Beat on Normal with rank D and 1.3 million points. Missed 1 file. I started on Hard and was expecting a Resident Evil survival horror. I was immediately disappointed at how the raptors kept respawning, while my health and ammo were going down quickly. I had to run away and spend what few points I had on med kits and ammo. I made it to the military base and was hoping the traditional gameplay would begin, but then the indoor raptors were respawning too. At least in the jungle they came in from the trees, but indoors they popped in out of thin air. I started over on Normal to see if there was respawning, and then looked online to see that they were not actually infinite. I liked Normal better because getting hit did not take off a massive chunk of health.

I methodically exterminated every enemy from each zone, except for a couple that were actually infinite. I very quickly realized that they spawned when the camera shifted, and by the time I was playing as Regina figured out how to get the no damage bonus. So it was camp near an entrance, kill 5, then leave for the bonus. Repeat until no more enemies. Prior to this the gameplay was growing on me as a fun shooter with Resident Evil controls, but the very formulaic way of enemy spawning and the no damage bonus made the game tedious. I bought each primary weapon and gave them all a max size ammo capacity boost (not the pistol). I found Dylan's shotgun to be better for general use than the solid cannon, because of range. The solid cannon wrecked Allosaurus but took more effort to wait until the raptors were close enough. The anti tank gun was the best overall weapon and I used it to wreck everything. In the fire cave I tried out the rocket launcher and it 1 shot the armored enemies while the rifle took 3 shots; not really much of a difference to the point where the rocket launcher was skippable. Regina was more fun to play. I used the flamethrower for the first Allosaurus and the pistol for everything else; it did not work well vs Pteranadons and I ran from them. Then I got the dual smgs, which was the most fun weapon in the game. I loved how each hand could shoot at separate targets, and how fluidly it controlled. It was almost like an aimbot. The heavy machine gun was good too, but better suited to single targets. The missile pod was much better than the rocket launcher, and was my go to for the more powerful enemies but it went through ammo quickly. The only subweapon I bought was the mine gun because it was mandatory. I bought everything else except the melee upgrades, and kept my health up by purchasing small med kits. Later on I found more med kits than I could carry.

The puzzles and rail shooting sequences were good. The only puzzle I did not like was hitting the power switches with the shock baton. I killed all of the Allosaurus during their nest boss fight using normal guns rather than the signal flare; they were way tougher than other solo Allosaurus but went down easily enough with the anti tank rifle and missile pod. Regina had to kill a few with the machine gun and smgs, which took forever. Should have used the flare gun. The tank mini game was fun, but the camera zoom and boss made it very difficult to tell what way the turret was facing. I wish there were more proper boss fights rather than the gimmicky battles that required fooling around with environmental stuff, though the side colloseum mode was like a boss fight. I started as the T rex but did not know what I was doing and died to the raptors. Regina got to the Allosaurus, but she did not have powerful weapons. I neglected to use any healing and probably would have won if I had healed. It would be all about running around flanking with the smgs. Dylan did about as well but his weapons were even worse. Really had to use the mine and shotgun to kill the armored, and save the piddly 5 rockets for the Allosaurus. Rick also lost at the Allosaurus because the solid cannon was awkward to use against 2 at once. I most likely could win with all 3 characters with more attempts. Gail wrecked the entire arena with A rank, mainly because the anti rank rifle owned the Allosaurus and T rex. The tank was just like the tank mini game only zoomed in enough to actually see the turret. I found it better to not move around much and won A rank despite taking a lot of hits and a long time. Then I did each dino. The oviraptor won with A rank using mostly the jump kick; it was fairly easy to get behind the enemies to avoid damage. The mid ranged spit was only useful against the armored guys when they were on their backs. The velociraptor barely won with B rank and a sliver of health. I found it to be too slow and unhandy, making it difficult to avoid damage. The jump attack was not nearly as good as the ovi's, and sometimes it would do a tail swipe instead. I think it needed faster movement and response. The armored lizard did quite well winning with B but not close to death. I found its basic bite to be savagely effective, and the 2 legged dash was helpful for getting and staying behind the bigger dinos. The Allosaurus was my favorite dino because of the fast handling and variety of attacks. It could sprint to get behind the big dinos, wrecked with the basic bite and had a handy area effect tail lash to deal with raptors. Got A rank. Then I got S rank somehow as the T rex despite it completely lacking the finesse of the Allosaurus. It was a struggle to keep up with both raptor types, with the key being to run away to keep them at bite distance; could not hit them when they were too close. It was not fast enough to get behind the Allosaurus and T rex so I just traded blows from the front. That did not seem worthy of S.

The main game felt more like a bonus mode, like it should have played like an actual survival horror with much fewer enemies and supplies. Instead it was pretty much the opposite, with nearly infinite enemies and supplies. The gameplay was fun but the nature of farming enemies for money brings the game down a but. Still it was nice to experience an action packed shooter using the Resident Evil interface. Makes me imagine how cool such an action packed bonus mode would be for mowing down hordes of zombies and lickers. The story went too far with the time travel, putting in things like paradox and causality. The concept of bringing dinosaurs forward to the present is cool, but once you add the ability to go to the past and future it makes little sense. Might play again on Hard, but not looking forward to the tedium of extermination again.

7.5/10