DINO CRISIS

IN 1999, RESIDENT EVIL CREATOR SHINJI MIKAMI SWAPPED GROANING GHOULS FOR RAMPAGING REPTILES AND THE RESULT WAS DINO CRISIS, ANOTHER SURVIVAL HORROR HIT FROM CAPCOM. JOIN RETRO GAMER AS WE DISCOVER WHY THIS FAN FAVOURITE SHOULDN'T BE DISMISSED AS 'RESIDENT EVIL WITH DINOSAURS'

- MARTYN CARROLL

This is just like that movie." In a game filled with goofball B-movie dialogue, this knowing line, uttered by operative Rick when it starts raining Raptors, is easily the best - and the most genuine. It's a matter of record that the game's director Shinji Mikami was directly inspired by Jurassic Park, but perhaps surprisingly, it was Michael Crichton's original novel rather than Steven Spielberg's adaptation that provided the key influence. Specifically, the scene where Alan Grant and friends visit the Raptor enclosure and witness the creatures hunting in packs. Mikami has commented that, in the novel, the scene is written from the characters' perspective, at eye level, whereas in the movie it's shown from above, a place of relative safety. It was the former approach, and the primordial fear it instilled in Mikami - the fear of being prey - that gave birth to Dino Crisis.

The game follows in the footsteps of his earlier Resident Evil, featuring that familiar mix of action, exploration, puzzle solving and inventory faffage. But damn, those Raptors take things up a notch. The setting is a high-tech research facility on the remote Ibis Island and by the time the game starts, Raptors are already roaming the corridors. They're far more formidable than Resident Evil's zombies, chasing you down at speed and killing you with a couple of bites. Worse, the bullets from your standard handgun seem to bounce off their scaly skin, and when you do down them, they jump right back up! Even worse, they can knock your gun out of your hands, leaving you defenceless. Worse still, you can't just leg it through a door like in Resident Evil, as the clever buggers follow you from room to room. To redress the balance, the facility features a number of anti-dino measures, such as laser gates and sprinkler systems which you can use to stop/stun them.