Dino Crisis 2

Dino Crisis 2
North American box art
Developer(s)	Capcom Production Studio 4
Publisher(s)	Capcom PlayStation JP / NA Capcom PAL Virgin Interactive Microsoft Windows Capcom
Director(s)	Shu Takumi
Producer(s)	Hiroyuki Kobayashi
Artist(s)	Kazunori Tazaki
Writer(s)	Noboru Sugimura Yosuke Hirano Kishiko Miyagi
Composer(s)	Sayaka Fujita Makoto Tomozawa
Platform(s)	PlayStation, Microsoft Windows, PlayStation Network
Release date(s)	PlayStation JP September 13, 2000 NA September 29, 2000 PAL November 24, 2000 Microsoft Windows JP 2003 PAL April 11, 2003 NA August 20, 2003 PlayStation Network JP April 13, 2011 NA April 19, 2011
Genre(s)	Action-adventure, third-person shooter
Mode(s)	Single-player
Rating(s)	ACB: MA15+ BBFC: 15 CERO: 15+ ESRB: M PEGI: 16+
Media/distribution	Optical disc, download

Dino Crisis 2 (ディノ クライシス2, Dino Kuraishisu Tsū^?) is a Action-adventure video game for the Sony PlayStation, published by Capcom in North America, released on September 13, 2000 and publish by Virgin Interactive in Europe, release on November 4, 2000. It was developed by Capcom Production Studio 4.^[1] The game is the sequel to Dino Crisis and was followed by Dino Crisis 3 in 2003 and was ported to Microsoft Windows that same year.

The story follows the events of the last game, where Regina is now on another mission involving a facility located close to the fictional Edward City, where a major anomaly has caused the whole island to be transported back in time to the era of the dinosaurs, along with all the human inhabitants. Regina is sent on a rescue mission with her new ally Dylan Morton, who has a strange connection to the events on the island. The player's control switches between Regina and Dylan at specific points in the game.

Gameplay

Dylan firing on a Velociraptor.

Dino Crisis 2 is a third-person shooter meaning that the player controls characters in a third person view, yet the perspective changes with movement into new areas and fields of view as the game uses predetermined camera angles. The game also departs more from the survival horror of the first Dino Crisis and is more action-oriented, with more open areas, more items and less emphasis on puzzles.

As players kill dinosaurs in succession, countering attacks and avoiding damage in areas, they can earn "Extinction Points" that act as a form of in-game currency that tally up as player moves between locations.^[2] Throughout the game the player can locate and use computer stations that act as save point where players can save and load games, along with spending Extinction Points on new weapons, upgrades, health packs and ammunition. There are also bandages that are used to prevent bleeding that occur when a player takes damage from certain attacks that results in slow draining of the health bar.^[2]

There are two forms of weapons in the game, main and sub-weapons, meaning the player can only equip one of each at a time.^[3] Main weapons provide the most damage and are used for the majority of attacks, for example shotguns, flamethrowers and rifles whereas sub-weapons are used to get past obstacles, like the machete for cutting plant vines and the firewall gun that creates a temporary wall of fire against foes.^[3] Over the course of the game, players will switch roles between Regina and Dylan, who have different weapons, making some passages blocked for one but accessible for the other.

Among the third person shooter gameplay are sections of on rails shooting, such as a chase where the player shoots at dinosaurs that are chasing an automatically driven vehicle and, like the previous game, several puzzles. Throughout the game, the player finds data files and documents that progress the story and give details of certain areas. Hidden "Dino Files" can also be found; these go into detail about each dinosaur in the game. Upon collecting all the available Dino Files, the player is granted unlimited ammunition for weapons on the next play through.

Extra Crisis

Upon completion of the main game, there is an unlockable mode known as Extra Crisis with two gameplay modes: "Dino Colosseum" and "Dino Duel". Colosseum is a survival mode where a chosen character with their own pre-set weapons fight off series of attacks by certain dinosaurs, the larger and more deadly being the latter. Upon completion the player is graded and awarded a trophy on how well they performed. Dino Duel is a mode that allows the player to take control of a dinosaur and battle another in the style of a fighting game. Completion of the game on harder difficulties allows more characters and dinosaurs to become available for purchase, using the final Extinction Points gathered from that play through.^[2] Dinosaurs can also be used in Dino Colosseum, however, must be unlocked by completing the game in normal or hard mode.

Story

Characters

The two main protagonists of the game are 1st Lieutenant Dylan Morton and Regina, with Dylan being new to the series and Regina reprising her role after the events of the first Dino Crisis. Dylan is a Tactical Reconnaissance and Acquisition Team (TRAT) commando who’s been sent back in time with the rest of the team in what was originally supposed to be a search and rescue mission.^[4]

TRAT is an off record covert team of shady characters who were recruited from the army special forces. They focus on subversive activities like Terrorism, Jailbreaks, Assassination and Insurgency.

Another prominent character is another TRAT member, David Fork. At the start he is separated from Regina and Dylan after enraging a Tyrannosaurus he shot with a rocket launcher but later saves them at Edward City from Velociraptors in an attack helicopter. Another recurring character is Paula, a teenage girl who is a part of the mysterious syndicate who are hostile to the main characters.

The last crucial character of the game is Colonel Dylan Morton. The future Dylan has a very important role in the game, tying the whole story together and revealing the plot. Colonel Dylan tells Lieutenant Dylan to use the time gate to take the surviving children back and prevent them from making the mistake of trying to coexist with dinosaurs.

Dinosaurs

Throughout the game, the protagonists encounter various dinosaurs that inhabit the whole jungle region, along with its waters and skies. Those that appear frequently include Velociraptor, Allosaurus, Oviraptor, Pteranodon, and Inostrancevia. Mosasaurus and Plesiosaurus also appear as a common enemy yet only during the Third Energy Facility level, most of which is underwater. Others like Compsognathus however act towards the game's puzzle aspect such as a segment where it steals the player's key card and Triceratops that appear in one of the on-rails shooting sections of the game.

Among the recurring human characters, a number of dinosaurs also appear multiple times in the story. The first is the Tyrannosaurus Rex who attacks the main camp at the start of the game before having an eye shot out with a rocket launcher by David. It follows the team, appearing both on the first jungle island in a few instances and again in Edward City, which sits across a very large lake. Another recurring dinosaur is the Giganotosaurus, which is shown to be abnormally large and powerful (perhaps to make it seem more impressive or possibly a mutation). It is first encountered at the missile silo where it battles and quickly disposes of the T. Rex and is seemingly killed by Regina in the missile silo. Later, it mysteriously reappears inside a secret research facility as the game’s final boss where Dylan must keep it from killing him while he activates a laser from a satellite which obliterates it.

Plot

It's 2010: one year has passed since the events of Dino Crisis. Third Energy research continues, this time at the hands of a government agency. However, an accident has occurred: Edward City, an entire town devoted to the research, has completely vanished, and been replaced by a prehistoric jungle. A search and rescue operation is set underway by TRAT to travel back in time and recover the survivors and locate the missing Third Energy research data. In this team are soldiers Dylan Morton and David Folk, and intelligence operative Regina due to her experience from the last encounter.^[5] Upon landing on the island, the team sets up camp but is attacked by Velociraptors, with most of the team killed except for Dylan, Regina and David. Unexpectedly, the Velociraptors begin to flee in fear; a Tyrannosaurus Rex suddenly enters the camp site from the jungle. Upon appearing, David shoots at it with an RPG, damaging its eye and permanently disfiguring it. The angered Tyrannosaurus then chases Dylan and Regina to a slope, where they both tumble to the ground below, and then go their separate ways.

Regina heads back to their ship while Dylan heads off into the jungle where he is attacked by packs of Velociraptors. When Dylan reaches a military facility, the one-eyed Tyrannosaurus Rex attacks him; however, before taking shelter in one of the barracks he is shot at by unknown helmeted figures, almost getting squashed flat by the T-Rex. Inside, he attempts to retrieve a key card but sets off a security alarm and is imprisoned. Back at the ship, Regina receives a distress call from Dylan and sets out to rescue him. Along the way she takes an alternate route towards the research facility. Along the way to pick up a flamethrower weapon, she is attacked by a short-tempered Allosaurus. After defeating the mild-mannered beast, she encounters more of the helmeted figures, but one fails to escape and is handcuffed by Regina. She removes the figure’s helmet, revealing the figure to be a blonde teenage girl who cannot speak. Regina leaves the girl there while she rescues Dylan back at the military base. She brings the girl from the research facility back to the patrol ship, but finds that it has been ransacked. Before he leaves to look for ship parts, Dylan handcuffs the unknown girl to the ship; strangely, she halts her struggles upon looking at him. She reaches his face, but he backs off. The look on her face means she's trying to tell something to him.

After fighting 2 more Allosaurus, Dylan fights packs of raptors while heading to the research facility, which also houses human containment chambers and is overrun by Oviraptors. When he's about to open a door to get the battery for the patrol ship using a card key, a Compsognathus craftily steals it from him. He chases it back and forth and eventually locks it in a cage, winning the card back. He arrives back at the ship to find the girl gone. They pilot the ship to an offshore under-sea base called the Third Energy facility where Regina turns the prime Third Energy reactor back on, evading attacks from mosasaurs and plesiosaurs that have taken residence in the underwater portions of the facility. She returns to the surface where she and Dylan get a distress call from David who claims to have found the survivors at Edward City. They traverse a cave filled with Inostrancevia, but stumble into the nest full of angry Allosaurus. They then come across a dying Triceratops fawn lying on its side. Dylan and Regina are horrified by the sight, but the fawn calls out. An angry Triceratops comes to the fawn's defense and chases them through the jungle After that they crash just outside the city into a field infested with Velociraptors: however, David saves them in a helicopter, but only to find that the dinosaurs have killed all the remaining survivors in the city. There Dylan encounters the Tyrannosaurus Rex once more and escapes in a tank. The tank is nearly squashed, and the T-Rex screeches in defeat and walks away. He is ambushed by yet another helmeted figure, but the figure is thrown off a bridge by the blonde girl before she leaves. Dylan recovers something in the aftermath of the struggle: a necklace worn by his dead sister, that the blonde girl had been wearing. He then tells Regina of his tormented past.

Regina locates the missile silo and retrieves the Third Energy data disc. Just outside, she is attacked by the Tyrannosaurus Rex. Suddenly a Giganotosaurus attacks the Tyrannosaur and kills it after a brief fight between the two; despite that the Giganotosaurus shown in Dino Crisis 2 is much larger than it really was [A real Giganotosaurus was estimated to be around 43 feet (13 m) long and 18 feet (5.5 m) tall and weighs 24,000 pounds (11,000 kg), but this individual is nearly 2.75 times this size]. The Giganotosaurus then follows Regina into the silo, which triggers a countdown. Regina fends it off by dousing it in flammable gas and igniting it, knocking it out for a moment. After she shuts off the missile, the Giganotosaurus gets to its paws and smashes the silo foundation, starting a fire. Outside David and Dylan are waiting, having opened the bay doors for their escape; but David is killed by an Allosaurus, which also knocks Dylan into the river, taking him away upstream. He wakes up in an unknown area where the blond girl leads him into a large base complex, where she shows him a recording that reveals the truth.

After the incident in the first game, the humans decided to study the dinosaurs. Widespread Time Skewing was carried out, with disastrous results that threatened the end of the project when it became clear that dinosaurs and humans could not coexist. The military decided to transport all the dinosaurs three million years into the future, where they could thrive, before they were to be sent back to their own time when the Third Energy time gate was perfect; it was called the Noah's Ark Plan. However, the time gate overloaded and was destroyed, leaving both the team and dinosaurs trapped. Even though the survivors were killed by the dinosaurs, their children were brought to the safety of the habitat support facility, where they were kept in life support chambers, which protected them and allowed for growth and learning. The children learned how to survive around dinosaurs, and because of the nature of the Noah's Ark Plan, they were taught to protect the dinosaurs, but lost the ability to speak, becoming the helmeted figures. One of the members of the team that came to the future was Dylan himself, who made the recording, but much older and with a daughter Paula, the blonde girl. As a result of the overload, Edward City itself had been transported to the future. The future Dylan tells his past self there is a basic gate to take him, Regina and the children back to their time: however, they can only use it once.

Dylan is attacked by another helmeted figure who has set off the base's self-destruct, before their fight is interrupted by the Giganotosaurus. Dylan manages to set off a satellite laser blasting the dinosaur, burning it to cinders. Regina turns up at the last minute, but Paula's legs are crushed by falling equipment. Unable to free her and with the building ready to explode, Dylan decides not to leave her and so sends Regina back through the time gate with the research disc, asking her to build a time gate to return and save them. Regina runs through the gate, promising to return. Both Paula and Dylan are about to be crushed by falling equipment but at the last split second the building explodes, unknown whether Regina was able to save them in time.

Soundtrack

Dino Crisis 2 Original Soundtrack
Soundtrack album
Released	September 20, 2000 (September 20, 2000)
Genre	Soundtrack
Language	Japanese
Label	Suleputer

Dino Crisis 2: Original Soundtrack was composed by Sayaka Fujita and Makoto Tomozawa with a catalog number of CPCA-1046.

Track listing
No.	Title	Length
1.	"Prologue"
2.	"Opening Movie"
3.	"Three's a Crowd"
4.	"A Survivor"
5.	"One-Eyed Menace"
6.	"Flying Discs"
7.	"Save"
8.	"Don't Let me Down"
9.	"Regina's Challenge"
10.	"Who are You"
11.	"Lethal Gas"
12.	"Trashed"
13.	"Stop it!"
14.	"Search for Survivors"
15.	"Spitting Lizards"
16.	"Research Facility Sounds"
17.	"She's Gone"
18.	"Daddy Long Neck"
19.	"Swimming Lizard"
20.	"Underwater Echoes"
21.	"A Living Sub"
22.	"Nesting Ground"
23.	"Chase of the Horned"
24.	"End of the Road"
25.	"Silence of Edward City"
26.	"Big Surprise"
27.	"Necklace"
28.	"For the Missile Silo"
29.	"Bigger Than T-REX"
30.	"Emergency!"
31.	"Dino Crispo"
32.	"The Awakening"
33.	"Time to go Back"
34.	"Here it Goes"
35.	"Farewell to David"
36.	"Hologram"
37.	"Anti-Satellite Attack"
38.	"Paula!"
39.	"Ending Movie"
40.	"Select Screen"
41.	"Extra Crisis"
42.	"Results"
43.	"Dino Crisis 2"
44.	"Attraction"
45.	"Electric Divide (Electro Mix)"
46.	"Dino Magic"
47.	"Extra Crisis MIXED Ver"
48.	"Dino Crispo MIXED Ver"
49.	"Electric Divide"
50.	"Theme of Dino Crisis 2"

Development

Reception

Reception
Aggregate scores
Aggregator	Score
GameRankings	(PS1) 81.71%[6] (PC) 57.33%[6]
Metacritic	86/100[7]
Review scores
Publication	Score
GamePro	(PS1) 5/5[8]
Game Revolution	(PS1) B[9]
GameSpot	(PS1) 9.2/10[10]
IGN	(PS1) 9.3/10[11]

Dino Crisis 2 received a positive response from critics, with an average score of 82% at Game Rankings based on 22 reviews^[6] and an 86/100 at Metacritic based on 13 reviews.^[7]

In a review by GameSpot, they mentioned it was possible to argue that the first Dino Crisis just "replaced the zombies with carnivorous dinosaurs" as a Resident Evil spin-off. However they found Dino Crisis 2 "an original, enjoyable experience that can no longer be considered just another entry into the survival-horror genre", as it "avoids the stereotypes of the genre and delivers one of the most refreshing takes on the third-person action shooter to date."^[10] IGN concurred by saying it was "stripped of its slow-paced Resident Evil shell and its haunting, creepy shockeroo tricks". They particularly praised the game’s artwork and level design that "the creatures and the design are both excellent, and the jungle backgrounds, and especially the underwater environments, are simply top-notch."^[11] On the game’s sound effects, GamePro stated the "Sound is solid, with an unobtrusive musical score that blends well with gaming effects, i.e. the telltale rustle of foliage preceding a raptor's leap for your throat isn't drowned out by J-Pop."^[8]

As a survival horror however, Game Revolution felt the "arcade-like" gameplay "detracts a bit from the whole survival-horror theme". And while they praised the sequel for not over-using puzzles and key fetch objectives, "the back and forth gameplay gets tired after a while" and can make it "very easy to get distracted from the storyline and get sucked into the process of amassing an arsenal."^[9]

Like its predecessor, Dino Crisis 2 was a commercial success. The PlayStation version of game has sold 1.19 million copies worldwide.^[12]

References

1. ^ "Production Studio 4" (in Japanese). Capcom Co., Ltd. Archived from the original on February 6, 2005. http://replay.web.archive.org/20050206023353/http://www.capcom.co.jp/studio4/index.html. 
2. ^ ^{a b c} CAPCOM CO., LTD., ed (2000). Dino Crisis 2 instruction manual (PlayStation). Virgin Interactive Entertainment. p. 12. 
3. ^ ^{a b} CAPCOM CO., LTD., ed (2000). Dino Crisis 2 instruction manual (PlayStation). Virgin Interactive Entertainment. p. 9. 
4. ^ CAPCOM CO., LTD., ed (2000). Dino Crisis 2 instruction manual (PlayStation). Virgin Interactive Entertainment. p. 16. 
5. ^ CAPCOM CO., LTD., ed (2000). Dino Crisis 2 instruction manual (PlayStation). Virgin Interactive Entertainment. p. 2. 
6. ^ ^{a b c} "Dino Crisis 2 Review (PS) at Game Rankings". Game Rankings. http://www.gamerankings.com/ps/913995-dino-crisis-2/index.html. Retrieved 2008-08-15. 
7. ^ ^{a b} "Dino Crisis 2 Review (PS) at Metacritic". Metacritic. http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation/dino-crisis-2. Retrieved 2008-08-15. 
8. ^ ^{a b} "2BARRELFUGUE" (2000-11-24). "GamePro Dino Crisis 2 Review (PS)". GamePro. http://www.gamepro.com/sony/psx/games/reviews/6978.shtml. Retrieved 2008-08-15. 
9. ^ ^{a b} A.A. White (2000-10). "Game Revolution Dino Crisis 2 Review (PS): They just won't stay extinct.". Game Revolution. http://www.gamerevolution.com/oldsite/games/sony/adventure/dino_crisis2.htm. Retrieved 2008-08-15. 
10. ^ ^{a b} Ben Stahl (2000-09-23). "GameSpot Dino Crisis 2 Review (PS)". GameSpot. http://www.gamespot.com/ps/adventure/dinocrisis2/review.html?om_act=convert&om_clk=gssummary&tag=summary;read-review. Retrieved 2008-08-15. 
11. ^ ^{a b} Doug Perry (2000-09-25). "IGN Dino Crisis 2 Review (PS): Capcom aims its dinosaur "horror" game at the action genre and comes up with a bull's eye.". IGN. http://uk.psx.ign.com/articles/164/164705p1.html. Retrieved 2008-08-15. 
12. ^ "CAPCOM Platinum Titles". Capcom.co.jp. http://ir.capcom.co.jp/english/business/million.html. Retrieved 2009-04-05. ^{[dead link]}

External links

• Dino Crisis 2 at MobyGames
• Dino Crisis 2 at Wikia