If you're a fan of Jurassic Park or Resident Evil, have I got a game for you! Dino Crisis is a killer idea. What better threat to humanity than resurrected dinosaurs and questionable scientific practices? The execution is also mostly satisfying. Yes, the tank controls have not aged well at all, but the thrills and intrigue of the narrative make for a classic in the survival horror genre. It has a complex level design with limited resources and threats around every corner, and DINOSAURS! This is a game sorely in need of a remake, much like its sister series, Resident Evil.

I could barely tell you a thing about the story and the lore of this game. I know that there are bad aliens doing bad things and we have to shoot them. So, where the game didn't grip me from a story perspective, it made up for it with some interesting gameplay elements combining the first-person shooter with the MMORPG. Most of what I enjoyed consisted of the game's multiplayer modes. Some of it you can do solo, but my favorite activities were the competitive matches and the raids, so it helps to have a good group of friends to play with! After a while, it kind of devolves into standard looter shooter territory, but that's essentially the nature of the game once you run out of content.

I was ready to really love this game the way I did Remake. I suppose I did overall enjoy it, but there was a lot that frustrated me about this game that led to massive disappointment in the end. I think the most egregious thing for me (and others, as I've seen) is the oversaturation of minigames. My goodness, I thought the original overdid it, and yet they found a way to just make nearly everything into some kind of minigame. Yes, many of them are optional, but I like doing side content in an RPG! I don't like having to learn a new set of rules or a control scheme to do said content. Also, a lot of these are worse versions of already good games (Mario Kart and Rocket League, for example). So there's that. Then there's the exploration aspect. I like that they wanted to make the open world feel wild and expansive, but it just got so tedious to explore certain areas the further along you got. After a while it started to feel like a chore and less like I was playing a fun video game. And my final complaint is something I won't go in-depth on to avoid spoilers... but the ending of this game is an absolute mess. From the final battles to the implications for the story, it's just kind of all over the place and not very cohesive. And yeah, that's saying something compared to the original. Now, despite all of that, there are things I loved. The combat is incredibly satisfying, and revisiting the familiar sights and characters from the original is delightful, and of course the music is absolutely wonderful. A lot of that was enough to keep me invested, but I think there are definitely some missed opportunities, especially as a follow-up to one of the very best games of the decade.