3.5/5 ★ – Brendan88's review of Dino Crisis.

[This is based on a second playthrough; my first playthrough was about 10 years ago.] People often deride Dino Crisis as just Resident Evil with dinosaurs. Like, it is, but that's a good thing. Dino Crisis deviates from the classic RE formula in a few subtle ways that make it its own thing, but not necessarily for the better. The "item boxes" are made more convoluted, but with limited plugs to activate those boxes, it asks the player to make hard choices about what kind of items they want access to, and where. Regular ammo is more scarce than in RE typically (and the enemies are faster and have more health), but you have tranquilizers that can knock out dinosaurs temporarily. This could be a good system, asking the player to choose which dinos they want dead forever and which they will leave alive, but it's ruined by the fact that enemies respawn with alarming speed and frequency. So really, there's no point in killing enemies, since they'll just be back as soon as if you'd tranq'ed them. The story is pretty fun, just the right level of nonsense. I like how the dinosaurs aren't clones or anything, they literally time-travelled from the past (and somehow didn't instantly die from modern-day germs and bacteria). Shout out to Stephanie Morgenstern, who did VO for the main character Regina and gave a memorable and likeable performance. Overall, its a flawed but still-fun spin on a classic survival-horror formula. And I would absolutely love a modern entry using the RE engine. Just imagine how scary those raptors could be now.