Interview: Project Crynosaurs

It's been a while, fans of dinosaurs in games, most of it spent enjoying the wonderful weather getting through all those greyed out games on the left there. Today I've got something a bit different for you. I heard about Project Crynosaur a bold mission to bring dinosaurs (and other prehistoric creatures PLUS BONUS FLORA) into CryENGINE 3. Normally, I weigh up the pros, the cons and scientific blunders of dinosaur (etc.) based video games after they've been pressed, wrapped and launched into the world but the heroes at Project Crynosaur have taken some time out of the project to give us insight into the minds of legends who seek to put dinosaurs into video games. Here's what tech lead Jon, developer Erin, 3D artist Jake, game designer Nick and level lead/designer Tom, had to say about the game, currently in development.

1)First up and most importantly, what drove you to make a game around dinosaurs?

Nick: I’ve always been interested in dinosaurs. I think what makes me a bit different from other people who have developed dinosaur games is that my mental image of dinosaurs didn’t begin with or stop with Jurassic Park.  I grew up on the original The Land Before Time and PBS’ The Dinosaurs and have continued to learn everything I can about them since.  I think my catalyst for wanting to create a game around dinosaurs was actually Spore. I enjoyed the cellular and creature stage, but they could have been so much more, especially looking back on the 2005 demo. Who hasn’t had a dream of a game like Spore with a focus on dinosaurs? One of the other things that drives me to make this game is wanting to share with people just how cool REAL dinosaurs might have been. Virtually every other media is still referencing Jurassic Park when it comes to their interpretation of dinosaurs. I want gamers to play this game and gain a new perspective on these animals and have fun doing it.

Jon: Simply put, I've been disappointed with almost all the games which have featured dinosaurs over the last 10 years, not only from a fun factor perspective, but also in the way in which they’ve been portrayed. I think the world has waited long enough for a great dinosaur game.

2) Before we talk fauna, the team is committed to representing the correct flora in a great deal of detail. To my mind this is probably a first as most DiGs projects just populate their environs with generic scenery. Apart from pleasing pedants like me and palaeobotanist gamers is this accuracy important for the team?

Nick: Well we are a bunch of pedants (no palaeobotanists yet, but our researcher/level designer, Tom, comes close) so yeah, this part of game development is very important to us. You really can’t understand an animal without understanding its habitat. All of us on the development team have been watching dinosaur documentaries or creating dinosaur art for a long time, and as far as we can tell, almost no one captures the actual environment of the Hell Creek Formation, the world of Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops*. We know more about these two dinosaurs than almost any other, and yet most of the time they get slapped against a generic background.

Jake: Accuracy is very important to us as a team. And I personally hope that the screenshots and videos released lately have shown that. Too many projects have marketed themselves as accurate, but it's really ever only in the loosest sense of the word. I want to leave no stone un-turned, and no detail left unrepresented. This will hopefully be the most accurate recreation of a prehistoric environment ever made, in a way I personally believe is only possible in this medium.

3) Let's talk dinosaurs. Recent games have explored the weird and wonderful species rarely seen, will you be including some of the off the beaten track taxa or will it be more JP standard cast- pterosaur (flyer), Compsognathus (weenie) unspecified 'raptor' (standard grunt) and Tyrannosaurs rex ('boss')?

Nick: Our dinosaurs are dictated by our setting: The Hell Creek Formation around 66 million years ago. Hell Creek is home to some of the most famous dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus, Ankylosaurus, Pachycephalosaurus and Triceratops. We didn’t choose them because they are “stock”; we chose them because they actually lived together. Beyond the big names however, there are a lot of unusual and poorly understood animals that lived in the same time and place, and I think a lot of people will be pleasantly surprised at just how vibrant an ecosystem it was.

4) You've been meeting with biodynamic academics, how important will scientific accuracy of how your critters move be to the feel of the game? I assume you won't be having any Jurassic Park: Warpath dinosaur ninjitsu antics.

Nick: As previously stated, accuracy is important to every aspect. We try to consult with field experts at every available opportunity, and animation is no exception. Hopefully how our animals move, based on the input of people like John Hutchinson, may surprise some people. But no, you won’t see anything gravity or anatomy defying in our game.

5) Any other non-dinosaurian animals going to make it into the game?

Nick: One of the great things about the Hell Creek Formation is just how much of the entire ecosystem is preserved. Players can look forward to seeing all sorts of unusual and unique animals, and many of them WON’T be dinosaurs. We released the concept art of our Champsosaurus a while ago via our Facebook as the first example of such, there will be plenty more to come.

6) Will the dinosaur AI include interactions with each other? Will it be possible to perch in a tree and just watch how the ecosystem interacts?

Jon: Yes, AI to AI interaction is a very important aspect to the game and we recognize that it’s also going to be a major development challenge for us. Getting autonomous characters of potentially different shapes and sizes to interact in a dynamic world is no easy task but we’re going to do our best to make it happen.

7) Even more most importantly, feathers or no feathers?

Nick: Our goal with creature design was to have the most accurate and unique look for each of the animals we develop as possible. So in a nutshell, yes, there will be feathers, where it is appropriate.

Jake: It is important to understand that this is no longer a creative decision for many a groups of dinosaur, they had them and this is indisputable. If we want to portray said animals in our game then they must have them too.

8) Next up, if you can say, what's the premise lost island? time travel? zombie space dinosaurs? 

Tom: As we conduct this interview, this question is definitely subject to change, but I can promise you that it will not be “zombie space dinosaurs” or the extremely cliché “lost island”. The ideas we’ve currently been throwing around most closely resemble a mixture of the “It’s all about the timing” and “time travel/bending” examples from your article.

Jake: We certainly have our ideas, but story isn't very central to this game. We are still very busy setting up the groundwork for the ecosystem and the animals inside it. It will be a while before you start seeing any story details emerge, if we even have a story. I think pure survival in itself creates more dynamic and interesting storylines than any scripted narrative.

9) The game didn't hit it's kickstarter target. Firstly, what's wrong with people and secondly how hard is it for the team to work on a project of passion because real life has a habit of getting in the way of volunteer effort?

Jon: The kickstarter was done far too early in development. Although it was a failure, we learned a great deal from the experience and also met some like minded individuals because of it. Since then, the team has completely transformed and the pieces are really starting to come together. When you are running a volunteer game development effort like this one, it’s definitely a balancing act and can be hard at times. However, everyone on the team is very passionate about this project, more so than any project I’ve been a part of before. I think that says a lot about the game and also the people involved.

10) There haven't been that many great dinosaur themed FPS, how limiting is the genre in getting the most out of them?

Jake: I think the core problem behind a lot of these games is that dinosaurs are not central to them. Jurassic: The Hunted for example could have been about anything and the game would be no different. The survival mode it offered was very similar to many a hoard mode you see in games that feature zombies or aliens. But the thing is, we don't want our dinosaurs to be interchangeable with zombies or aliens, or mutants or whatever else. We want them to offer an experience that only dinosaurs can offer.

Nick: I was marginally involved with the development and testing of Primal Carnage, and while I think that game has come together nicely, playing as a dinosaur pitted against humans in a deathmatch setting doesn’t really convey that feeling everybody wants of being a dinosaur. And I think that’s the biggest thing I want people who play this game to feel; you are a dinosaur, not just a class with a sweet gimmick racing around to rack up as many points/kills/whatever as possible in a timed game.

11) You'll be able to play as the dinosaurs in this game. Did you ever think about excluding the option of playing humans completely?

Jake: We have definitely considered excluding it. There is a question as to how much human game play can add that we haven't seen before. But there are many people who want to experience this world as a human, so we are going to explore the option for sure.

Erin: The thing with human gameplay is that it can be easily related to because we are human and we easily put ourselves into the shoes of a character that is also portrayed as a human. A player won’t relate to a dinosaur in the same way as a human, and vice versa. These factors are neither negative nor positive, but it does directly affect how a player will feel playing a game depending on what their avatar is in addition to variable gameplay elements. It is definitely important that we take this aesthetic into consideration.

Jon: There are a lot of people, myself included, who want to dive into a prehistoric world as a human and not solely as a dinosaur. There are a variety of reasons for this but the point is, human gameplay could be a very fun, exciting  experience if done right and not at least considering it,  I feel would be a mistake.

12) The team seem to be a passionate bunch of gamers as well as developers, do you have any other dinosaur games as spiritual touchstones to inspire you whilst working on this?

Nick: We look at all kinds of other games for inspiration, because ultimately no matter how gorgeous or accurate it winds up, this game needs to be fun for people to play. That’s our number one goal. One of games that really inspired us in development though was actually developed for a museum exhibit: Be The Dinosaur. Other games that have been influential in our development process include Minecraft, DayZ, Far Cry 3, Spore, Trespasser, Jaws: Unleashed, Skyrim, and even some classics like JPOG and Savage Quest. 

Thanks to the Crynosaurs team for taking the time to speak to me. You can follow the development of the game, including regular asset updates and tech demos over at the Project Crynosaurs website.






* Mega kudos to the team for italicising genus and species names in their reply.

Revisited: Dino Crisis

First, an explanation. Way back in the Eifelian I featured Dino Crisis in this super packed roundup here. Now I know that it's a bit rich to be revisiting games I've covered before but have you tried playing all the way through Combat of Giants Dinosaurs? It's tough and not even the inclusion of dinosaurs can hide the fact that it is a dull and repetitive game. Or how about the Lost World: Jurassic Park? That's one platformer that I wish time would forget. Oh and look there's now four dyed in the wool mediocre film tie in Ice Age games to play. Great. It's not easy you know running a self imposed blog about dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures in video games when half the games are awful and the other half have dropped off the face of the Earth. I'd love to play Evolution: The Game of Intelligent Life, Lost Eden and Dino Stalker but many didn't come out here or can only be found through less than reliable sources. My hopes were raised by the promise of platforms like OnLive but then, they don't have a single dinosaur game in their library. So to heck with it. Why not take some time out (that implies I spend some time in) from those run of the mill games and those unobtainable experiences and revisit some of the games I didn't spend that much time on the first time around? Good rhetorical question.

Soooo Dino Crisis. What a difference 13 years make. Maybe it is the warm comforting hand-holding bosom (hand-holding bosom?) of modern games with their hand holding, immersion breaking HUDs, usable maps and file sections of the inventory screens that have tainted playing games from yesteryear that were... let's say less than helpful in some respects.

Billed as Resident Evil with dinosaurs, the most striking thing about replaying Dino Crisis is how bland it is. The whole game takes place inside a futuristic science installation which very much feels like the inevitable lab sections at the end of Resident Evil games with the exception that there's no Spencer Mansion to suck you in in the first place. From the first loading screen you're thrown into a generic laboratory and corridor installation, so unmemorable that if it wasn't for my memory card telling me I'd cleared the game three times I honestly wouldn't have believed I had.

Graphics have come a long way since 1999 haven't they? Oddly Dino Crisis hasn't aged as well as the original Resident Evil. The pre-rendered dark, worn and faded corridors of the Spencer mansion aren't nearly as primitive looking as the bright neon lab spaces of Ibis Island. Robotic human models and Capcom rubber faces aside the CGI has fared a little bit better.

Remember backtracking? That was a fun part of video games wasn't it? Find a locked door, find the relevant key card to get you to the next locked door until you find another key card. There's so much of this in Dino Crisis and because the map isn't as useful as it could be and amazingly you don't collect files in your inventory I was both happy and dismayed to have to start sketching annotated maps and writing down codes in order to remember which door needed which key MacGuffin and where the ammo boxes were. 

It isn't all bad. The so called 'puzzles' familiar to survival horror games come in three flavours here. There's the DDK code cracking, circuit board rearranging and then a mini game moving red and blue blocks around to magnetically rewrite ID cards, obviously. It's inoffensive stuff but with the DDK code keys there's a need to keep jotting down the changing encryption rules which I just ended up FAQing rather than running around to relocate the correct notebook to crack the new codes.   

On to the stars of the show. Weirdly for a game called Dino Crisis, there's not a great deal of fighting dinosaurs. I remember that door opening 'raptors' were an exciting antithesis to the usual cadence of safe space, set piece, in survival horror games. However, rather than feel that there's no safe space to hide it becomes obvious relatively early on that the raptors will only open some doors which ruins the whole illusion. As ever our pal, in Dino Crisis a rather yellow, Tyrannosaurus rex plays the role of big bad guy but many of the encounters with it in the build up to finale are just frustrating ending in death a couple of times until you work out which pixel is the safe one to stand on in the set pieces. It seems that resuscitation packs, which give you a mini continue, were included purely to make these harrowing encounters a little more palatable but in true Capcom style many of the run-ins with T.rex are on the wrong side of cutscenes. As ever Pteranodon is the perpetual annoyer of the sky. When will game developers ever learn? Therizinosaurus sort of makes an appearance although it looks like Therizinosaurus and Godzilla had a late night rendez-vous and Capcom employed the love children. Okay, so the year after commercial release of Dino Crisis a key fossil discovery helped to complete the palaeontological picture of this dinosaur but even before this is was unlikely that the dinosaur was going to turn out to be a squat angry stomper shown in this tiny picture here.

There's not a great deal  to remember from Dino Crisis. There's a few interesting bits and pieces and ideas here and there but for the most part it's running up and down-samey looking corridors inching nearer to the end with every key card and DDK code key. After the credits roll there's a few nice little touches that marginally increase the re-playability. A range of costumes for Regina (pantsu visible in two of them) add cosmetic variability but the more inspired design choice is that if you choose the Cave woman look, the weapons and upgrades change too. Want to upgrade the flinstone bone handgun and shotgun? Naturally you need to find a ummm frog bit and a snake bit respectively. Also waiting for you after the credit roll is Operation Wipeout a nice little trio of kill the dinosaurs and Therizillas mini game for fun and giggles.

Dino Crisis is probably best remembered with rose tinted glasses rather than replayed and the sequel game was a significant improvement on it. There was dual wielding, Regina could run and fire, underwater sections added some much needed sauropterygians and the boring laboratory environments were (largely) ditched. The third game is by all accounts a bit pants but thanks to the lack of backward compatibility of some Xbox titles on the Xbox 360 no one will ever be able to play it again. Not even me.

Tyrannosaurus Run

No sooner do I bemoan the lack of dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures in games when I discover the excellent Tyrannosaurus run, free to play in your browser right now right here.

Remember that bit from Jurassic Park when the T.rex runs after the little JP jeep thing, Goldblum mutters his "must go faster" line, then there's a bit with the mirror and "objects may appear larger". We all know that scene right? Well it turns out that 10 second scene is enough to inspire this lovely little Shockwave Game reconstructed from fossils by Silent Bay Studios. The game is fairly straightforward. You are a land rover. There's a T.rex behind you. GO! The game has a nice little twist however, playing homage perhaps to the mirror in Jurassic Park as you can see your rear view mirror and I won't spoil it but you actually need to use it unlike 99.89% of all rear view mirrors in video games. Hey, perhaps I should start a new blog about rear view mirrors in games? Also like the movie, which spawned a million average or worse video games, you have to collect gems for points.

Dinosauriness: There's a single dinosaur in this game. There's no cash prizes for guessing which one and in the blurb for the game it is actually speciated it is our old buddy Tyrannosaurus rex. 

Scientific Accuracy: Since Henry Fairfield Osborn first described Tyrannosaurus rex in 1905, amazing discoveries of related dinosaurs, revolutions in the technology available to palaeontologists striving to unravel the mysteries of the rock record and paradigm shifts in the understanding of dinosaur anatomy and physiology have painted a vivid picture of how Tyrannosaurus rex may have lived, moved and how it would have looked. Unfortunately, a great deal of this knowledge has been overlooked by practically everybody who ever made a video game with a dinosaur in it.

Buzz Bonus: Scraping the barrel for a buzz bonus today but Silent Bay Studios seem to specialise in games about things going forward. Not just land rovers; rally cars, horses, bikes, spy cars, snow cars and even soccer mum wagons. Check 'em all out here.

Not extinct merely 'Lazarus'

This crazy weather had me in a state of torpor and hibernation. But even with most of my senses dulled or off I still heard about Orion: Dino Beatdown and I still played way too much Dino Run.

I got excited about the trailer for still not released Orion Prelude and as I was breathing slowly to keep calm until it was out they ONLY WENT AND RELEASED A WHOLE OTHER GAME.

It's called Orion: Dino Beatdown, it's out now and well, here's the trailer

Of course I'm above the lazy technique of describing games in terms of XXX meets XXX but it looks like Halo meets DINOSAURS. There's nothing not to like apart from the fact that it isn't out yet and won't be  until the 20th of April for Steam or On Live.In the meantime DINO RUN.

Syberia

After what seems like forever, I finally got around to finishing Syberia. It may seem stupid for a game that's nine years old but I'm gonna put a SPOILER warning up here. If you like Dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures in games then Syberia is definitely worth a play. Then come back here. Okay? I don't know if it is just because I'm a jaded old gamer or because I haven't played a solid point and click adventure for a longtime but I really enjoyed Syberia. Probably more so than normal because it's a dinosaurs game that isn't a Pokemon clone or FPS. It's pretty standard fare really. Point here, click there, pick up this item, give it to this person who'll give you another item to give to someone else. It isn't free of the frustrations particular to the genre and if you played it like I did over a space of months rather than hours you'll need a number of trips to the excellent Universal Hint System for some of the (subtle) clues you end up forgetting between plays.

The game takes you on a fantastical journey in the shoes of lawyer Kate Walker, sent to a weird French town to settle the estate of an eccentric woman whose automaton factory is due to be bought by a big toy company. Unsurprisingly, things don't go as planned and Kate ends up tracking down the deceased woman's brother, a curious savant obsessed with mammoths. The game takes you to some really amazing places and I found myself forgiving the linear nature of the game (item A to place B to get to item C etc..) because the environments you visit are so fantastic, the writing and characters are compelling and solving the puzzles to progress are normally just the right side of head scratching. There's also a snazzy little gimmick in that Kate has a mobile phone and occasionally gets phoned by her boyfriend, mother and best friend. LIKE HOW MOBILE PHONES WORK IN THE REAL WORLD! The phone does a good job of giving an insight into who Kate is beyond the person you mercilessly puppet about the place as well as being key to progressing at times. I've said too much already just go and grab it. Sure, it's dated but it's less than a tenner on Steam,just under 12 for both Syberia and Syberia 2. As a fan of dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures in games I really like that this game is palaeontologically themed rather than just a palaeontologically skinned generic game as so many DiGs are. Mammoths, biology and palaeontology run through the game and kept me playing. It's just refreshing still, even from a nine year old game, to see that the Syberia team actually did a bit of research rather than just pick up My First Book Of Scary Dinosaurs, bung in the usual suspects and then copy and paste the "facts" in the ubiquitous dinopedia. Anywho, down to the regular bitness...

Dinosauriness: Remember that spoiler warning? Well you don't actually see any real virtual mammoths in the game, the three screenshots in this post is as near as you get. Early on you find a prehistoric mammoth doll and make a mammoth rubbing (pictured above). At the Barrockstadt University the skeletons of Megaloceros, Mammuthus primigenius, Platybelodon and some other extinct mammals that are hard to identify (speculatively equid and elephantid) can be found. In addition to the amazing statues you can see above there's a pair of sabre-toothed tiger statues although I wouldn't like to guess exactly which 'sabre-toothed tigers' they are (sabre-toothery in mammals is an amazing example of convergent evolution).

Scientific Accuracy: So far so good. You don't see any real mammoths although the game foreshadows an encounter in Syberia 2, apparently there's a cryptic population of mammoths possibly alive on an island called Syberia. More outlandish is the automatons, wind up robots, you meet throughout the game. But this is Dinosaurs in Games NOT Robots in Games.

Buzz Bonus: There's so much to say, there's a sequel that's on my to play list and the sort of announcement of a third one to be released for PS3 and PC with the demand that Sony stop their Syberia PS2 denial.. This game was also released on the DS in 2008 and was the version I originally wanted to pick up but the handful of sites that reviewed it all recommended picking up the 2002 PC version. My last buzz bonus is that in the Barrockstadt University library you can see Aristotle's principle 'Natura non facit saltus'- nature does not make leaps a famous proposition invoked by a number of the brightest luminaries in science throughout time and just one of the biology geek references that endeared this game to me even more.

Disney's Dinosaur

Disney's Dinosaur was a game that was released on virtually every single platform at the time, Game Boy Colour, PlayStation, PlayStation 2, Dreamcast and Windows. I've been meaning to pick up a copy of this game for a long long time.

It's a Ubisoft game, when Ubi wasn't so fussy about not for making awful games before the days of Assasin's Creed. That being said, this game (the PS2 version at least) isn't as bad as I expected. It isn't as good as it could have been either. The game plays like a bit like Baldur's Gate is as much as it an isometric 'dungeon crawler', although the water isn't as good as in Baldur's Gate. A nice twist on the dungeon crawling is that you need to combine the specific skills of Aladar the Iguanodon, Flia a Pteranodon and Zini a lemur to make it through levels that roughly follow the plot of the film. There's a neat little squad organising mechanic that makes it easy to split your team of three or to combine them all together. Aladar can give out and take a lot of damage, Zini can climb up ladders and hurl stones at enemies and to create walkways and Flia, who has been created specifically for the game, can act as a scout, access areas the land dwellers can't as well as being able to pick up and carry objects. The game occasionally falters in that unintuitive and cryptic mechanics are sometimes introduced in order to progress through levels requiring a number of frustrating failures in order to work out what you're supposed to do. Some sections also suffer from the classic problem in that bridges and ledges require a careful navigation that simply isn't possibly with the unrefined controls. I had to restart a couple of the escort missions because I'd fall off a ledge and respawn to find my escortees blocking the way through. As you can see below, the game isn't exactly a looker but it deserves some credit for not being a Pokemon clone, RTS or light gun game as so many of these Dinosaurs and other prehistoric creature games are.

Dinosauriness: The game departs slightly from the film including some dinos that didn't make the cut. Creatures featured are: Albertoaurus, Ankylosaurus, Brachiosaurus, Carnotaurus, Champsosaurus, Dryptosaurus, the bat Icaronycteris, Iguanodon, Oviraptor, Parasaurolophus, Pteranodon, Quetzalcoatlus (misspelled Quetzelcoatlus in the game), a' raptor', Spinosaurus, Styracosaurus (misspelled Styrachosaur in the game) Talarurus and of course a Lemur. A number of other genera appear in cutscenes including Pachyrhinosaurus, Struthiomimus, Stygimoloch and possibly Ichthyornis.

Scientific Accuracy: Where to begin? First off talking animals loses some accuracy points. Secondly, a lot of the dinosaurs have been found continents apart, Carnotaurus remains have only been found in Argentina, Styracosaurus is only known from Canada, Oviraptorin Mongolia and possibly China. This is not to say that they couldn't have met but current evidence doesn't suggest they did. Also many of the creatures represented weren't coeval. Champsosaurus resembles a giant lizard and is found roaming the desert rather unlike a Choristoderan really. Lastly, the lemurs (and similarly Icaryonecteris) really throw a spanner in the works. Not only are lemur fossils only known from Madagascar, Asia and continental Africa conflicting with the Dinosaurs from the Americas but even the most immoderate estimates for the appearance of lemurs don't go as far back as 75 Ma. However, most irritatingly in the game is that Zini sounds like some kinda New York wise-guy. Having been forced to watch the film again for fact checking, bizarrely this accent has been added specifically for the game. Thanks guys. Someone should really publish a paper on the independent evolution of NY wise guy accents in sidekicks.

Buzz Bonus: It seems almost obligatory for dinosaur games to have a 'dinopedia' and this game is no exception albeit with a shocking number of typos. This makes my life a lot easier because I don't have to keep quite so many notes. The dinopedia in the PS2 version is a nice little three-dimensional diorama that you can whizz around and discover various dinosaur (and other prehistoric creature) facts.

Planet Dinosaur

Planet Dinosaur was oh so briefly on the TV recently and as with Walking with Dinosaurs, an accompanying game has been made. You can go and play it right now, right here.

It's a fun little browser game. You can breed a number of species from the television series then let them loose in your own little panorama. It won't be breaking any records for looks. Or playability. But hey, it's free. Oh and it has achievements if you like that kind of thing. It is quite slow and if I was being cynical I'd say it was a cheap way to get people to keep coming back to the website. In fact, there are achievements for logging in every single day.... Here's my panorama so far:
Nuffin but a couple of Spinosaurus at the moment. They don't get up to much. They stomp around. There's a little sawfish catching mini game you can play for in game credits to buy more dinosaurs, food to help your babies grow to adulthood and extra bits of scenery to enrich your panorama. I'll hold off the final judgement when I've unlocked more of the dinosaurs and mini-games. If you decide to give it a go, let me know what you think in these comments.

A Bumper Crop For Mammoths Today

A Hirsute* of mammoths if you will. Typical! You wait for ages for a mammoth to come along and then two appear!

Just in via RPS it's Trine 2. Is this mammoth skeleton nought but a Checkov's Gun for the real thing? I'm hoping it is. Even if it isn't it's nice to see such a lovely mammoth skeleton.

* Sadly, not the actual collective noun.

UPDATE: Apologies if this post keeps changing. I've had to edit this post about five times for typos. I'm just too excited.

Jurassic Park: The Game

I've mentioned the any day soon release of Jurassic Park: The Game and how I'm quite excited about it. I was excited about it. Having caught up with the available information about it, I'm struck by five things.

1. It looks quite QTE heavy. Like Heavy Rain but with dinosaurs. No biggie though. I prefer being explicitly told to "press A to win" rather than be given the mere facade of agency a la Modern Warfare 3 single player. Plus hopefully that'll mean the journey should be quite fun because it is so controlled? Not that you get to take in much of the action sequences when your scouting the screen for the next button to press.
2. The characters are still worryingly reminiscent of the characters in Timesplitters 2. Not the style of the characters in Timesplitters 2 but as if somebody had transplanted the characters in from that nine year old (and excellent) game. The dinosaurs look mighty shiny too. Too shiny. Like early days of the Xbox360 shiny. Bad shiny. Not that I'm a graphics snob, as long as a game has dinosaurs in it I'll happily play it, but I can't imagine that this game will be pushing the 360 or PS3 not to mention the PC and Mac. Confusingly, I thought that one of the main advantages of making a QTE game was that you could make it look beautiful because the player is limited in their interactions with the game and environments......
3. The Wii version was either never announced or dropped. I can't tell which, Telltale's own site says it'll be on "all major video game platforms". To not be on the third biggest platform (after PC and Mac) seems to make that sentence untrue. Sad because I think there's a lot of love in the world still for Jurassic Park. With some decent marketing I imagine it could have been a big hit on that particular platform. Ho hum.
4. This game is another great example of how poorly game makers serve their potential consumers. Telltale's own website isn't very useful on actual information about the game. The game itself is confusingly described as episodic by some sites and others don't mention this at all. Also, that lovely deluxe PC edition we told you about? If you want it in Europe before Christmas, ermmm there's no guarantee you'll get it for Christmas. You know, Christmas, that time of year that people like to spend lots of money on expensive presents for each other, possibly on video games, possibly on video games that come out at the end of the year. Even friends of fans of dinosaurs in video games like to splash out on video games with dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures for their dinosaur fan friends. Not if it won't be delivered on time they won't though. Oh also aren't we in the middle of an economic crisis or something? Telltale not bothered in maximising their profits at all? Good on you.
5. On that note, why is the limited edition for PC only? Xbox 360 owners get a free virtual T-rex for their avatar. Wait whilst I feign a yay. yay. Presumably it is the same game? Now I'm torn as to which one I contemplate getting (if I get it all straight away). Do I want to get it as quickly as possible with all that extra stuff to put in my big 'ol pile of limited edition game junk I've never opened or used? Or do I wait so I don't have to mess around with PC settings and get stuck with looking at Xbox 360 button prompts for my QTEs. I've not seen a video without Xbox pad prompts, presumably the mac version will be changed at least? A professional games company might clarify these things days before it is due out. Oh well.

Sorry to gripe. I like to keep this site as a happy place normally. Takes some doing to bring a dark cloud over talking about dinosaurs in games. Especially when talking about the biggest high profile dinosaurs in game release for a long long time.

Jurassic Park: Naked Dinosaurs Edition

Watch people talk about the new Jurassic Park: The Game.

Hmm it looks like the graphics aren't up to much. For a start all the people look like Timesplitters 2 characters and a bug they need to fix is that the engine is accidentally showing all the dinosaurs without the feathers. Woops! Naked dinosaur action. Come on guys sort it out.

Primal Carnage

I sink maybe there is a renaissance in ze dinosaur vs man FPS non? Ave a look 'ere at ze primal carnage.


Whatever mystical forces are at play which conspire to bring us more of this dinosaurs versus gunny men appear to be in full swing. Although they all seem to have similar source material.

1) Character wearing Robert Muldoon hats despite the limited defensive capacities? CHECK.
2) Big Fences? CHECK.
3) STOMP STOMP REVEAL? CHECK.
4) A character says "Shoot her! Shoooooot her!"? Well not in this trailer but here's hoping.
5) Yeah but Spinosaurus is bigger innit? CHECK.

Also, some feathers would be nice guys. It's a definite fact that most dinosaurs had feathers let's keep up now shall we? Primal Carnage ladies and gentle spoons. Indie developers too which is always nice to see.

ORION Prelude

Check out Spiral Game Studios page for their new game, or a prelude to another game: ORION Prelude? There's even a trailer!!



It isn't a great trailer there are only a maximum of two dinosaurs on screen at any time. I'd be interested to see how they've contrived their dinosaurs into the game because there are jet pack people which could mean time traveling people but then there's also a lot of grass which suggests time traveling dinosaurs? Maybe clones? It could be any of these. Or all of them. Time traveling people travel a little bit back in time and meet time traveling dinosaur clones who have also time traveled. I'd buy that for a dollar.

The website confirms three genera of dinosaurs, Pteranodon, Tyrannosaurus and Velociraptor. Can't say I'm surprised by any of those except Pteranodon but only because they aren't dinosaurs. Also, it should be Tyrannosaurus rex, not Tyrannosaurus Rex. WHEN WILL THESE DEVELOPERS OPEN A BOOK ABOUT DINOSAURS? We've emailed them about it.

Dino D-Day

Many think Half Life 2 to be a great game. Maybe the best game. But it was missing two vital things.

List of things Half Life 2 was missing
1) Nazis
2) Dinosaurs

Heroes, nay Legends! correct these errors people:



Fingers crossed everyone that Dinosaurs become the new zombies in games.

Escape the Museum and Jurassic: The Hunted.

Ever since gaming got mainstream, the hardcore have complained that games have been ruined. More people now play hidden object games or social games through facebook than those really good games about big marines shooting aliens. Gaming proper is officially dead. Long live gaming.

Except when your hidden object game has dinosaurs in it! In which case, screw hardcore gaming we didn't like it anyway and step up Escape the Museum for the PC and now for the Wii!

We haven't played it yet because it is still £14.99 and we'll wait until it drops to around £5. We have to be careful though because once games go to £5 they next just dissappear from the internet and you have to go looking in dirty pawn shops and antique shows in order to find them again.

SURPISE DINOSAUR GAME! Also expect to see Jurassic: The Hunted in stores soon for the Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and Wii. It looks like next gen finally got on the dinosaur train. And we haven't been this happy for SEGA. It is a shame that Activision didn't get Flash Bang's memo about feathers though :( A possible step backwards for dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures in games.

Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie-Almost every platform

Widely (and rightly) ridiculed for it's ridiculous name, this game was released on a shed load of platforms. Some of them were surprisingly good considering the film tie in (PS2) and some were pretty bad (GBAand the DS version ). Either way dinosaurs were a feature of the films and games and they are a delight in this title. Fans of dinosaurs in games should endeavour to pick this title up (on the consoles) as rarely have nicer dinosaurs been seen on the little screen.

Dinosauriness: A number of dinosaurs with very silly names. Quite why the silly names I'm not too sure. Perhaps it is so that know-it-all palaeontologists can't later poo poo some of the made up dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures as they are want to do. Perhaps there has been some crazy isolated insular evolution going on on Skull Island which led to the total loss of feathers. And silly names. Anyway there's some sauropod ones, theropod ones, some hadrosaurs, some permian mammal-alikes, ancient giant crocodiles, some pterosaurs and the very silly named Vastatosaurus rex.

Scientific Accuracy: I quite like the idea of making up some dinosaurs rather than lazily skimming described species. This gives you a lot of artistic freedom and a way to ignore the palaeontologists who go to cinemas and concentrate on biodynamics and scale rather than the action/drama etc. I'm giving it a 5/10 but only because it could be a 0/10 (they are all made up) or a 10/10 (they made them up so how can it be inaccurate?).

Buzz Bonus: All dinosaur fans should play this game. It has some nice settings some cool set pieces and spear throwing. Who doesn't love themselves some spear throwing?

Off Road Velociraptor Safari- PC

Velociraptor Safari from Flashbang studios is yet another great and free dinosaur game. Play it in your browser now you crazy boyos.

The aim of the game is to drive around in a jeep as a monocled Velociraptor and using ramps, speed boosts and a genius spiked ball that comes out the back of your jeep you need to take down some wild Velociraptors, with panache and style. Although it looks simple it can be tricksy but judging from the highest scores you can get a knack from running down your feathered kin.

Dinosauriness: Velociraptor galor, a Triceratops skull sits in the back of your jeep and an unidentified pterosaur flies around in the sky.

Scientific accuracy: Major kudos to the inclusion of feathers (which some gamers questioned). 8.5/10.

Buzz Bonus: The achievements are truly great. This whole game shows more polish and attention to detail than many other current releases. Sad really :(

Dinoworld-PC

Way back when Walking with Dinosaurs came out, the beeb put up a neat little "game" downloadable here. Although basic and very dated now it still offers some surprising enjoyment, some mission based play and even the chance to create your own herd of dinosaurs!

The game/edutainment software starts out with our protagonist mysteriously transported back to the Jurassic. There's very little exposition (you are sometimes treated as a human, sometimes as a disembodied camera) but it's best kept ambiguous in my opinion. You can then explore a number of environments (salt lake, forest, desert) and discover some facts about dinosaurs and other animals as well as observing them milling around and doing their thang.

Surprisingly there is a little bit of progression through the 'game' and you have see and discover certain things (an Allosaurus eating a meal or large dragonflies) in order to unlock the next event culminating in you hitching a ride on a pterosaur to a secret area. In this new secret area you can use a couple of simple keystrokes to spawn your own herd of Diplodocus or Allosaurus or both!

The program is entirely free and runs quite smoothly and definitely worth a try, you could even set it up to be some kind of persistant screensaver when you are away from your desk as all the animals continue to potter around even if you aren't there to see them do so.

Dinosauriness: A smattering of prehistoric critters are here. Allosaurus, Diplodocus, Stegosaurus and a pterosaur (the ID escapes me know) all populate the environs.

Scientific Accuracy: Nothing obviously wrong the environments don't exactly blend together realistically but whatcha gonna do about it. Of course no feathers but this was made almost 6 years ago now.

Buzz Bonus: Climb to a high ledge and hitch a ride on a pterosaur to the secret salt plain where you can spawn as many dinosaurs as you want until your computer crashes. CONFESSION TIME! I spent hours spawning sauropods and theropods trying to arrange two armies to fight against each other. Unfortunately, the AI isn't up to enacting my grand plans so half the dinos would potter around oblvious to the threat whilst the Allosaurus queued up to get beaten to death by a single Diplodocus. Oh well, you win some, you lose some...