Bytes & Flops 1.26.12: Dino D-Day
Posted by Vince Osorio on 01.26.2012
Dino D-Day is a first-person class based shooter. With Nazi Dinosaurs. With a premise that appealing, there was no way the game couldn't succeed, right?
The Source engine (the proprietary 3D game engine developed by Valve Corporation) is one of the most prolific this side of the Unreal Engine. Ever since its debut in June 2004 with Counter-Strike: Source, the engine has been powering the most critically and commercially acclaimed retail and downloadable games, not to mention some of the most inventive mods out there. We wouldn't have Half-Life 2 or Portal without it. There would be no Zeno Clash or Goldeneye: Source. Without the Source engine, we would be living in a world without Dino D-Day.
I don't actually mean for Dino D-Day to be uttered in the same breath as those masterpieces. It, however, shares more than some DNA with the games I just listed off. It's a game that plays and like Day of Defeat: Source. But you know, there are Nazi dinosaurs.
Nazi dinosaurs. That's pretty much why you'd come to Dino D-Day over any other first-person WWII shooter out there. It's a damn fine way to grab the attention of a fickle audience, that's for sure. But does it work in practice? Read on, my friends.
Dino D-Day is a team and class based first-person shooter. You can join the Axis or Allies teams in four different game modes- team deathmatch (self-explanatory), king of the hill (also self-explanatory), capture point (capture as many points on the map as you can before the end of the round) and objective, which is split into two different game modes. The more common one has one team planting bombs while the other team protects against the assault. The more abstract one is confusing in practice- the Allies must capture specific enemy nests/points, while a randomly selected Axis member spawns as a Styracosaur who can only be killed by explosives. In the objective mode, sometimes an Axis member can spawn as a T-rex with turrets on his neck. No, I'm not making this up. Yes, it doesn't make much sense, but that's Dino D-Day for ya.
For obvious reasons, the Allies have more human classes than dinosaur classes, and it's the opposite for the Axis. As for human classes, there's a sniper, an assault, a demolitions expert and a medic on each squad (Allies have a bonus assault member as well). Certain human classes have special abilities as well that are activated after a wait period or after requirements are met: the Axis sniper can summon kamikaze pterosaurs to any point on the map, while the Allied sniper can launch a rabbit which acts as bait for Axis dinosaur classes. One character on the Allies can spawn an artillery strike, while another gains an "Apoca-fist" type power up after three kills in a row. With the exception of the special abilities, however, the classes play as you'd expect them to. If you've played any class-based shooter before, this one's not all that different...except for the damn dinosaurs.
The Allies have one dinosaur: Trigger, a protoceratops with a machine gun turret on his back. His equivalents on the Axis are the stygimoloch (also has a machine gun turret) and the dematosuchus (who wields an anti-aircraft gun on his back). The Axis has access to four other dinos. The Compsognathus is a kamikaze character- control him and rush into an enemy and you'll explode on impact. The microraptor can fly and has a ranged acid spit attack. The dilophosaur (my personal favorite) can sprint and ram enemies with a devestating headbutt, pick them up with their teeth, and launch them across the map for an instant kill. He can also throw goats. And everyone's favorite, the velociraptor, can pounce on enemies and claw/bite them for a kill.
Most of the dinosaur classes are fun to use, because they control unlike any character you've ever played in this genre. The turret based dinosaurs are less fun, but more practical to play as, especially during shoot-outs. I do have two problems with the classes, however. Although it's understandable that the Allies don't have any other dinosaur classes (in Dino D-Day's universe, the dinosaurs are impure creations resurrected by Hitler's scientists), it just makes the Allies less interesting to play as. The developers took this to heart and added Trigger (as he was not an Allied class when the game was first released in early 2011), but it's not enough. Also, the compsognathus is wildly unbalanced. He's extremely fast and hard to attack (due to his small stature), and his attack is very nearly an insta-kill. It's an attack that's susceptible to trolling, straight up. Compy too was added after Dino's original release in a patch, but most fans seem to hate his very existence.
The game through the eyes of the Velociraptor.
With that said, Dino D-Day has some issues. A lot of issues. Other than the addition of the dinosaurs, it doesn't provide a significant difference that hasn't been seen in any other WWII shooter out there. It looks and feels like a game from 5 years ago, but commanded a $15 price point when it was first released (that price has been knocked back down to $10, and it was apart of the Indie Royale bundle back in late 2011).
The fake propaganda posters might be better than the game itself.
The game has a lot of fun with the premise, which should be commended. The load times, while pretty terrible, give you ample time to read the fake advertisments, propaganda posters, news articles and "Dear John" letters scattered on load screens. One advertisement shills out outrageously priced dinosaur jewerly made form the finest T-rex teeth and bones. One news headline reads "Nazi dinosaurs become new Apex Predators, Non-Ayrans low on food chain". The best are the dark, morbidly hilarious casualty notification letters sent to widowed soldiers. I've copied & pasted the text from one below:
It is my sad duty to write you about the untimely loss of your husband. Though I would not attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming, I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the fact that even as the T-Rex was ripping the legs off his pelvis with horrible, wet popping sounds, he kept on firing his tommy gun down that thing's gullet.
You either find that excerpt hilarious or unnecessarily stupid and offensive. If you agreed with the latter opinion, than Dino D-Day is not for you.
And this game failed because?
Dino D-Day is a game I had only heard about due to a Giant Bomb quick look a week or so after release. Sometimes, games with inherently stupid premises are too easy to pass on, even for myself. With that said, the high price point, the lukewarm to negative reviews during original release and the lack of hype for the product did the game in. The Indie Royale bundle might have given the game extra exposure, but it's still far too hard to find more than one or two servers with significant competition online.
I've bashed Dino D-Day a significant amount on my Twitter page and on a day-to-day basis, but it's really not deserving of any of that. It's not insanely stupid, it's just insane and ridiculous and surprisingly addictive. But you truly have to have the right mindset to play this game and give it the benefit of the doubt.
