Dino Crisis 2 For: playstation Genre: adventure Reviewed by: Doug Developer: Capcom Publisher: Capcom Released:9.30.00   Dino Crisis 2 We have the complete intro movie, high-res screens, and news from further in Capcom's adventure. August 10, 2000 New Impressions Ah, curses - there is more than just action in Dino Crisis 2. In between blasting tyrannosaurs, fleeing from velociraptors, and slicing up procompsognathi with a giant machete, you will have to spend a little time finding keys, solving puzzles, and exploring new and different areas. Heavy is the load we gamers must carry. Our second look at Dino Crisis 2, in a form much more complete than the early E3 demo, reveals a somewhat different story construction, and a much more interesting opening movie than the one we saw earlier. The mysterious Third Energy is at it again, with disastrous consequences for both the bystanders when things go awry and the special forces sent in to clean up the mess. The first section of the opening movie is a frightful echo of the beginning of Resident Evil 3, as the TRAT team sent to rescue survivors from the accident is attacked and overrun by a horde of raptors. Just before protagonists Dylan and Regina are about to become lunch...the raptors stop, sniff the air, and flee. Strange behavior? No, not really. They just smelled the T-Rex before the humans could hear it. Then begins the sequence that we've already seen, where David slows down the Tyrannosaurus with a rocket-propelled grenade while the rest of the survivors run like hell. Once they're in the clear, the game takes a different direction than the demo did. Early on, you play only as Dylan. There's no representative sequences starring Regina. Instead, he goes it alone for a while, heading out of the jungle, into a somewhat out-of-place cornfield (the installation where things went wrong is in the Midwest somewhere), and from there to an abandoned installation. It's there that things become a little bit mysterious - Dylan finds several survivors, none of whom seem all that talkative. Some flee when spotted, while others, dressed in futuristic outfits and wielding unusual missile weapons, attack him on sight. The T-Rex is still kicking, too, which is no help when it comes to sorting the mystery out. The pre-rendered backgrounds and area design are pretty impressive in parts. The military warehouse where Dylan battles the T-Rex (or, more likely, flees from the T-Rex as fast as possible) looks very sharp, full of disused machinery and multiple elevations to climb up on, but it's no too hard to navigate in your quest to avoid being eaten, and it's even easier to get around once the Tyrannosaurus smashes some of the polygonal background elements. Quieter scenes look just as good, like a ransacked lab filled with unidentifiable equipment and eviscerated researchers. Some of the new dinosaur types are a nice change, too - in the early sections, you fight almost nothing but raptors, but they come in a couple of different colors, including a cool-looking green and brown variety. This version is still entirely in Japanese, so it's no picnic trying to understand which way to go when the game slows down and expects you to do a little puzzle-solving (There's a locked door. There are kanji. Brain...melting...). The story is also a bit of a mystery, but I think that's probably intentional. I certainly look forward to finding out why these strange fellows are trying to zap me with little flying buzzsaws, as well as the more obvious question of why North Dakota has been turned into a hellhole infested with reptiles and giant bugs. Fast action is still at the fore, and the switch to pre-rendered graphics has been compensated for with great art and area design. Enjoy the new complete intro and gameplay movies, and we'll bring you more information on Dino Crisis 2 as it comes. -- David Smith -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The sequel to Dino Crisis is playable at Capcom's booth today (May 11, 2000), and after only a few moments of the game I was able to discern that it is most likely the best PlayStation game of the show. Dino Crisis 2 is without a doubt every single thing that the first SHOULD have been and wasn't. The game demo that was playable at the booth is packed with action, lots of different kinds of dinosaurs, with whom you fight – instead of run away from – and a provides a completely different feeling than its originator, Resident Evil. With Dino Crisis 2, Capcom has truly departed from the confines of the Resident Evil landscape, and has in turn created a real action-based dinosaur game that had me enthralled within minutes. The fact is, the game is a complete surprise to both gamers, such as myself, but to Capcom, too. It's come into its own, and here at E3 it stood out with shining colors. In the demo we played, you take on Regina, the star from the first game. She is dressed exactly as in the first game, tightly outfitted and sultry. The entire demo, and the entire game, takes place outside, in prerendered jungles and forests in which the path widens to giant dirt fields, and then occasionally narrows to bushy paths and trails. The outside environments are truly perfect for this game. Throughout the demo, Raptors, in twos and three, jump out and attack. Regina is equipped with at least two guns, but what's especially cool is that she can use two weapons, one after the other. She was loaded with a large automatic machine gun and a taser the size of a short sword. By pressing O, you attack. That will probably change to X when the game reaches the States this October. The Triangle button enables the taser, which was an excellent tool to kill off Raptors. By pressing R2, you swing around in a 180 degree turn, and you'll need to as the raptors attack from all angles simultaneously. I was literally yelling in sheer joy and delight when this happened, because this sequel enables you to fight the dinos! I was educated quickly in Dino Crisis 2. I learned that you run out of ammo rather quickly. After I reached the end of the demo level, I confronted a T-Rex. Or rather, the other way around. Regina reaches a round area with a small mesa on one side. A ladder leads up to it. As you reach for the ladder, a cutscene ensues and a jeep is shoved off the mesa and almost squashes you flat. Of course, Regina dashes to the side, but following the mangled jeep is a T-Rex. He's the boss of the demo. I shot at it until my ammo ran out, and though the taser was an excellent weapon against the Raptors, killing them off in about three to four swings, the taser is no match for a T-Rex. No bueno. Even though the game felt much different than Resident Evil, much like the fights against the Nemesis in Re 3, you must recognize patterns in the way the T-Rex moves, and run exactly when he pauses. Otherwise, the giant creature picks you up in his mouth and throws you around like a dog with a rag doll. After he does that twice, you are done, kiddo. One of the new additions to the game is the combo system. If you are able to kill raptors quickly and in succession, you receive combination points. When you earn up enough, these points for additional items, such as weapons, ammo, and health. Dino Crisis 2 is one of the coolest games of the show, if not the very best PlayStation game at the show. Douglass C. Perry -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Splintering off the Resident Evil series in an entirely new universe, Capcom's Dino Crisis led gamers last fall into a fully 3D, branching odyssey of huge, hungry dinosaurs that wanted your blood and bones. And it was raucous fun, to a point. Dino Crisis was scary in a different way that Resident Evil: There was less slaughtering and running away, but it had its moments. In a kind of ironic way, Capcom -- the masters of the sequel -- needed to make a sequel. Dino Crisis 2 looks to be everything that the first should have been (PlayStation users with modded systems should be hopeful, too), and more. The most significant aspects of the game are considerably big. Dino Crisis 2 enables you to play as two characters, the former star, Regina and a new character, Dylan. It handles action situations differently. You can equip yourself with one weapon in each hand, for seriously dangerous fights that occur with more than one dino at a time. There are 10 different kinds of dinosaurs in this game, a fantastic improvement over the first. And lastly, Dino Crisis 2 takes place entirely outside, in the jungles and forests of ancient times. All of these aspects are crucial to improving the sequel, but the last one may indeed be the most subtle and important. Imagine being in a dense, lush forest, completely outside of your own environment -- entirely subject to their world, with no doors to shut them out, with no extra rooms, no nothing. Just you and big hungry ferocious Raptors, seemingly everywhere. That's scary, in my book. And a scarier, more dramatic game is what Capcom intends on delivering to us with Dino Crisis 2. Due this October in the US and rated "M," Dino Crisis is being overseen by Shinji Mikami, creator of the Resident Evil series and the original Dino Crisis. "Dino Crisis 2 delivers more panic-evoking fear than ever before," said Todd Thorson, director of marketing, Capcom Entertainment. "This time Regina has to fight off multiple dinosaurs at a time instead of the one-on-one attacks in the original Dino Crisis. Dino Crisis 2 takes the survival horror genre in an all-new direction by focusing on high-paced action and split-second decisions." The sequel starts begins where the first left off. In DC, Regina and her team successfully captured Dr. Kirk, secured his revolutionary and dangerous work and sent him packing to prison. But that seems to have only energized him and his colleagues to double their efforts. Regina discovers that Dr. Kirk’s research on the Third Energy has been mysteriously transferred to the country’s military department. With little regard to dangers at the heart of Dr. Kirk's plans, the small government continued Kirk’s research. Only this time, the catastrophe is worse than before. Edward City, where the research is being performed, vanishes. The whole town mysteriously evaporates and has been replaced by a giant Jurassic jungle. A jungle filled with you know what. Here's how Capcom describes the rest of the story: "The government must begin an emergency evacuation to rescue both the staff and the results of the research. However, the decision is made to use an experimental time and space transfer device to send a military task force back in time and to the location of Edward City. Equipped with specially altered anti-dinosaur weapons, team members travel back in time on a mission they cannot possibly imagine. Unfortunately for her, Regina can imagine." She's accompanied by some assistance this time, though. Dylan is a veteran of the regular army, now a member of the Tactical Reconnoitering and Acquisition Team. His advantages are his strength and endurance - he may not be the fastest character, but he'll probably last the longest, especially thanks to his heavy armament. David is another member of the TRAT special forces - as you might guess from the goofy hat (which he never takes off), he has aspirations to become a real-life cowboy. He's basically a nice guy, but that doesn't stop him from cutting loose with his collection of heavy special weapons (check out him rocketing the T-Rex in the intro movie. Apparently, Dino Crisis 2 enables players to play as both Regina and Dylan, which means that players possibly switch characters at some point in the game, somewhat like Resident Evil 3 Nemesis. David may be playable, but we don't know for sure. Players also are equipped with special weapons that weren't in the first. According to Capcom, the game is loaded with special "anti-dinosaur weapons," which any sane person can infer means killer, big-ass guns and the like. The game also enables gamers to target much better than before. Players can aim and target enemies from anywhere, below or above, for deadly group kills. For instance, if Dylan is standing on a bridge and a herd of dinosaurs is beneath it, he can aim his special weapon at the target, obliterating the herd from a distance. In close combat, you have some new maneuvers to help you battle the dinosaurs more effectively. While walking was the default movement speed in Dino Crisis, now you'll automatically run, only slowing down when you press a particular button. To get around the aggravating turn speed of Resident Evil, DC2 will also include a quick 180 degree turn, letting you swing around to quickly face enemies. The R1 button will let you shoot while running, which is great for avoiding small and fast-moving enemies, and a sidestep maneuver lets you neatly dodge charging dinosaurs. Dino Crisis introduced a phenomenal level of intelligence of the part of the dinosaurs to entice and scare gamers. In Dino 2, each of the 10 creatures is intelligent in the ways we suspect they were in their time. So Raptors will most likely strategize in pack hunts, while Pterosaurs attack from the air, and Allosaurs and T-Rex's strike with great speed and ferocity all by his lonesone. Dino 2 rewards players with points for defeating dinosaurs, too; you receive credit points to help earn better weapons, healing items, and ammunition. Taking the game in a slightly unique direction, the creators at Capcom bring gamers underwater for the first time in their survival horror and survival panic games. Players dive underwater with diving gear and fight ancient underwater dinosaurs to the death. Gamers will also get the chance to take on "action oriented tasks." Basically, you engage in mini-games that range from protecting team members or running down dinosaurs to retrieve a special item that they've stolen. It looks like Capcom has taken a lot of the well-meaning criticism from its first Dino Crisis experience and is applying it to Dino Crisis 2. With all of these major changes in the works, this sequel looks to take the series to heights that the first game -- and Resident Evil itself -- have never seen before. I can't wait. --Douglass C. Perry 8.26.00   click on the above images for screenshot for the larger image images from ign