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- Category Archives PlayStation
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Dino Crisis (PlayStation)
Dino Crisis (Capcom – PSX – 1999)
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Dino Crisis is a game that was created by Capcom for the PlayStation and released in 1999. It was created by the same people who created Resident Evil and has many similarities to that game. It is a survival horror game but it features dinosaurs instead of the undead.
The dinosaurs were brought from the past as the result of a secret weapons research project. An experiment gone wrong resulted in a pocket of the island the research lab is on being swapped with one from the distant past. You must destroy the rift in time and capture the the person responsible.
Though similar to Resident Evil in many ways, it is a newer game and has a number of improvements and differences. The biggest is probably that it uses an new 3D engine and a real-time environment instead of a pre-rendered background. This made high detail scenes more difficult to achieve but allowed for more immersion and interactivity.
Dino Crisis was ported to both the Sega Dreamcast and Windows in 2000. However, they were not enhanced much over the PlayStation version. It was also re-released via the PlayStation Network in 2006. For those that like survival horror games, this is a pretty good one and worth having for your PlayStation or Dreamcast. Either one is fine, just don’t expect the Dreamcast version to take advantage of its superior hardware because it really doesn’t.
There were several sequels and spin-offs to Dino Crisis. Dino Crisis 2 was released in 2000 also for the PlayStation and later in 2002 for Windows. In 2002, Dino Stalker was released for the PlayStation 2 but this was more of a spin-off and related to the Gun Survivor series. In 2003, Dino Crisis: Dungeon in Chaos was released. This was a mobile game, another spin-off, and a first person shooter. Finally, Dino Crisis 3 was released for the Xbox in 2003. However, this last game in the series was more action/adventure that survival horror and it takes place in the distant future on a space station with dinosaurs created from mutant DNA. Dino Crisis 2 is the only real direct sequel and the only one that could be considered better than the first. It was mostly downhill from there…
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Quake II (PlayStation)
Source: Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine – Volume 3, Issue 1 – October 1999
The Quake series was id’s follow up to the Doom series. At this point in time, first person shooters were still progressing rapidly in terms of the technology and game play features. For instance, in the Doom games you were primarily limited to 2 dimensional movement and shooting at only what was directly in front of you. Quake added the novel feature of being able to look up and down. Quake II was the second game in a series that continues to this day.
Quake II, like its predecessor and the Doom games before it were all developed first as PC games. Quake II was the first of id’s games to support hardware 3D acceleration out of the box (though it was added in later patches for the original Quake as well). The ad above is for the PlayStation version of Quake II. the PlayStation version (and also the Nintendo 64 version) was released two years after the original PC game. Because of the limitations of the PlayStation, Quake II ran at a lower resolution and featured fewer levels. There were assorted other various changes as well, including some different enemies and music. Despite the PlayStation’s relative limitations, the graphics were still well done. However, there is one huge negative with the PlayStation version. There was no network multiplayer. To me this was the feature that made the Doom and Quake games truly great. The PlayStation version did feature split-screen multiplayer but it’s just not the same.
There were several official add-ons to Quake II, including The Reckoning, Ground Zero, and Extremeties. However, there were no add-ons released for the PlayStation as such. Also, the source code has been released so there are a number of games, both free and commercial, that were based on that code. Hexen II was my personal favorite.
If you are a PlayStation collector, then Quake II is still a game worth having. Some may even prefer the split-screen approach for multiplayer. However, for the best Quake II experience, it needs to be played on a PC. Fortunately, there are easy and cheap ways to do this today, including buying the game for $4.99 from Steam. Or you can always go old school and install the original game on a Pentium II.
The ad above, a rather unique supermarket parody ad, is from the October 1999 issue of The Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine. Screen shots above are from the PlayStation version of the game.
