings and pans and lighting is made a hell of a lot easier. Most of the time you find yourself not missing the prerendering in the backgrounds and that’s fine really because the 3D engine does the job brilliantly. Controlling Regina is a walk in the park; she moves nimbly and has a swift 180 degree turn which makes escape easy, she wields her weapons with frightening vivacity and wears tight leather! What’s not to like?. Dino Crisis also features interesting DANGER! Sequences in which Regina can drop her weapon and must scramble to recover it which is intense (and bad for the d-pad). Weapons are pretty standard, in easy mode you begin with all the weapons in the game minus upgrades, in normal you must look for the shotgun and grenade gun. All the aforementioned weapons have two types of ammunition each which do more damage to certain dinosaurs than to others. An interesting feature is that there is no status indicator, you must decide based on the injuries sustained by Regina if she requires treatment or not which can range from healing minor wounds to stopping bleeding with hemostatic medicine, there are also chemicals you can find which increase the potency of items (such as being able to make poison darts out of anaesthetic darts).

Dino Crisis has brilliant graphics, for full 32 BIT 3D they look really spiffy; Regina’s model looks great and there is little interlacing of environment and characters (for instance when you find yourself sinking into a wall). Loading times are also decreased dramatically from using full 3D as opposed to having to load a large image into the consoles RAM. One thing that could have been improved though are explosions and blood effects which are incredibly pixelated and remind me of Capcom’s younger days.

Dino Crisis has quite a boring soundtrack which basically consists of ambience and techno horror which would feel more at home in Resident evil. I personally was expecting thumping jungle beats with drums and panpipes and what not, something more fitting of the subject matter. The sound effects however are brilliant, especially the ear splitting roars of the T-Rex which made me need to change my pants once and awhile (don’t tell me it hasn’t happened to you!).

The best part of Dino Crisis however are the guest stars; the dinosaurs. They have the most terrible AI I have ever encountered – run and bite no matter what is there, if they hit something while they are chasing you they have to stop and walk around stupidly for a moment before giving chase again which gives you more than enough time to escape. The dinosaurs also seem a little too strong at times but that doesn’t necessarily make for a bad playing experience (they’re not as bad as the hunters, can anything be?).
GOOD: Backgrounds and models are brilliant for full 3D. Good storyline and finally some great acting. The T-Rex rules.

BAD: Dinosaurs too stupid and strong. Lack of status indicator gets a little annoying at times. Soundtrack a bit of a disappointment.