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Lttp: Dino Crisis 1

Bebpo

Banned
Picked up Dino Crisis 1 & 2 yesterday for $1.20 each on PSN. I have a disc copy of DC1 somewhere and had played like an hour of it in 1999 but it got backlogged and it wasn't until someone mentioned in the thread on the PSN sale yesterday that DC1 was a Shinji Mikami directed game, (something I never knew), and so I totally had to play it since it's the only game of his I've never finished.

...and it's one of the best $1.20 and 6 hours I've ever spent!

Played through basically the entire game today in a 5 hour session (did the intro last night and total game time was 5:11 + some non-recorded time so probably took about 6-6:30 hours). It was fun! The game has a great pace to it and it was really hard to put down until about the 3 hour mark when it felt like it was almost other and at that point I figured the final area of the game would keep the pace and not be more than another 30-45 mins so I kept playing...only to find out the final lab basement is like 40-50% of the entire game and takes 2+ hours with maze-like design, some annoying enemies, lots of enemies overall (not much ammo either), and lots of puzzles.

Speaking of puzzles, the puzzles were great for the most part. Better than the weakass puzzles we get in most modern games. They weren't particularly hard (outside the memorization password game which got pretty insane by round 3), but they were fun and creative and there was a bunch of them.

It was also just a lot of fun to play a survival game like this where the best tactic 90% of the time is just running like hell past all the enemies weaving around them to conserve health & ammo. The constant speed and running gives the game a fast paced intensity and looking at the map and memorizing the next run you're gonna do from one save point to where you gotta go next is just fun and holds up great today.

Overall it just had something that a lot of modern games lack. I'm not super nostalgic in general with gaming and I greatly prefer modern games, especially as many old-school games have terrible interfaces and have random really slow things to them (Xenogears text speed <.<), but at the same time I gotta hand it to Dino Crisis. Most modern games whether indie or AAA, most of the time I can't play more than 1-2 hour sessions in a day because there's just so much repetition, cutscenes or dialogue, tutorials, etc... done usually in order to stretch out to 10-30 hour game lengths, but games like Dino Crisis, RE1, MGS1 just move at a great pace for 5-7 hours and then are done are just are so much more consistently edge of your seat engaging and easier to keep playing for hours at a time (there are handfuls of great modern games that give that feel too, but it generally feels like most modern games are bloated in order to keep players from returning them quickly).

Heck, the controls on the Vita version of the PS Classic I was playing were even broken and for the entire game Regina would keep trying to turn around the wrong way (everytime I would enter a door she would immediately turn backwards to face the door) which meant I was fighting the controls consistently and took a lot of enemy hits trying to reign her in and keep her moving in the right direction. Yet despite that I couldn't stop playing.

Now that being said, besides the awful tank controls (which were obviously way worse with my never ending control glitches), I gotta say I didn't like the mechanic of enemies being able to knock your weapon away. There were a few times I'd get trapped by two enemies, take a hit and lose my weapon, so now not only am I trapped, but I can't even break away if there's an opening because then I'll be leaving my weapon behind so I have to get to my weapon, pick it up, then try to get out, which was just annoying at times.

And then my other issue (not really an issue, but just a thought) is that I don't think Mikami pushed originality enough with the game following his Resident Evil 1. DC is very, very heavily inspired by RE1 (even down to the Heliport scenes and spending the last 1/3rd in the SCIENCE LABS), but not as good in a few ways. Namely Dino Crisis 1 basically has no boss fights the entire game (there's some mini-game type boss parts, but no real fights imo); whereas RE1 had a bunch of classic great bosses like the Snake and scary dude with the claws at the end. Also RE1 has more story and more interesting lore/atmosphere with the mansion compared to a generic lab. It's not even like Dino Crisis has you going through an interesting Jurassic Park type place, nope the game is just set in a boring standard lab (that happens to have Dinos) with a million keycards (having to get 2 separate cards [card + decoder] and solve a puzzle to open a lot of doors was pretty extreme key card level design structuring, but it flowed well so I'm fine with it and no complaints).

Dino Crisis isn't a ton worse than RE1, it's just slightly worse on those categories and the only real improvement is maybe the puzzles (RE1 had some good puzzles too though so it might be a draw). In the end Dino Crisis is like a B+ Resident Evil 1 clone with dinosaurs, which is still a great play and better than 90% of the survival horror stuff these days (I'd say DC1 is more fun and a better game even today than every RE since RE4 or at least RE5). But really, it's Mikami directed and Mikami directed games are some of the best games out there, so it does feels a bit phoned in for him. I'd rank Mikami's games as RE4/God Hand/Vanquish 3 A++++ games at the top of their genre in a row (dude was on fire for 6 years), then REmake/RE1 (REmake is better today, but RE1 gets marks for its time) are A quality stuff, P.N.03 is quite good too (A-), and then I'd put Dino Crisis (B+) above The Evil Within (C+; TEW has a lot of great things going for it, but there are way too many shitty 1/10 type parts scattered throughout that really bring the experience down; game needed another 6 months of playtesting and cutting).

So yeah, Dino Crisis is definitely worth the 5-6 hours of time and $1.20. Looking forward to trying out Dino Crisis 2 for the first time now as I never picked it up back in the day because of the genre change to action.

Additionally, as much as the final boss fight is weak as heck in DC1, it totally gets credit for:

T-Rex chasing you while riding on a FLYING SPACESHIP THROUGH A WATERWAY
That was so old-school Capcom and was great lol
 

Shoujax

Neo Member
Loved Dino Crisis back in the day, as a kid might have even preferred it to Resident Evil (possibly my obsession with dinosaurs coming through). Don't remember enjoying Dino Crisis 2 as much though. Didn't it become very arcadey?
 

Soulflarz

Banned
Jawmuncher thanks you!

Jokes aside, I liked it too in general (got around to it a few months ago), and would highly recommend it to people if you play it with the mindset of when it came out.
And use a guide for puzzles.
 

Bebpo

Banned
Oh, historical accuracy question (I know, I know, but I'm curious). Are the bigger raptor-ish/armadillo-ish dino enemies later on even real dinosaurs? How about Blue raptors?

I'm guessing the answer is no, but maybe I will learn something.


Time to load up Dino Crisis 2 tomorrow?! :)

Maybe!
 

Bebpo

Banned
The pipe puzzle isn't fun.

Actually that was one of the first puzzles I really enjoyed. It felt like it took a little more brainwork than the puzzles I'm used to in games these days. That being said the interface of having to run to each of the 6 consoles and lower/raise parts was tedious I agree. But thinking about what goes where and which order was pretty fun I thought. Same with the 3-part power line puzzles.

Funny enough, the puzzles in Dino Crisis got me missing the Layton games and their puzzles. I still have a couple of those I never got to, so now I'm in the mood.

I remember getting stuck because we couldn't figure out a password way back. Something related to water?

The Ciphers weren't bad as long as you found the book that told you have to decipher the passcode. Usually the book was in the same room, but a couple of times when it wasn't it sucks because if you miss it, you just have no idea. I missed the book for the last 1 or 2 so I just googled it to speed things up at that point because I wanted to finish the game.
 

Doczu

Member
Dino Crisis 1 is a great RE clone, but the sequel is when the game "series" really shines. It was a RE 4 switch that at first i thought it would be crappy (who the fuck would want to play a arcade like shooter with tank controls?) but boy was i wrong.

Tight action, combo's, upgrades and a really wacky story with
time travel, and bad scientist shit
(should i spoiler such old game?).

Have fun OP, even if the sequel won't satisfy as a Dino Crisis game, it's still a blast!
 

Bebpo

Banned
Dino Crisis 1 is a great RE clone, but the sequel is when the game "series" really shines. It was a RE 4 switch that at first i thought it would be crappy (who the fuck would want to play a arcade like shooter with tank controls?) but boy was i wrong.

Tight action, combo's, upgrades and a really wacky story with
time travel, and bad scientist shit
(should i spoiler such old game?).

Have fun OP, even if the sequel won't satisfy as a Dino Crisis game, it's still a blast!

Yeah, this was me and why I never gave it a chance. Really been pleasantly surprised to see so many people come out in the last few days in praise of DC2's formula working. Definitely looking forward to playing it :)
 

dlauv

Member
Kind of agree with this guy, as a survival horror fan.

The art/map design (the two go hand in hand), abundance of number codes, item box separation, and damage sponges make it too much of a slog and too tedious.
 
Such a great series and definitely one of the most worthy ones to be revived. Especially DC1 was like a dream come true for my younger self (loved RE, loved dinosaurs)

It's to this day one of the biggest mysteries of out time as to what Capcom was thinking when they made DC3.

I can only echo what others have said here OP. Play DC2. It's vastly different and much faster than the first but equally as good.
 

Bebpo

Banned
Kind of agree with this guy, as a survival horror fan.

The art/map design (the two go hand in hand), abundance of number codes, item box separation, and damage sponges make it too much of a slog and too tedious.

fwiw, I didn't fight almost anything in the game (put a few enemies to sleep though), and the ones I did fight (in small hallways I'd have to use multiple times) I primarily used the shotgun and it took them down in a few shots, so I didn't have any damage sponge issues with the enemies. It was more fun just to learn how to dodge their attacks while running past them.

I think the map design is good until the last area with Level A/B/C doors, Chief of Operation locked doors, Scientist locked key code doors, battery locked doors, etc... all stacked on top of each other. Until the Basement Lab the maps flowed pretty well and actually I was impressed with the map design and when I'd open shortcuts and they'd connect to areas I'd been to, I totally got Dark Souls 1 vibes of a really well designed map that conceptually all fit together. The keycard stuff wasn't much of an issue because at the normal flow of the game you'd either have both cards by the time you found the door to use them on, or you'd get one card, find the door, then get the other card and know exactly where to head to next (back to the door). Plus everything was close and there were a ton of shortcuts.

But man, that last area was just packing way too much stuff in not enough physical space. Very over-designed and the weakest section imo (although still solid, but I loved the first half in comparison).

The item box thing is weird. It's like they wanted to make it where you could save up and spend more to get better item boxes, but then it kind of screwed you over later on because you couldn't access them unless you bought another one of the better item boxes and maybe you'd only have enough plugs for the regular item boxes. Yeah, that definitely could've been handled better. I had serious ammo issues in the endgame and I'd barely used any ammo the entire game! Like I said I ran past almost all enemies, but I swear 80% of the box pick ups were health item boosters I didn't need. By the end I had like 10+ Med Pack L++, and just as many resurrections/and stop-bleeding items, but I barely had any shotgun shells (I saved all my grenade ammo for boss encounters, and handgun was too weak by the last area, so shotgun was the only weapon I could use and the ammo just did not exist much at all).
 

Kuraudo

Banned
Incredible game. It was one of the first games I remember beating from start to finish over the course of a couple of weeks, rather than over like a year with numerous restarts. Absolutely loved the graphics at the time, from the art direction to the real time backgrounds: it felt like MGS with RE gameplay and dinosaurs.

The sequel is great too.
 
love this game so much, i played it a year ago and couldn't stop playing. the DDK keys for the doors where infuriating though, i could handle it at first but the last few i just had to look up.
 
It was also just a lot of fun to play a survival game like this where the best tactic 90% of the time is just running like hell past all the enemies weaving around them to conserve health & ammo.

This is what I've always done in RE1. No point in even shooting most stuff just run.
 
Brilliant first 2 games,some of my favourite Capcom titles.Even though I have the 3rd I ignore it,turn it facing away from me,I don't want to see the shame in its eyes looking sadly back at me.
 
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