Dino Crisis 3

"In space no one can here you scream at the camera position"

Well, here we finally have the long awaited Dino Crisis 3 game from Capcom that we have been waiting for since Capcom first announced the games release exclusive on the Microsoft Xbox.

There have been tons of bad press for this game for a better part of a couple months due to the Japanese reviews of the game...so now, a couple months later, we finally have a U.S. copy of the game...so is it any good?

First things first...there is no real ties to the previous installments of the game that appeared on the PC, Psone, and the Sega Dreamcast. This is a ''fresh start'' for the franchise because it is also drastically diffrent from the previous games and has new approach to the standard formula.

Second, this it the type of game where you must play it to get a better feel for if you would like it or not. Hell, even my review of the game shouldnt persuade you to like the game or hate it, i just want you to try it out. This is one of those games that you really need to play if only for a little bit.

STORY

The game takes place almost 500 years into earths future and over one of the planets in our solar system, a mysterious space ship(a 300 year old colony ship) appears and is headed straight towards earth. See, this ship disappeared over 300 years ago and no one knows what happened to it. So therefore, the government sends the S.O.A.R. team(think the space marines from aliens) to investigate this ship. Well, things go bad from the initial encounter with the ship and the S.O.A.R. team is stranded on the 300 year old ship and soon learn its not a ghost ship as previously thought, but over run with dinosaurs(hence the title DINO crisis.) I dont want to spoil the story, as for some it will be great while others will feel it is completely bad, again, you have to experience it for yourself.

GRAPHICS

This is the most appealing part of the game. The game is freakin amazing graphically. Everything runs at a smooth framerate and there are no jaggie edges that are in other games. This is a full 3D world brought to life. The ship is huge and offers tons of exploration and combat. The ship has the same feel of such ships from movies like 2001 A Space Odyssey or more recently, Event Horrizon. Everything has a reflection on its surface, except for the characters who just offer a bland ball shadow...for what we know the xbox is capable of doing with shadows, capcom seems to have just decided not to try and make it look too impressive.

The CGI movies of this game are also amazing. You could swear that it was squaresoft work here its just so amazing. The CGI movies help move the plot along although i wish we were treated to more in game graphics instead and it would have been better to have the movies be widescreen...instead, they are presented here in fullscreen.

The character models are very nicely done and the dinos have some very cool graphically effects....the particle effects in this game arent too shabby either.

Then, theres the camera....ouch. Capcom has perfected a full roaming camera in such games as Devil May Cry and its sequel, it makes you wonder why the camera in this game is bad. For me, i was quickly able to get over this and play the game very well, but for others this static camera will hurt a otherwise good game. The gameplay demands that you constantly be fighting dinos, why is the camera placed so that you cannot even see them most of the time when you are playing the game(unless they are on top of you and your dead?) Good for us though that the boss battles camera is actually good and it makes a cheap death highly unlikely.

GAMEPLAY

Standard issue stuff here. You are equipped with guns and a cool jetpack that allow you to handle yourself on the ship and are able to buy powerups and new weapons to get you around the ship. It feels alot like resident evil but on speed because you need to constantly move around...this are dinos not zombies...and when your fighting as many as 7 raptors at once, you need to be moving. Only problem with the gameplay is that the camera makes it one of the bigger problems you must learn to overcome, worse than even the dinos.

A cool gameplay gimmick is that the ship is constantly changing and you can ''transform'' it to access previous unavailable areas and new goodies for you to explore.

OVERALL

I liked this game and i enjoyed it very much...the replay is moderate as you unlock some extra modes and other goodies to boot. I suggest renting the game or playing the recently released demo thats available on the OXM demo disk.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 09/19/03