Thomas Plays Games - Dino Crisis

As a kid, the survival horror genre did a lot for me.

Well, let me take that back. It did it a lot for me -- or rather, to me. As in, I've got more than one memory of nearly shitting myself as previously unseen enemies bounded at me from offscreen, tearing into me with little to no concern for my well being. These assholes were only slightly less punishing than the completely uncooperative fixed camera angles of the day.

Despite my fear (and frustration), I constantly dug my teeth into survival horror games, simultaneously wishing that the next door I enter would either be a safe haven, or have something terrible and frightening waiting for me. Talk about a conflict of interest.

As horror movies drift further and further into the torture porn abyss (see: Saw), horror videogames seem to be following suit (see: Rise of Nightmares.) For classic survival horror enthusiasts,  options are limited. What are horror gamers to do?

Why, go back and play the horror classics from yesteryear, of course!

Or play Dead Space. But for the sake of this column, we're going to go with the horror classics thing.

With Halloween approaching, I have made it my personal goal to squeeze in as many classic survival horror games as possible before the holiday passes. Here's hoping that work, Dark Souls, Batman, and Battlefield 3 don't completely derail this entire idea.

First up on the docket is Dino Crisis, a dinosaur filled adventure in which our heroes must infiltrate a top secret research facility, rendezvous with an undercover agent, and extract a researcher who was previously thought to be dead.

Leading the charge is Gail, team leader and world-class toolbag who likes to be a lone wolf, treat his teammates like shit, and if I had to guess, probably wears TapouT t-shirts when he's not covered in body armor.

Good old Gail

At his side is Rick, resident computer wiz, whose abilities to hack mainframes and other such shit are only matched by his ability to crack wise. He's also the character who has a baaaaaaad feeling about this. Furthermore, he has a ponytail. Moving on.

I've got a baaaad feeling about this

Cooper is the team's third squad member, though his role is never explained beyond being the guy who has the radio. One can only assume he has some skills, as he's part of an elite spy team being sent on a top secret mission, but I can tell you with 100% assurance, he's excellent at getting eaten by dinosaurs. He displays this by using this talent within the first 2 minutes of the game.

The final member of our crack squad of spies is Regina, the 22-year-old wunderkind who specializes in undercover ops, infiltration, espionage, extermination, and scrap booking. Well, maybe all but that last one. She may also be the primary influence of Rihanna's stylist over the last year or so.

I've got the weirdest boner right now

The player steps into Regina's knee-high boots just after the team (minus Cooper) lands on Ibis Island, home of the top secret military research facility. It doesn't take long to learn that things are amiss, as Rick quickly discovers that the entire facility's power has been cut (nevermind that every light in the facility is on as he says this. Maybe they use solar lighting?) The trio set out on a quest to restore power to the facility and locate the mysterious Dr. Kirk, one of the government's top researchers, whose highly publicized death was apparently faked.

By "trio set out on a quest," I actually meant, "Regina goes and does a lot of shit, Gail acts like an ass, and Rick sits in the computer room and thinks about ponytails." Despite the whole "spy team" thing we set up in the first few minutes, the game focuses almost entirely on Regina's solo actions, with other character interactions mostly taking place over the radio. This is fine, as it adds to the game's atmosphere and general sense of solitude.

This solitude gives the game a pretty unique pacing, as players can go through relatively lengthy periods of time without hearing from a teammate or running into one of the titular dinos. The game places a decent amount of its focus on puzzles rather than action, making the moments where a raptor crashes through a window that much more startling.

For the most part, the horror in Dino Crisis is pretty light stuff. Raptors do occassionally jump through windows, drop through air vents, or inexplicably make their way through security doors that normally require keycards to get through. These jump moments are pretty few and far between, but provide the closest thing one could consider a "scare."

Combat with the dinosaurs takes on a slightly different kind of horror, however, as velociraptors are absolute bullet sponges. Regina's starting peashooter -- er, pistol -- does little to hinder a raptor's approach, making them far more threatening than the typical survival horror zombie. Combine this with their aggressive nature and the fact that dodging these assholes can be rather difficult, and you've got a pretty tricky enemy on your hands.

When you're not getting tossed around by raptors, players often find themselves sorting out a pretty tricky array of puzzles. Puzzle segments are old hat in the survival horror genre, but find a hint of freshness in Dino Crisis, as most puzzles seem grounded in reality. Gone are the "put the jewels in the statue's eyes to reveal the hidden door in the wall" puzzles of the Resident Evil series, replaced instead by "put the battery in the right spot to make the generator run." It may not sound like more fun on paper, but when the puzzles all have an air of practicality in their design, it's a little easier to overlook the tedium they might bring otherwise.

As far as plots go, there isn't much to talk about here. The game does a decent enough job of explaining who Dr. Kirk is and how the hell he turned Ibis Island into Jurassic Park, but the storyline lacks any real points of interest. Thankfully, things pick a up a bit in the last act of the game, culminating in a pretty satisfying conclusion with 3 different endings.

When it comes to whether or not the game is worth playing, the answer is pretty simple. The game is a product of Shinji Mikami, one of the forefathers of survival horror. The game is built on the same formula that made the Resident Evil series such a huge success, and for the most part, the formula works here as well. For $5.99 as a PSN download, and maybe even cheaper if you can find a copy of the original PS1 disc, Dino Crisis is a nice little bit of gaming, and should satisfy most fans of classic survival horror.