YMMV / Dino Crisis

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Gail. Over the course of the game, it's made clear that he's the cold senior member of Regina's group, enough so that he doesn't trust anyone (Rick especially) and is willing to let teammates be left behind, presumably to their deaths, if it interferes with the mission. And then the ending where the true mission is revealed, and it's shown he didn't tell Rick or Regina about it to keep them safe. Makes you wonder how much of his "hardass soldier" approach was to keep them safe from learning too much about their government's motivation.
    • Even some of his colder actions, like carrying on without Cooper or being willing to leave Tom to die can be interpreted as him prioritising his living teammates. It'd be reasonable to assume Cooper was already dead and waiting/looking for him might cost more lives, and Tom isn't part of the squad, and going to rescue him would take time and be risky. Given the kind of government the ending implies they work for, Gail may just be disillusioned enough to start prioritising his actual team over everything else rather than trying to be a hero; also given the fact that he at no point tries to stop Rick by force, and that he doesn't try to sugarcoat the secret in the end, he could be taken as not wanting the other two to turn out like him at the same time, despite himself.
  • Dr. Kirk is indeed a Jerkass and Mad Doctor, but given he had difficulties with the government before, is he acting the way he is simply because of spite or is he somewhat aware of Gail's mission to collect the data for weaponizing Third Energy and thinks the whole team knows it and is a dick to all of them for that?
  • Was Tom's sacrificing himself to protect Rick against the Raptor ambush a Senseless Sacrifice, or did he realize that his critical injury was beyond saving, and any recovery attempt (especially when it's implied that the Medical Room is very low on supplys) would just briefly delay his inevitable death?
• Awesome Music: The soundtracks are great, especially the second one. Try the save room theme from both games or the final boss theme from the second as standout examples.
• Badass Decay: Because of the increasingly powerful guns you can get in Dino Crisis 2, dinosaurs that in the previous game were unstoppable opponents you could only run from became pitiful bullet magnets who came at you in droves and were still harmless. The best example is the Allosaurus, a difficult, time consuming, tricky thing to try to take one on when you first meet it. Then you get an anti-tank rifle or a missile pod, and how WONDERFUL it is to finally turn the tables on those scaly bastards!
• Base-Breaking Character: Gail. One can either like him for saving you or hate him for being a lying prick.
• Best Known for the Fanservice: For some fans, Dino Crisis is much less remembered for its dinosaurs than it is for Regina, whose default outfit for some reason features a swimsuit-esque leather leotard on top of her already figure revealing Spy Catsuit.
• Contested Sequel: Dino Crisis 2 split the fans, with some praising the Actionised Sequel aspects while others criticised the lack of Survival Horror elements from the first game (yes, it is exactly like the fandom split its sibling series suffered). Meanwhile, Dino Crisis 3 is this at best, but more often than not it's treated as outright Sequelitis which fans will be more than happy to deny that it ever exist.
• Critical Dissonance: Dino Stalker was savaged by critics, but a few of the fans who managed to play it, especially after the universally negatively received Dino Crisis 3, liked it not only because of the frantic arcade action but it wraps up the plot of Dino Crisis 2 nicely, although without Regina.
• Cult Classic: This series has never reached the same popularity and success its zombie killing big brother had, but nevertheless has a pretty devoted fanbase that keeps hoping - even after all these years - that Capcom will one day revitalize it.
• Demonic Spiders: Therizinosaurs, or Therizinos, the outrageously powerful, pot-bellied dinos in the first game that roam in pairs and love to block narrow corridors. If you don't have any poison darts, get ready to see the inside of their stomachs many, many times.
• Designated Hero: You play as a member of an espionage group sent in to another country to capture and repatriate a madman. And although Regina has a set of morals that include being opposed to her home country exploiting the Third Energy as a weapon, she shows no signs of rebelling and by the end of the game, she declares she's ready for the next assignment.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: It is very easy to diagnose Dr. Edward Kirk with some form of Bipolar Disorder. Mood swings? Check. Aggressive Behavior? Check. Poor Judgement? It's in his bio that he can't tell the difference between right and wrong so check. Risky behavior? Check. Will to complete goals? BIG check. It is also, however, easy to diagnose him with Antisocial Personality Disorder. Kirk fits almost every symptom on the the list.
• Even Better Sequel: While the first game may be the most popular, there is a camp that believes Dino Crisis 2 is the superior game, in spite of its tonal differences. In addition to more dinosaurs and a larger scope of exploration like jungles, an underwater facility, and a time-displaced city, the game offers more weapons and more control regarding traveling and battling dinosaurs, not to mention it's much more fast-paced than its predecessor, which is padded out by tedious puzzle sections, and manages to carve out its own unique playstyle distinct from the first game's "Resident Evil with dinosaurs" model. Finally, Dino Crisis 2 makes an attempt to flesh out the series' lore, something the first game was unable to do so, further highlighting the sequel's ambition.
• Fanon Discontinuity: Dino Crisis 3, especially by fans who were disgruntled that it never addressed the second game's cliffhanger, but the gameplay is also fairly unremarkable, meaning it doesn't get a pass on fun factor the way some other loosely-connected game sequels do.
• First Installment Wins: More people know about Dino Crisis than about its sequels. That said, there are some people who prefer the second game for a couple of reasons.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Any raptor that follows you from room to room will quickly become this, since you most likely fled them in order to restock on ammo.
  • Oviraptors in the second game have an incredibly annoying habit of dive-bombing you with a jump kick from offscreen, ruining your chances at getting that juicy "No Damage" bonus.
• Most Wonderful Sound: Listen to the save room theme; you can just hear the sighs of relief as it starts up.
• Narm:
  • Like many other Capcom games from the same period, the voice acting can dip into So Bad, It's Good. "That's no lizard. That's a dinosaur."
  • The way the script bends over backwards to enforce No Communities Were Harmed. There's only so many times you can hear "your government/nation" before it starts to get cringe-worthy.
  • Rick's anger towards Gail puting the mission over saving Tom sounds very laughable due to Rick's voice actor trying to invoke Tranquil Fury, but comes off sounding like an edgy rebellious teenager acting out towards his parents.
• Nightmare Retardant:
  • The compsognathus hordes from the first game. They are meant to Zerg Rush Regina and overwhelm the player, but they are pitifully easy to defeat with the handgun and make a faintly amusing squeak each time one gets shot.
  • The oviraptors from the second game. They spit venom in a manner similar to the Dilophosaurus from Jurassic Park, but are just too comical-looking to be taken seriously. (They still have a knack for pissing off anyone gunning for that No Damage bonus, though.)
• Older Than They Think: Capcom actionizing one of their popular Survival Horror series and causing a split in the fanbase as a result? They did it with Dino Crisis 2, five years before Resident Evil 4. In fact, as The Sphere Hunter noted in her retrospective on the game, a lot of the exact same gameplay elements that RE4 used to shake up its series' formula — the greater focus on gunplay and action-packed set pieces over puzzle-solving, melee attacks getting their own separate button, an in-game economy where players earn money for killing enemies and then spend it on upgrades, even an Escort Mission involving a young blonde girl — had precedent in DC2 five years prior. She argued that, had RE4 come out on the PS1, it would've played exactly like DC2, and speculated that Shinji Mikami (who had worked on both DC games) may have taken influence from it at some point in the production of RE4.
• Polished Port: The Sega Dreamcast version of the first game cleans up the graphics quite a bit more obviously than the ports of Resident Evil 2 and 3 did, seeing as the entire game is displayed with polygonal environments. It was sold at a massively discounted price, to boot.
• Sequelitis: Dino Crisis 3 wasn't as well received as previous games partially due to the fact that the only connection it had to previous titles (beyond some tenuous links to Dino Stalker of all games) was that it had dinosaurs (of a sort) in it.
• Spiritual Successor: The first two games could be considered this to Alien and Aliens mainly due to how similar the corresponding entries are regarding their tone and theme; Alien and Dino Crisis are horror where the protagonist has to survive against something in a closed and tight environment whereas Aliens and Dino Crisis 2 are much more action-packed as well as having a plot that involves saving a colony that goes horribly wrong. Youtuber RedScotGaming comments on the similarities between the Alien and Dino Crisis series in his Gaming Retrospective video on the latter. Then Dino Crisis 3 straight up recreates the "Nostromo" plot of the first Alien, up to and including the equivalent of the MOTHER master computer.
• Squick: The bodies and bloodstains left around for the hero to find. While the on-screen animation is fairly dull, it's a particularly squicktastic idea to raid dead bodies for keys and Apocalyptic Log entries, especially because few of those aforementioned corpses are anywhere close to intact (one corpse you come across has been eaten down to nothing more than a head and half a ribcage, like a discarded melon rind).
• That One Level: The Initializer/Stabilizer segment of the first game is easily the most tedious and frustrating part of Dino Crisis, especially if one chooses Rick's option where you're stuck on the "B" floor. For one, the areas you'll be going through are crawling with super-raptors and therizinosaurs which could kill you in 2-3 hits and the puzzles become even more confusing and difficult to pinpoint, let alone solve unless you're paying attention to any missing notes and files you've been stumbling across, which contain numbers and details about locks and key items. At least with Gail's option, you could fetch the Initializer and Stabilizer and get to the plot's endgame there (that is if you can get through the therizinosaurs and have enough grenade ammo), but Rick's option will leave you dazed, annoyed, and confused on just where to go unless you have a guide and then you need to play a minigame to assemble the Initializer and Stabilizer.
• That One Puzzle: In the second game, corralling the compy that stole a keycard from you. It's not that hard once you know what to do, but the compy's tendency to sprint off in semi-random directions and Dylan's refusal to just shoot the stupid thing still grates on one's nerves.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Dino Crisis 3 could have been a chance to cover the cliffhanger ending of the last game, but it did not. Curiously, part of this can be chalked up to the obscurity of the actual third game in the series, Dino Stalker. Dino Stalker is clearly a continuation of Dino Crisis 2 in that Dylan and Paula are alive and the Noah's Ark Plan is mentioned. Furthermore, the game also appears to set up plot points in Dino Crisis 3 (namely, the Mother Computer that oversaw the project is implied to be the predecessor of the MTHR computers in 3 and genetically engineered dinosaurs similar to what is seen in that game). In spite of this, the cliffhanger of 2 (i.e. Regina promising to rescue Dylan and Paula once a time gate is constructed) goes completely unaddressed and appears to have been resolved entirely off-screen.
• The Woobie: Lt. Mike Wired of Dino Stalker. When Dylan breaks the news to Mike that he was pulled from the timeline and chosen for a potential Suicide Mission because he was fated to die in WWII anyway regardless of his success, Mike shuts down for a bit. And then he goes through with it, despite knowing what awaits him at the end. The ending does away with this, as Paula, having fallen for Mike, displaces the bullets that were going to kill him, thereby altering time by allowing Mike to live.

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