Dino Crisis 3

"Worst camera system ever"

There are a few reoccurring thoughts that cross my mind as I decide on how to go about writing this review. One is the fact that this is the shiniest game I’ve ever played in my entire life. If you like, and are attracted to shiny objects, then by all means, skip this review and go purchase Dino Crisis 3. The second thought is why in god’s name did Capcom take dinosaurs out of the jungle, hideously mutate them, and throw them into a derelict spaceship in 2548? The third and final thought is did Capcom purposely try to create the most awkward camera system ever to be found in a videogame? At some point during its development cycle, the moderately successful jungle-themed Resident Evil game took a turn for the worst. What is left for us, is another romp through familiar territory.

The most obvious change to the series is the setting. Where as the original and its sequel took place out in the open jungle, Dino Crisis 3 takes place on a derelict spaceship called the Ozymandias. A strange place to find dinosaurs yes, but luckily the game’s explanation of this phenomenon, to a certain unbelievable degree, makes sense.
You play as Patrick (and sometimes Sonya) from the elite commando unit SOAR (Special Operations and Reconnaissance) who have been sent in to investigate the sudden, mysterious reappearance of the Ozymandias, a ship that has been lost for 300 years. Naturally everything goes wrong, and our heroes have to make an emergency escape onto the ship itself. Once inside, the crew finds themselves up against hoards of hideously disfigured dinosaurs who insist on ingesting our main characters. The story unfolds through short cutscenes and documents found scattered around the Ozymandias. For the most part the story is engaging. Not because it’s believable, or even all that interesting, but because you want to find out just how Capcom came up with a believable explanation as to how the dinosaurs got onto the ship in the first place.

Dino Crisis 3 borrows some survival horror mechanics from the Resident Evil series, such as finding notes, solving illogical puzzles and so on and so forth, but ultimately ends up being a game more focused on action than survival. The SOAR team is equipped with jet packs and state of the art weaponry including the all-mighty WASPS, which are little robotic turrets, released by our characters to kick some major dinosaur ass.
The basic formula is the same as most games of this type, find an item, put that item somewhere, unlock a door then repeat the process all over again to complete the game. The game often makes you send your character from one end of the ship all the way to the other in order to find a particular item (especially near the end of the game). This results in some extremely repetitious tasks for our characters, and more importantly, for ourselves. By defeating enemies, characters gain credits which can be spent at save points on upgrading various stats. The idea is to chain together as many kills as possible, to increase the amount of credits obtained. You can also collect credits located throughout the ship to help increase your abilities. The repetitious nature of this game hurts its overall fun factor. Shooting dinosaurs over and over again as they relentlessly hunt you down, is by no means fun. Since the game only has three or four different species of dinosaur, it means you’ll not only be fighting hordes and hordes of dinosaurs, you’ll be fighting hordes and hordes of the same dinosaurs.

I’ve decided to devote an entire paragraph to the game’s ridiculous camera system. The camera is horrible. It’s the scariest thing about this game. The camera is always in a fixed position, and will change itself to another fixed position only when the character has moved to that position. In essence, you can only see what the camera lets you see. Capcom tried to dismiss this fatal error by including a first person perspective, which is brought up by pressing the right analog stick. Unfortunately your character can’t move during this perspective, and ends up being utterly useless. This system isn’t so bad when used in conjunction with smaller areas, such as the hallways and small rooms like in the Resident Evil series, but in a massive spaceship that has endlessly long corridors, the camera will get you killed. You will spend most of your time fighting enemies off screen, and most of your time dying because of that. The camera will never switch its position to show the off screen dinosaur that is ready to charge and kill your character because he or she has a minimal amount of health left and isn’t aware of the danger. It isn’t that hard to implement an adjustable camera.

The interior of the ship is best described as a massive reflecting metallic corridor.
Everything shines and reflects, and although this is easy on the eyes at first, during the later portion of the game it becomes quite easy to get lost. All of the ships rooms look exactly the same and it’s hard to distinguish a new room from one you’ve already visited. The map helps alleviate the confusion, but even the map controls are awkward enough to cause frustration. It would be nice to see some variety in the ship’s design. For instance, the addition of some sort of environmental simulator, where in one room, there may be a snow storm, while in another, there may be a river full of wildlife, isn’t too far-fetched for the year 2548 is it? At least that way the some of the game’s rooms would have a fresh feeling to them, and wouldn’t feel like old rehashed versions of the previous corridor. The character and dinosaur models are excellent and well detailed. Same goes for the game’s metallic environments which are extremely detailed as well. If you can get passed the shine factor, this is a pretty game to look at.

The voice acting is once again horrible in a Capcom action game. Where Capcom gets these actors, I do not know. The sound effects get repetitive quickly (especially the sound of the characters walking across the metallic floor of the ship, and the sound of gunfire). The faint music in the background is pleasantly catchy, but nothing groundbreaking.

I had one other thought, and minor gripe about the game. How did the crew live in the Ozymandias? The rooms in the ship are massive and at no point are we introduced to crew quarters, dining rooms, or recreational rooms. Where did the crew live? Where did they eat and sleep? How did they get from point A to point B without the help of a jet pack? I know it’s a minor gripe, but it hurts the overall feel of the game.

The most disappointing thing about Dino Crisis 3 is that it could have been a good, even great game. If you can stomach the horrible camera system, and frustrating controls, you might end up liking the third instalment of the series.

Final Comments:

The game clocks in at around eight hours, the typical length of any Capcom game. There are a few things to unlock, but you really have to work for them, especially with the unforgivable camera system. Dinosaurs in space doesn’t seem like such an awful idea, but it does when it’s executed this poorly. The only reason I’m giving this game a seven, and not something less, is because problems aside, part of me did enjoy the experience.

Story: 7.0
Gameplay: 6.0
Graphics: 8.3
Sound: 7.0
Replayability: 7.0
Overall: 7.0

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 01/24/04