Review: Dino Hunt 2

You can play this game here, but I do not recommend it at all. I don’t even know why I played it honestly.

There’s not much to talk about graphics wise, there’s two generic outdoor maps. One with grass and one with snow. The game randomly alternates between the two.

Your gun has infinite range and infinite ammo. Aiming is ridiculously easy, if you see a dinosaur in the distance, just move your cursor over it until your reticle zooms in, then click the left mouse button.

There are four upgrades available, but only three of them are useful. The camouflage upgrade is a joke. I’ve upgraded it twice, and it just doesn’t work. You are best off just upgrading your speed, gun damage, and your rate of fire instead.

The game only has four dinosaurs to hunt; Velociraptor, Tyrannosaurus, Stegosaurus, and Diplodocus. The models look fine for a free game, but there’s one problem. The dinosaurs aren’t animated. They just float around the map like ghosts. When they die they just fall headfirst and clip into the ground.

The AI is a joke, I’m not even sure if I should call it AI. If a dinosaur is near you, or near a dinosaur that got shot, it will head straight for you, no matter what. This becomes a massive problem in the later levels and makes the game extremely boring in the early levels. They only make noise when they kill you, not when moving. I’ve been jump-scared by dinosaurs in this game several times.

The first few levels are fine, boring, but beatable. By level 8 or so, the game turns into an unfair mess. Despite the maps being a decent size, the game always spawns you close to your targets. The dinosaurs are also clustered together, and will gang up you, no matter what type of dinosaur they are.

When you spawn, you have about five seconds to shoot the five or so dinosaurs charging towards you. As you can’t hear them, you have no idea where they are coming from. If they are coming from multiple directions, you are pretty much dead. If you upgraded enough, you might be able to run around and dodge a few, but even that doesn’t work sometimes.

The Velociraptors and Tyrannosaurs move so fast that you won’t even know what hit you, and while the Velociraptors become 1-hit kills if you upgrade gun damage, the Tyrannosaurs still take multiple hits to kill no matter how high you upgrade.

Let me give you an example. You spawn, and there are five raptors, a Stegosaurus, and three Tyrannosaurs near you. All of them rush towards you in different directions. The Tyrannosaurs are the biggest threat, but if you try to kill one, the other dinosaurs will get you. If you try shooting the raptors, the Tyrannosaurs or the Stegosaurus will get you. You can’t shoot the Stegosaurus because of the carnivores that are about to kill you. If you try to back away, you’ll back into one of the dinosaurs.

It’s a Morton’s Fork, everything you do ends in miserable failure. Most of the levels are luck based, you just have to hope you only spawn near a few dinosaurs, or that they all come in one direction. Upgrading only helps you so much.

Also, do the dinosaurs have some sort of treaty? Why do the herbivores care if I shoot a Velociraptor? Why do the dinosaurs all ignore each other and go straight for me? It’s nonsensical.

I’ve made it to level 37, and I’m giving up there. I’m just getting mobbed within seconds of spawning. I honestly should have given up twenty levels earlier, but I’m stubborn. I’d call this game so bad it’s good, but I can’t because of how unplayable the later levels are.

This is one of the worst games I’ve ever played.

Rating 

1 out of 10

The Mystery Cartoon

Sorry about the lack of posts. I’ve been doing two things recently:

1. Playing Lego Marvel Superheroes 2, which you can expect a review for shortly.

2. Trying to track down a cartoon I watched when I was a kid. This cartoon has seemingly vanished into thin air, and I can’t find it anywhere. It’s like the show has ceased to exist. I’ve posted this in a few other places, but I figured I post this here, in hopes that someone reading this knows what which show I’m talking about:

“The show aired on TVO during the Early 2000s. I saw two episodes, and possibly the opening of a third. I don't think they were very long, and about halfway through, the host of TVO kids would interrupt the show to guess who the culprit was.

The characters were all anthropomorphic animals. The main character was probably a dog who was either a police or a private detective. He had a sidekick, who don't remember anything about, not even what animal he was. He and his sidekick might have been the only recurring characters. I'm going to give a summary of what I remember from each episode, but I could be wrong on some of the details. I'm not even sure that the third episode was of the same show.

Episode 1: I remember the opening of the episode the most as it terrified me. The episode started from the point of view of an inventor walking down a path in a park to his lab (I think), when he hears someone say something from behind him. He turns around to see a fist flying towards his face. He gets knocked out, and the plans for one of his inventions is stolen.

The detective and his sidekick arrived on the scene and talked to the inventor. They also took a look around the crime scene. They talked to the inventor about possible suspects, and he named three, all of them different animals. I don't think the detective ever talked to the suspects, nor did the suspects ever appear. One of the suspects was named "Captain Kangaroo". After this, the TVO kids host interrupts. He says that the culprit isn't Captain Kangaroo and references the old Captain Kangaroo show. After this, the show continued. It was revealed that the culprit was "Captain Kangaroo", as there was a series of tracks leading over a gate or a fence that revealed that the culprit was hopping.

Episode 2: The entire episode took place in a small apartment building. It started with a Porcupine couple arriving at their apartment after their vacation, only to discover that their apartment had been ransacked and that stuff had been stolen from the apartment. The detective and his sidekick arrived, and they talked to the porcupines. Then they talked to the porcupines' neighbors. Eventually they figured out the culprit was a skunk because all the other neighbors were hibernating when the crime happened.

Episode 3: It started with someone admiring a diamond at a museum. The museum's lights suddenly went off, and when they went back on, the diamond was gone. I believe I watched until the detective and his sidekick arrived, but I stopped watching soon after.

I have a list of shows its not: -Sherlock Hound -Dog Tracer -Dog City -Paw Patrol -The Mysteries of Alfred Hedgehog -T.U.F.F Puppy

I seriously have no idea what happened to the cartoon. I even emailed TVO, they couldn't help me either. To me it seems impossible that there's a TVO Kids show that only I watched.”

Review: "Smithsonian Institution: Dinosaur Museum"

So, today I'm going to be reviewing something different. An old obscure educational game from the 90's that was an important part of my childhood. That game is "Smithsonian Institution: Dinosaur Museum" by Perspective Visuals, Inc.

I first got this game in the Topics Entertainment collection, "A World of Dinosaurs", which contained four other games as well. I used to play it all the time, but when my computer broke and got tossed, the game was still in the CD drive. It wasn't until almost 10 years later that I got the game again.

So, how does the game hold up today? Do I like it now as I did when I was younger?  Well, it's an enjoyable game, but it has some major flaws.

Since this game is so obscure that there's barely any information about it online, this review will  be longer then normal, and contain more images.

I should quickly point out that because the game was released in 1997, some of the information is out of date, so keep that in mind if you play it. However, besides some featherless dinosaurs, there's not too much inaccuracies.

When you start the game, you are greeted with three rooms, the Library, the Conservatory, and the Game Room. Let's start with the Library.

The Library is the main section of the game. Here there's info on 24 Dinosaurs, mainly the well known ones. The dinosaurs are split up by time periods, although most of them are from the Cretaceous period. At the library, you have a few different options. Most of them lead to photos, some in 3D.

The images used in the game are quite good, and there's several I haven't seen anywhere else. The dioramas are probably the best, as you get a reconstruction of what the dinosaurs may have  looked like when they were alive. There's photos from a ton of museums as well.

The two parts you'll be spending the most time in are the Museum and "(Insert time period here) Life". You click on a dinosaur name, and you are sent to an exhibit featuring that dinosaur. 

The leads to the first problem with the game. Let's play a game of spot the difference. These are the exhibits for Camarasaurus and Tyrannosaurus:

There's only three differences. The dinosaur model in the middle of the room, the Earth outside the window, and the name below the dinosaur model. Other then that, both exhibits are identical. While admittedly it's not a big issue, it's kind of lazy. 

Everything that is a hot spot is in color, while everything else, including the dinosaur model is in grey-scale. Clicking on a hot spot gives you information on the dinosaur in question.

Unfortunately, most of that info comes in massive walls of text. It's hard to read, and I don't understand why they couldn't have used paragraphs.

There's some interesting information there, but in my opinion, it's presented rather badly. The grey-scale makes the exhibit look rather creepy as well.

Clicking on the earth brings you to the "(Insert time period here) Life" part. This is where the grey-scale becomes a massive problem. It looks like an unfinished coloring book. Some of you may have noticed that is "Utahraptor" from "Dinosaur Comics" to the right of the picture. 

Ryan North, the author of "Dinosaur Comics" got the dinosaurs in the comic from clip-art software, evidently, so did this game.

Clicking on the hot spots here doesn't give you  walls of text, as the text boxes are normally only one or two paragraphs long.

The design of the "Life" sections, despite my hatred of the grey-scale, are much better then the bland museum. There's some reused backgrounds and dinosaurs, but for the most part, each dinosaur's area looks different. You can tell they put more effort into this part.

Moving on to the Conservatory, there's really not much to talk about. Most of the sections here are the same as the "Life" sections. Instead of focusing on one dinosaur, they focus on a specific dinosaur-related topic, like Dinosaur myths and extinction theories. Unfortunately, there's plenty of text walls.

The highlight of the Conservatory is the "Dinosaurs in the Movies" section. Here, you get to view a bunch of soundless clips from old dinosaur movies. The collection includes the only remaining footage from the cancelled movie "Creation".

Most of the clips are of dinosaurs fighting humans, or other dinosaurs. There's actually a clip of someone being impaled by a dinosaur, which is surprising in a kids game.

The only problem I have here is that I sometimes need to click on the reels several times to get the clips to start.

Finally, we have the Games Room, my favorite part of the game. Here you can play a trivia game, with three levels of difficulty. You can play by yourself or with another player. 

In the beginner level, you just have to answer questions. Answering these questions correctly uncovers a picture of a dinosaur. Once you've uncovered the picture, you win. I rarely play beginner because it's too easy for me.

In the intermediate level, you not only have to get the answers right, you have to guess which dinosaur is being uncovered. This is the difficulty I'd recommend, as it's the most fun. "T-rex" from "Dinosaur Comics" appears as the yes option.

The advanced level is way too hard. Unless you are very good at remembering names, dates, and numbers, you won't beat it. There's some really obscure stuff there. It's way too hard for a kids game.

Your reward for beating the trivia game is admittance to the "Hall of Fame", where you can see full-screen versions of the pictures used in the game. It's a pretty neat reward. You have a limited amount of clicks before it kicks you out of the hall. I don't know exactly how much clicks or if the amount varies with difficulty, but in the intermediate level, it's a pretty fair amount.

One more thing I'd like to bring up is the soundtrack, as it freaked me out when I first played it. Now, it's more of an annoyance. Whenever you enter a new section, a audio file lasting about six seconds plays. These mainly consist of jungle noises and bird calls. However, one of these is the sound of what I can only guess is an asteroid hitting the earth. It's loud and if you weren't expecting it, it's a jump scare.

"Dinosaur Museum" has quite a bit to offer, but compared to other dinosaur games, it's bare-bones. 
"I Can Be a Dinosaur Finder" came out the same year (1997), "Eyewitness Dinosaur Hunter" came out the previous year, and "Microsoft Dinosaurs" would come out only two years later. All of these games have a lot more content then "Dinosaur Museum".

"Dinosaur Museum" is so obscure, the aforementioned  "A World of Dinosaurs" collection is currently the only way to get it. That's not a bad thing, as the set also includes "3-D Dinosaur Adventure" and "I Can Be a Dinosaur Hunter", two very good games.

Despite the grey-scale, the short audio, and the walls of text, I enjoyed playing this. Part of this may be nostalgia, however. If you can get a hold of "A World of Dinosaurs", give this game a try, just don't expect too much.

Rating
5.5 out of 10

Note: According to this document, Perspective Visuals were planning on making more games in this series. It never happened, and this was the only game they ever released. You can see an archived version of their website here.

Review: Miss Clue: Formula for Danger

Before I start this review, I’ll admit that I’m not that good at adventure games. I’ve only ever beaten one Nancy Drew game out of the ten or so that I’ve played, and I needed the help of a walkthrough to do it. I needed the help of a walkthrough for this game as well. I’m hoping to get better at these types of games, and I’ve made it my goal to not use a walkthrough for the next game I play.

“Formula for Danger” is a fun clone of the Nancy Drew games. The game has you play as Jane Darcy, who is staying at her aunt’s lodge. One day, she hears a scream coming from the other side of a lake and decides to investigate it. It turns out that Jane’s friend Anne needs her help finding a formula hidden by her late father. Someone else is after the formula, and it’s up to Jane to find out who.

If you’ve played an Nancy Drew game, you’ll notice that “Formula for Danger” is extremely similar to the earlier games in the series. This isn’t a bad thing. With the next Nancy Drew game not scheduled to come out until 2019, it’s nice to have something to play while waiting. 

The puzzles are similar to the ones in the Nancy Drew games. I can’t really comment that much on the game’s difficulty due to me being genuinely bad at the game. * I will say that this probably is not the best game for beginners, as well there is a hint system at the start of the game, you lose access to it halfway through, when the puzzles start getting harder.

One problem I had with the puzzles was the amount of backtracking you had to do to solve them. To get from the lodge to Anne’s mansion, you have to walk for a bit, take a boat, then walk a bit more. In the early chapters, I had to do this multiple times. This got old fast. Fortunately, this stops being a problem in the later chapters.  

It doesn’t help that the game expects you to check everywhere to solve the puzzles. Even with the hint system early on, the location of some things wasn’t clear.  The fact that some things could only be clicked on in a specific spot didn’t help at all.

For example, I had to check Arglefumph’s playthrough to find the boathouse keys because they happened to be on the couch I checked several times without finding the hotspot. The area with the sofa was hard to navigate as well, and I had to go in circles a few times to get to the right spot.  I had the same problem with Jane’s room in the lodge.

Like in the Nancy Drew games, you can die or fail, and if you do, you can continue from where you left off. I only failed once near the end, and there appears to be only four points in the game where you can lose.

The first one didn’t happen until almost halfway through the game, when the lab I was in started filling up with gas. This caught me off guard, but I managed to stop the gas in time. This was a really suspenseful moment, and it kept me on my toes for the rest of the game.

There were also some creepy moments in the game. The scene where Jane gets woken up in the middle of the night by strange noises genuinely scared me.  There was also a moment involving a secret passage that made me jump. 

The game’s mystery was rather fun. Although the culprit’s identity was painfully obvious, there were still a few twists and turns along the way. You don’t spend as much time talking to suspects as you do in most Nancy Drew game, and one suspect you only talk to twice. The game is more focused on the puzzles then the story, but the puzzles are fun enough that it doesn’t matter. I will say that the voice acting could have used some work, but it was good enough. 

Unfortunately, I had some technical issues while playing the game. Flash crashed twice, forcing me to refresh the page. To the game’s credit, I didn’t lose any progress from this, as the game frequently autosaves. Occasionally, I saw stuff appear then randomly vanish. For example, for a split second, I saw the Macaw I had already dropped off at the lodge magically appear on my boat then disappear.  It’s not game breaking, but it’s still odd.

There were some more serious problems. Some areas that looked like hotspots (the magnifying glass would turn red) weren’t, causing me to waste time trying to click them. There were some missing sound files, as I would often see subtitles for an unsaid line. These problems weren’t that common, but they were still annoying.

There was also one time in Chapter 13 where the correct code refused to work on a code machine, forcing me to check a walkthrough again. I consider that almost game breaking. If someone insisted on not using a walkthrough, they would be stuck on that spot forever.

All in all, “Formula for Danger” is a good game. You can play it for free on the VFK website if you make an account, and I’d recommend it. It’s got its problems, but hey, it’s free. There’s a few other games in the series to check out as well, and all but one of them are free to play.

Rating

6.5 out of 10

* At one point in the game, I got stuck because I forgot how to spell the word “Mongoose”. Another time, I counted the wrong number of chess pieces, and initially thought it was glitch when my answer turned out to be wrong.