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"Dinosaurs exist and the Nazis have them!"
Dino D-Day Homepage

Dino D-Day is a 2011 First-Person Shooter for the PC, developed by 800 North and Digital Ranch, set in World War II... more or less. There is one minor difference: Those Wacky Nazis cloned dinosaurs. Training them to fight the Allies and equipping them with guns and armor, the Nazis gain a terrifying new advantage. In the game, you play as either the Allies or the Axis (which despite the name has no Japanese or Italian characters) and can play in several classic first person shooter game modes such as control points, deathmatch, and king of the hill. A cooperative Multi-Mook Melee game mode, titled "Last Stand", is also available as paid DLC.

The Axis has eight playable characters, plus two map exclusive dinosaurs. As the inventors of the cloning process, they have the majority of playable dinosaurs. These include the Stygimoloch, a fairly average quadruped with a back mounted machine gun, the Velociraptor, a fast but fragile predator that can pounce on a victim, leaving seconds for teammates to save them, the Desmatosuchus, a very tanky but slow quadruped with a mounted Anti-Air gun (which is never used on aircraft in game), the Dilophosaurus, a fairly tough and fast dinosaur that can knock targets over with a charge and throw goats and downed enemies, the Microraptor, a bird-like dinosaur that can glide, cling to walls, and spit acid to blind enemies, and the compy, a small, fast, but very fragile dinosaur with a grenade strapped to it that can be detonated at any time. Additionally, Karl Hissman can summon kamikaze pterosaurs, the T-Rex and Styracosaurus can be played in specific maps, a Mosasaur can be found in a certain map and will kill ANY player that touches it, and a Triceratops existed in the since removed single player beta. Many more are referenced in-game and in-lore, but are not seen in-game, such as the Plesiosaur, Deinosuchus, and Dunkleosteus. In addition, the Axis has three human characters, the previously mentioned Karl Hissman, a devoted Nazi sniper, Kurt Streicher, a fairly average soldier with no special abilities, but few weaknesses, and Wolfgang Von Graff, The Medic for humans and dinosaurs alike, but far from harmless in his own right.

The Allies lack the know how to clone dinosaurs as yet, so all but one of their seven team members are humans from various countries. The team includes Jack Hardgrave, The Leader known to punch Tyrannosaurs to death, Joe Spencer, a quick soldier who can call in an artillery strike, Nigel Blythe, a british soldier who can use the rocket launcher or the flamethrower, which are excellent for fighting tanky dinosaurs and hard to hit dinosaurs, respectively, Ilona Vike, a latvian sniper who can bait velociraptors with a jackrabbit distraction, leaving them immobile and vulnerable for a few seconds, Camille Brun, a french medic with an SMG, and Jakob Brown, a jewish german defector who uses a heavy machine gun and powerful but inaccurate flechette gun in combat. Trigger is the sole allied dinosaur, a small Protoceratops rejected by the Germans for a leg deformity. The Allies found him and fitted him with a prosthetic and a mounted machine gun, granting the allies a powerful new ally. Guess that insistence on "perfection" didn't work out so well for the Nazis.

Dino D-Day contains examples of:

  • All Germans Are Nazis: Averted. The Allied team have Jakob Frank as their machinegunner and he despises them.
  • And This Is for...: Ilona has lines for both her mother and her father, the couple having been killed by the Nazis.
  • Animals Not to Scale: The Styracosaurus is big as in "I'm a living tank" big. It's likely that the Nazis bred or genetically modified Styracosauri to be much bigger than normal as Styracosaurus fossils show that they were only 5.9 feet tall, about the height of a grown man.
  • Anti-Frustration Features: The Dilophosaurus can pick up a downed enemy and throw them at another player to instantly kill both. However, knocking down someone can prove to be a difficult task (especially if you're out in the open, since you become a sitting duck for gunfire), so there are harmless goats scattered around every map for you to freely pick up and throw around.
  • Awesome, but Impractical: The T-Rex is often this. Although fun to play once you get a turn, it's not as powerful as you might expect. It has a large health pool, high damage machine guns mounted on the sides of the head, and can eat enemies to regain some health, but it's also very slow. A competent allies team can take you out quite quickly, and players will tend to focus you as an obvious and important target. And if a Hardgrave player has scored three kills to earn his bonus ability, he can take you out in just a few punches. The Rex will respawn after a while, but it may not be your turn again... And even if it is, you might decide you prefer not to be the biggest target on the server.
    • The Velociraptor can pounce on enemies and kill them in a single attack. This is provided you somehow manage to isolate somebody, that you can accurately jump on them, and that your victim is incapable of killing you first. If you succeed at this, you are left a sitting duck for their teammates while the killing animation takes place, so if one happens to see you (and bothers to help) it's very likely you'll die while your target survives.
  • Badass Bookworm: Hardgrave and Nigel are both paleontologists.
  • Beast of Battle: This is why the Nazis clone dinosaurs and they prove quite effective.
  • BFG: Jakob Frank has a Browning Automatic Rifle, Cpt. Nigel Blythe has a Projector Infantry Anti-Tank (or PIAT), Trigger has a .30 cal Machine Gun, the Desmatosuchus has a miniature tank cannon on it's back, and the Styracosaurus has an actual tank turret and gunner on it's back. Unfortunately for the Styracosaurus and her gunner, the battle cannon can only turn in a 180-degree arc but then again that horn isn't for show. Nigel is ultimately the best against the largest Dinos as his PIAT can dish out the hardest hits without having to run up to a T-Rex or Shield-face.
  • Boom Head Shot: As expected of the genre, headshots deal twice as much damage, most rifles killing in one shot.
  • Boring, but Practical: Human characters are perhaps the most effective in the hands of a skilled player, but it's hardly as fun to shoot someone like in any old first-person shooter compared to mauling them to death as a dinosaur.
  • Combat Medic: Camille Brun and Wolfgang von Graff have access to powerful automatic weapons and incredible self-sustainability that allow them to easily stay within the frontlines.
  • The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: The Desmatosuchus is equipped with an anti-aircraft gun, but a bot controlled one has access to a flamethrower somehow.
  • Christmas Episode: One map takes place on Christmas, and the radio speakers play Christmas songs when Santa himself isn't explaining how his sleigh was shot down by the Nazis and he was forced to "permanently remove (some Nazis) from the naughty list", and fight off some dinosaurs but took severe injuries fighting them off. Sure enough, you can find his burning sleigh by one of the control points.
  • Delicious Distraction: Ilona Vike's jackrabbits, a tasty treat for the tiny dinosaurs. It distracts them for 5 seconds but heals them if they finish so Ilona has to make that time count.
  • Death from Above: Joe Spencer can summon an airstrike and Hissman can summon a pterosaur to dive bomb his enemies.
  • Eaten Alive: The T-Rex can do this to the allies to regain some health, and the Mosasaur will do this to anyone on either team that falls in the harbor it floats in.
  • Fire-Breathing Weapon: Nigel Blythe's alternate weapon is a flamethrower, which is highly effective against fragile but hard to hit dinosaurs such as the Microraptor and Compy.
  • Good Old Fisticuffs: Every Allied Member uses their fists as their melee. Hardgrave gets a special mention because his special ability limits him to only using his fists.
  • Flechette Storm: Jakob's secondary is a one-round shotgun with flechette rounds.
  • Fragile Speedster: The Velociraptor, Compsognathus and Microraptor have low or zero armor, but have some of the fastest speeds in the game.
    • Joe Spencer has the least amount of armor for an ally, tied with Ilona and Camille, but is faster. In fact, his presence makes nearby teammates faster as well.
  • Interface Screw: The Microraptor spits blinding acid which covers your screen with thick green goo if hit, making it very hard to avoid enemies or shoot them.
  • Lightning Bruiser: When Hardgrave activates his ability, he becomes faster, becomes Nigh-Invulnerable and his packs a more powerful punch. The only downside is that he's limited to melee.
  • Limit Break: After three kills, Hardgrave can activate his patriotic fever ability, which allows him to punch anything to death. Even the Tyrannosaurus Rex!
  • Multi-Mook Melee: The Last Stand game mode features the Allies fighting off waves of various Axis soldiers and dinosaurs, culminating with a battle against the dreaded Red Baron.
  • One-Hit Kill:
    • A direct hit from Nigel's PIAT or a well-placed headshot with certain high-caliber weapons will almost always spell doom for humans and small dinosaurs.
    • Getting pounced by a Velociraptor will quickly lead to death, unless the Raptor dies before the pounce is finished. Having low health significantly hastens this kind of death.
    • Got picked up by a Dilophosaurus after it knocked you down? You Are Already Dead; even if the dinosaur doesn't throw your body like a ragdoll, you will still die after some time has passed or even if a teammate kills it while you're still in its grasp.
      • Speaking of throwing bodies like ragdolls, anybody who gets smacked by a flying teammate or goat will wind up dead in an instant.
    • A Compy's Suicide Attack will become this with at least two melee kills; detonating won't kill someone at full health if the Kill Streak is any less than that.
  • Propaganda Piece: Several in-universe examples from both sides appear during loading screens or can be seen on the official website. Perhaps the most bizarre is one which claims drinking goat milk is equivalent to having Hitler over for dinner because the Nazis feed goats to their carnivorous dinosaurs. One can only assume cattle ranchers had a hand in that one.
  • Recruiters Always Lie: Several posters like this can appear during loading screens. Most are fairly standard, but one claims killing Nazi dinosaurs is as easy as hunting deer and they're just as dumb.
  • Shock and Awe: The Vengeance Goat can summon electricity to kill your foes.
  • Short-Range Shotgun: While Nigel's M97 is alright, you pretty much have to be point blank to deal any damage with Jakob's secondary.
  • Shout-Out:
  • Sniper Duel: While some characters have distinct voice lines, depending on the type of enemy (e.g. Hardgrave comments on various dinosaurs he kills,) Ilona is the only one who comments on killing another sniper.
  • Stupid Jetpack Hitler: Somehow, Nazi scientists managed to clone dinosaurs of a wide variety of species, when in modern times in reality, we've yet to clone relatively recently extinct animals like the Woolly Mammoth or Dodo.
  • Suicide Attack: The Compy can detonate a grenade at any time, which does more damage for each kill you've already made that life, and Pterosaurs are used as an artillery strike. Though one wonders if it's worth using them for that over shells that don't need to grow, be trained, and eat.
  • Super Drowning Skills: On the map with Mosasaurs in the water, if you fall in away from them, you will instantly die. This is explicitly from drowning, not being eaten.
  • Team Pet: Trigger the Protoceratops for the Allies, being a cute dinosaur the size of a sheep or a very large dog.
  • Throw the Mook at Them: As the Dilophosaurus, you can pick up enemies you knock down or the goats scattered around the maps and hurl them at enemies. This can be a very useful option, as it is the only ranged attack the dinosaur has.
  • Throwing the Distraction: Ilona Vike's special ability is tossing a dead jackrabbit. While pointless against larger dinos the Velociraptor, Compsognathus, and Microraptor will eat it, leaving them vulnerable for 5 seconds. But if they eat it they'll be back to full health so Ilona has to make those shots count!
  • Urine Trouble: Some dinosaurs have the ability to pee. It serves no purpose beyond humiliating the opposition.
  • Video Game Cruelty Potential: Goats are scattered throughout the maps. These are mainly meant for Dilophosaurs to throw at enemies, but you can also kill them as any class for your own amusement. This can have some tactical value for the allies by denying them from Dilos, but they respawn fast enough and are so common it rarely matters.
  • Violation of Common Sense: One of the most effective ways to take down a T-Rex is to punch it to death. This is thanks to Hardgrave's unique ability available after scoring three kills in a life, temporarily greatly increasing unarmed damage and damage resistance.
  • Weaponized Animal: Most of the dinos have weapons or armor of some sort added, greatly enhancing their natural power and durability.

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