Dino Crisis 3 Member Review for the Xbox

HIT
+ Dinosaurs!
+ Somewhat awesome guns

MISS
- Everything is ruined in space
- Horrible controls
- Sounds like everything we've heard before
- Camera movement ruins any chance this game had of being great

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Everyone that's ever seen a good horror movie series taken to space (Friday the 13th, Leprechaun) knows what I'm getting at.(okay, so the Leprechaun series was horrible to start with) There hasn't been a good horror film yet that's been taken to space and survived criticism... and apparently, the same goes for the Dino Crisis series. The first Dino Crisis debuted for the Playstation in 1999 and was immediately greeted with open arms. Many referred to it as "Resident Evil with dinosaurs". Not quite a year later, in near the 4th quarter of 2000, Dino Crisis 2 was released. Many found it to be a far better game than the original. Fast forward to 2003: Almost three years to the day of the release of Dino Crisis 2 on the Playstation, Dino Crisis 3 is released for Microsoft's game console, the XBox. Needless to say, in the eyes of the gaming community... it failed miserably. When will people learn that taking certain things to space never work... especially dinosaurs.

In Dino Crisis 3, you assume the role of various members of SOAR, a reconnaissance team out to report on the Ozymandias; an enormous space craft that disappeared over 300 years before the story takes place. Out of nowhere, the ship reappears and our SOAR members hit the scene. When they get there, they are met by jurassic beasts seemingly overtaken by some sort of parasite, earning them strange new abilities that were never seen in any Jurassic Park film. From here on out, it's your typical survival horror style game.

From a gameplay aspect, you're going to be moving at a pretty fast pace. While mostly trying to ditch the survival horror style, Capcom tries to force in a lot of quickly done action sequences which aren't nessicarily that bad, but aren't exactly thrilling either. Navigating through the game isn't quite as easy as one would think, especially since the camera is not very helpful. The L button will serve as the Strafe and Lock-On button. The R button will allow you a boost of speed via your jetpack. B executes your basic quick jumps. The X button will control attacks with your space weaponry while the Y button will launch your WASPs. The X button can be held for a powered up blast. The A button, as well as White and Black will be in charge of confirmation, Menu pop-up and Map pop-up, respectively. The Right Analog stick will function as your First-Person-Shooter viewpoint when clicked down. The Left Analog stick will allow for character movement and aiming, as well as surveying the area in First-Person mode.
Various other moves can be executed by holding the R button followed y pressing B in different situations.

From a visual standpoint, Dino Crisis 3 couldn't really look any better. The character models are done very well, but the main eye candy here are the beasts you will encounter. One of the main dinosaurs that stand out is none other than the ferocious T-Rex at the very start of the game, who seems to have his very flesh turned inside out. Some of the smaller, less important creatures don't show as much attention to detail, but that is made up for by the environments which look gorgeous on the XBox. As far as sound goes in Dino Crisis 3, we're pretty much looking at a rehash of old tunes from earlier on in the series replaced with a more modern feel, which really does nothing for the overall setting of the game. Definitely a disappointment.

I remember reading about this game back in late 2004 on Gamespot, and decided that the reviewer had no idea what he was talking about. I figured, "Hey, this game has dinosaurs... they look cool... what's the big deal, right?" WRONG! I picked this game up used at GameStop in early 2005 for 26.99 and took it home, expecting to find a new favorite game. I was sadly mistaken. While the cutscene at the beginning drew me in, I knew after I had dropped ole Rex that I was in for a rude awakening. The camera IS just as bad as everyone says it is, and the controls, while tolerable really do start to get under your skin after a while. Even after using a Playstaion 2 controller with my adapters I was still very disappointed. A good tip for gamers today that weren't around back in the days of the NES can look at this game and hopefully learn one very important lesson: Just because a game looks great doesn't mean it plays great. How did it stand up to my past reviews?

SCORECARD: (via www.enterthezombiegod.com)
5 (Concept)
2 (Gameplay)
7.5 (Visuals)
5 (Sound)
3 (Value)
0 (Tilt)
FINAL SCORE: 3.8

(Please visit www.enterthezombiegod.com for all my movie and videogame reviews!)