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So I was pretty excited over Dino D-Day when it was first announced. The idea seemed goofy and it was accompanied by a campy campaign of fake WWII posters about Dinosaurs. Plus, few games let you really play as Dinosaurs that I can think of. Actually the only one I can think of is Jurassic Park on the Genesis, which was pretty awesome to play as the Velociraptor. This was back in the days when Velociraptors looked like bad ass mini T-Rexes and not this modern day “They have feathers and look like Dinosaur Chickens” bull crap.

SCREW YOU SCIENCE.

Anyway, the game seemed interesting enough that I picked it up when it was released. I may have even pre ordered it. I played it a few times and unfortunately… I got bored. Playing as the dinosaurs wasn’t nearly as exciting as it could be. The raptors are tiny, the big Anklyosaur looking tank is slow and the other guys are just boring. The 3rd person view makes aiming iffy and the controls were kind of confusing too which didn’t help. They also seemed to die pretty easily for a thick skinned giant killer lizard.

Aside from the Dinosaurs, you had some human soldiers to play as, and it was essentially a slightly bland looking Day of Defeat clone.

The creators have done some patching to try to fix some of the issues but it also suffered from another major issue, one that tends to fluctuate over time. There’s no servers. Dino D-Day is an online only Multiplayer game. There are supposedly plans for a single player campaign or some sort but they have not come to fruition yet. Due to it’s lackluster gameplay, the few servers the game had dwindled quickly. This is of course a death nail for this sort of game, no servers means you can’t even play it.

Fortunately the developers still seem to have hope for a revival. There are still patches and any time the game is on sale for cheap there is a related spike in interest by the game playing community. Personally I think even a weak Single Player campaign would help the game immensely, running around slaughtering idiot computer soldiers as a Velociraptor could be a lot of fun. They could even beef up the stats for Single player to make the gameplay more action filled instead of a constant die easily and respawn fest that it is.

I guess the bottom line is, the IDEA is neat. And the developers seem to really want to make it neat, so if you can manage to get it for fairly cheap and want to support the idea and maybe get the benefits later, then go for it. But if you’re looking for an immediate awesome payoff you may end up disappointed.

Review – Deus Ex (PC)

There was a short period in gaming time not too long ago where many hyped up games we released all around the same period of time. These include games like Oni, Deus Ex, and Shenmue, to name a few. These games all have one thing in common. All had mediocre everything with one amazing shinny new gimmick. In the end you get a game that more or less sucks except you still feel the need to play it because of this one gimmick. Oni had it’s whole weapons and hand to hand combat thing, Shenmue had it’s whole free range suckage going on, and Deus Ex is sort of a FPS RPG hybrid.

I’ll admit, I didn’t really play this game the “correct way”. I cheated right out at the start and beefed up my player to the max after failing the Liberty Island mission 20 or 30 times in a row. By “Liberty Island mission” I mean killing more than 5 guys and making it past the first 2 or 3 enclosed areas. That said, it also means I got to play a game that was nothing but pure game play, a game that consisted of everything else besides Deus Ex’s one gimmick, the experience level up system. Frankly after playing through without it I sure as hell don’t want to play through with it.

Even as an invincible combat god the game started to DRAG immensely by about halfway through. The plot in this bitch just goes on and on and on and on and on. By the end you won’t know what the hell is going on because the plot also changes completely every five minutes or so. It’s unfortunate that Tracer Tong’s ending was the worst one since he was the only person I could remember out of the supporting cast. After New York you think you’re done but no! On to Hong Kong. Then it’s back to New York, then to some gas station in the middle of nowhere. Then some undersea lab. Eventually you end up god knows where fighting some guy in a bubble. Whoop de shit. That is what I get after all that playing?

Really the plot isn’t the only thing that I didn’t like. Honestly the character models left something to be desired as well. Every person has the same weird bulgy stretchy look to them. Also the enemy AI was pretty weak to. Not really weak in that is was easy to beat, just weak in that it seemed like it was a computer AI and not a person trying to kill me. It was not good like say, Half Life. Though it was also not as shitty as say, Shogo. Shogo being the only game I can think of where a boss killed HIMSELF through no act of my own. I just stood there just after encountering him as he blew himself away.

Anyway, Deus Ex 2 is in the works, let’s hope they can put an understandable plot in this time. The graphics I’ve seen seem pretty improved, so that is one flaw down at least. Anyway, I literally had to force myself to finish this beast just so I could uninstall without ever feeling the guilty need to install it again.