Dino Crisis

Dino Crisis is a survival horror game created by Capcom that was released in 1999. The controls, movement and gameplay is very distinct Resident Evil style, but unlike Resident Evil, Dino Crisis uses a 3D playfield rather than prerendered backdrops. Its sequel, Dino Crisis 2, was released in 2000.

Story
Regina, an intelligence agent of S.O.R.T. is sent along with three other agents to a secret military facility on Ibis Island in the Borginia Republic. Another agent of S.O.R.T. called Tom who was there seeking information on top secret new-type weapons being developed there, reported with rather interesting news. Dr. Edward Kirk, who had supposedly died three years ago in a lab accident, was alive and at Ibis Island as the head on a non-weapon project. It would appear that his "death" was staged and that the Borginia Republic was somehow involved.

Tom requests that appropriate measures be taken, and S.O.R.T. decides to send a team to take the doctor into custody.

It was supposed to be a simple extraction mission...

Regina and her team paradrop onto the island, and she soon meets up with two team members on the beach; the team leader Gail, a cold and calculating veteran agent, and Rick, the team's hacker.

The fourth agent, Cooper, was blown off course, and finds himself in the jungle quite a way from the facility, and is eaten by a Tyrannosaurus rex.

Regina and Rick want to wait for Cooper, but Gail cuts in saying they don't have time for waiting, and orders them to move out.

So the mission begins.

The team arrives at the Ibis island Facility and find the back entrance in disarray; blood stains the ground, fences are torn to shreds, and lights are out in the guard house. Rick decides to explore the facility as Regina and Gail explore outside. After restoring power, Regina hears the sound of gunshots, as well as Gail screaming. She runs outside, but Gail is nowhere to be found. Soon after, she is attacked by a velociraptor and makes her way to the facility to rendezvous with Rick.

Inside, the facility appears to be abandoned, except for the occasional dead body; it now belongs to raptors. Regina catches up with Rick in the control room and decides to search the facility for Dr. Kirk as he operates things from there. Upstairs, she finds a survivor who is badly wounded. He gives her some info about Kirk being a fool but before he can finish, a Tyrannosaurus Rex bursts its head through the window and eats him. After a brief fight with the Rex, Regina discovers that Kirk is nowhere to be found. During her search, she is attacked by a raptor, but is saved by Gail, who apparently survived his previous attack.

In the control room, Rick turns on the controls for the Underground. He also receives a distress call from Tom coming from outside of the facility. Gail says they should stick to the mission, but Rick decides to go to Tom. In a heated argument, both go their separate ways and Regina has a choice of going with Rick or Gail.

After going with Rick, Regina is attacked by Pteranodons right before they meet Tom, who has been mortally wounded. They take an elevator down to the basement. Rick stays with Tom in a medical room while Regina goes to find Gail. In the medical room, Tom is attacked and killed by a raptor. Regina joins up with Gail and they find the Lab of Dr. Kirk, who has already left. Regina uses an accessway under the lab to catch up with Dr. Kirk. Gail turns up and takes Kirk to Rick and then leaves, claiming that he has "unfinished business".

Regina goes to the second floor where she calls for the helicopter and has another fight with the T. Rex. She then runs to the heliport where Rick and Kirk wait. Gail is nowhere to be seen. At that point the helicopter arrives and is destroyed by the T-Rex. In the ensuing fight, Kirk escapes. Regina and Rick flee to an elevator, taking it down to the third floor basement. Whilst their they discover that there is a port on the third floor. Regina retrieves the port key off of a worker killed on the elevator whilst trying to escape from the T. Rex. The T. Rex attempts to follow, but is knocked unconscious by an electrical surge. They use the key to open a locked door to the port, but there is a third energy vortex blocking the way. Regina finds Kirk, who explains that his new experiment, Third Energy, can transport creatures from a different time period to the present day... in this case, dinosaurs. He attempts to kill Regina, but Gail shoots the gun out of his hand before he can fire. Gail agrees to watch over Kirk as Regina hurries to find the "Initializer and Stabilizer" to overload the third energy generator and vortex to create a path of escape. During the overload, Gail is mortally wounded by a falling pipe and Kirk escapes, but not before Gail tags him with a beacon. Regina and Gail meet up with Rick. Rick insists that they escape, but Gail wants to complete the mission and recapture Kirk. Regina has to decide what to do.

After this there are several possible endings.

1. Regina and Gail go after Kirk and catch him whilst Rick heads to the port. Gail reveals that the whole mission was a cover up to gain info on Third Energy as a weapon, and hands Regina a disc containing all the information he had gathered, and then dies. Regina, Rick and Kirk make their way to the Port where they take a hovercraft and speed down a tunnel to freedom. The overload causes the entire facility to begin collapsing around them. Suddenly, the T-Rex appears for a final showdown in which Regina shoots at it with a grenade launcher from the roof of the craft. An explosion occurs as half of Ibis Island is caught in a third energy reaction and transported to another time. Regina, Rick, and Kirk make avoid the explosion only to have the T. Rex attack them yet again. This time, Regina throws a live grenade into its mouth, killing it once and for all.

2. Regina and Gail go after Kirk and catch him whilst Rick heads to the port. Gail thanks Kirk for giving him a 'disk', but does not reveal what is on it. They go to the port and escape in similar fashion.

3. Regina goes after Kirk when he escapes from Gail and finds him in a secret underground heliport. She catches him, and the four of them fly away whilst being chased by the T. Rex again which they kill in a similar fashion.

4. Regina knocks Gail out and they all head to the Port to escape and get chased out by the T.Rex, leaving Kirk behind.

Regina
Regina is the only female member of the team, and is the character the player controls. She is an intelligent spy and weapons expert. Her specialty is customizing weapons. She also has the gift for helping others in a heart beat! Regina is voiced by Stephanie Morgenstern.

Gail
Gail is a veteran spy, and the leader of the team. He is well known for his cold demeanor and seems to have a heart of stone. He carries a large heavy machine gun and his field of expertise seems to be combat. He cares a lot about his mission. Gail is voiced by Adrian Truss.

Rick
Rick is the third member of the team, and hacking into computers is his speciality. He carries a Sniper Rifle. He seems to be much more easy-going that Gail, providing most of the comic relief. He is not in the game very often because he stays mainly in the control room, but packs a good punch when Tom dies. He is African-American. Rick is voiced by Richard Yearwood.

Cooper
Cooper is the fourth and final member of the extraction team. He's blown off course at the start of the mission and ends up being eaten by a T. Rex. The team never learns this, and he is declared M.I.A. at the end of the mission. Cooper is the team leader because he jumps out of the helicopter before anybody else. When he gets separated from the team, Gail takes charge because he is the team's second-in-command.

Tom
Tom is an agent of S.O.R.T. and infiltrated the Ibis Island facility to investigate the reports of new-type weapons being researched. He is wounded by a dinosaur, and later dies. Tom is voiced by Bino Tautorrez, while during the first opening cutscene (computer-log), he is voiced by Robert Tinkler.

Dr. Edward Kirk
Dr. Kirk is the genius behind the Third Energy Theory. He was approached by the Borginian Republic who were interested in the properties of Third Energy as a weapon, and promised him all the funding, facilities, researchers and equipment he needed. To that end, he staged his death and moved to Ibis Island, to where a Third Energy research facility had been set up for him and killed most of his workers with the help of the dinos. Dr. Edward Kirk is voiced by Alex Karzis.

Strategy Choices
During the game, the player has to choose between a strategy that Gail comes up with and a strategy that Rick comes up with, Rick's almost always end up being easier (except for one puzzle that makes you input codes into a computer) and Gail's almost always ends up being more challenging; causing you to run into more dinosaurs, making you use more ammunition.

DDK (Digital Disk Key) Lock System
Dino Crisis makes you use the Digital Disk Key (DDK) lock system to open doors. It has you collect two disks and insert them into card readers next to specific doors (most of which lead to main areas of the facility) and make you input a code to open them. The first letter of the code is the specific key that you input into the reader.

Tyrannosaurus

 * Length: 14.50 m (48 ft)
 * Height: 4.80 m (16 ft)

The largest enemy in the game, Tyrannosaurus can kill with an instant bite. Only one Tyrannosaurus is featured in the game, but it persistently attacks Regina and the others throughout the game.

Velociraptor

 * Length: 4.80 m (16 ft)
 * Height: 1.80 m (6 ft)

Velociraptor is the most frequently appearing enemy in the game. Clearly based on the raptors from Jurassic Park, it is much larger than its prehistoric counterpart, looking more like its larger relatives Deinonychus and Utahraptor. Raptors sometimes attack in pairs and will chase Regina from room to room, breaking down doors. Although Regina usually stumbles across wandering or sleeping raptors in hallways, they sometimes attack from ambushes. Raptor attacks usually cause Regina to bleed severely. A different coloured, more powerful version with a few extra attacks referred to as the Super Raptor appears later in the game.

Pteranodon

 * Length: 3 m (10 ft)
 * Wingspan: 6 m (20 ft)

Soaring high in the sky, Ibis Island's Pteranodon are nothing like the gentle fishing cliff dwellers from dinosaur books. Instead, they will attack Regina whenever they get the chance, dive-bombing to stab her with their sharp beaks or lifting her into the air and then dropping her to break her bones.

Compsognathus

 * Length: 1.20 m (4 ft)
 * Height: 50 cm (1 ft 8 in)

Like the 'compies' from The Lost World: Jurassic Park, the Compsognathus of Ibis Island are vicious little pack hunters that can bring down prey several times as large as themselves. However they pose very little threat in the game, and are easy to kill.

Therizinosaurus

 * Length: about 6 m (20 ft)
 * Height: about 3 m (10 ft)

These strange looking carnivores have huge arms with scythe-like claws which can severely injure Regina. They are often seen in pairs. If Regina is knocked onto the ground, it can stomp on her, killing her instantly regardless of her health. In real life, Therizinosaurus is a herbivore.

Game Boy Color version
A Game Boy Color port was in development by Uk developer M4 in 2000. Because of technical limitations, this was to be a top down view instead of 3D. However, it was quietly cancelled at some point.

Trivia

 * The most apparent influence on Dino Crisis is the book and subsequent film, Jurassic Park. As an in-joke, Rick mentions that "it's just like that movie."


 * When Regina first calls Rick after facing and killing a Velociraptor, he is understandably skeptical about this and asks, "So, who was it? Barney?" This is a reference to the purple dinosaur of the same name.


 * The movie Jurassic Park III (which was released in 2001) carries some similarities with the Dino Crisis series.
 * In Jurassic Park III, one of the mercenaries hired by the Kirbys is called Cooper, possibly a reference to this game. Just like the mercenary in the game, Cooper gets killed relatively quickly. Both meet their ends at the hands of large carnivores - the game version is killed by the T-Rex in the opening sequence while movie Cooper is eaten by the Spinosaurus.
 * The roar of the Spinosaurus is so powerful that it blows things over, similar to the Giganotosaurus in Dino Crisis 2.
 * Similarly to Dino Crisis 2, the newcomer giant carnivore easily kills the T-rex in a fight.


 * Regina has made an appearance in Namco x Capcom as a playable character, paired as a unit with Bruce McGivern from Resident Evil: Dead Aim.


 * Regina appears in Resident Evil 3 as one of Jill Valentine`s secret costumes.


 * "Borginia" appears as a fictional country in another Capcom game, Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney.

Reviews

 * IGN: 9.2 out of 10 (92%) (PlayStation version reviewed)
 * GameSpot: 8.5 out of 10 (85%) (PlayStation version reviewed)
 * Edge (magazine): 8 out of 10 (80%) (PlayStation version reviewed)