Dino Crisis 2

Dino Crisis 2 is, obviously, the second installment in a series that Capcom tried to dub "panic horror". Thankfully, the name never caught on, due to being retarded, but its spirit continues in Resident Evil 4 and 5.

Released for the Playstation in 2000, it tried to distance itself from its predecessor's reputation as "Resident Evil with dinosaurs" by making things more action oriented, with combos, huge weapons, and no reloading. This might have been pretty cool if they hadn't kept the awful tank control scheme that plagued every Resident Evil up to that point.

Story

One of the better mini-games.

For a game about running through the jungle shooting the shit out of lizards, there's a pretty big emphasis on story. Some lab studying an alternative form of energy has some kind of explosion, which sends it, a nearby missile silo, and a large portion of Midwestern America back to the Cretaceous Period. Bet you liberal pussies will stop whining about our reliance on oil after this.

A team of kind-of soldiers are sent in to save the day, which apparently involves being eaten by raptors. Two of the three soldiers to disobey these orders and fail their country are the game's playable characters. They are Dylan, member of T.R.A.T.(Tepid Retarded Acting Talent) and Regina of S.O.R.T. (Sexy Obnoxious Recurring Tease) and hero of the first game. The third guy is just some doofus with a cowboy hat who will make his nation proud and get eaten much later.

Setting out to find survivors, Dylan and Regina encounter a mysterious group of young adults who wear all black and lash out at anyone who gets close. Regina manages to capture the one and only female of this group and handcuffs her to a wall.

Dylan, meanwhile, takes part in various thrilling sidequests including corralling a three foot tall dinosaur in a cage (totally a euphemism), fiddling with rainbow colored keys, and following a leaf that leads him to a keycard.

After all that excitement, it's discovered that the heroes haven't traveled to the past at all, but rather far into the future, where a group of hippies created a dinosaur preserve, then went on a field trip and died. In case that made too much sense, it is further revealed that they were led by a future Dylan, and that the psycho bitch Regina captured was his daughter. Whatever.

All of this future nonsense is just an excuse for the heroes to be able to use a giant laser satellite to melt the final boss. Then, after having destroyed the largest dinosaur imaginable, Dylan and daughter are immediately defeated by... a filing cabinet falling on top of them. Regina promises to go back in time and somehow alter events so that this doesn't happen.

The credits roll and we're left to wonder if she succeeds or if we care at all.

Characters

Clever girl

Dylan: Your basic dull, boring Capcom hero. Somehow manages to have less charisma than Chris Redfield.

Regina: Emasculating heroine of the first Dino Crisis, now reduced to alt. character status, probably because she refused to show up in the prehistoric, futuristic jungle in nothing but a tube top. Spends a good portion of the game on the boat making sandwiches. Fun Fact: She is voiced by Ivy from Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego.

David: Notable for being more obnoxious than the two lead characters combined, his entire personality can be boiled down to "wears a cowboy hat and yells idiotic things." He manages to shoot a T-Rex in the eye with a rocket launcher, but this only serves to kind of annoy it. It does, however, lead to Dylan uttering the game's best line, "Come on, you one-eyed menace."

Paula: Dylan's daughter from the future, today! As she is the only other female character in the present with Dylan aside from Regina, it seems likely that at some point, he had sex with her and she gave birth to herself. Fucking hot.

Enemies

Typical Dino Crisis action. Here, we have Dylan interacting with a T-Rex.

Pretty much just dinosaurs.

Your greatest foe, however, is the brain aneurysm that will almost surely occur if you think too hard about the idiotic time travel "story."

Great Moments in Dino Crisis 2's Writing

	“	They seem to have a lot of similarities with the birds. It could be that they are their ancestors.	„
	—From Researcher's Notebook, spitting in the face of God.

	“	Combat Notes No reports have come in with regards to killing a T-Rex. Every soldier who tried to kill it have died. There are hardly any combat data. If we were forced to give an indirect conclusion, we would say that the T-Rex has no real weakness. Rumor has it that there was one person who escaped from the implacable T-Rex chase. She was not a soldier but simply an Intelligence Personnel. Supposedly, good looking about 20 years old.	„
	—The best intel the military could come up with for the T-Rex

	“	Observation Records We originally thought of dinosaurs were just "slow and dumb reptiles". We soon realized this wasn't true at all. The Velociraptor proved us all wrong.	„
	—If only they had a couple of million years worth of warning, they might have gathered better intel.

	“	Also on very rare occasions there have been encounters of blue raptors reported. Their attack and toughness are said to be "Ultra-Raptor" level.	„
	—By their blonde, spiky hair shall ye know them.

	“	To Bob, I heard you were placed in charge of this area. As a present for your new position, here is a memo.	„
	—From Mechanic's Note

Previous Quote | Next Quote

Impact on the World Stage

Like all great works of fiction, Dino Crisis 2 had a profound effect on the dozens who played it. Beyond the simple separation anxiety borne of completing the game, it also inspired some of the greatest artists and talent of a generation.

In Art

Run a search on Deviantart and you'll find literally tens of hundreds of fine works portraying Regina, Dylan and their compatriots rendered in pencil, paint, and crayon. While the quantity of these works is a sign of the game's following, none are quite as impressive, influential or sensitive as those of Enres.

In his most well known and controversial piece, A Crisis with Dinobot Ver. 3 (originally conceived as three separate works placed together in a triptych, this plan was scrapped when his mother couldn't afford the necessary ink for the printer), Enres seeks to titillate, yes, but also to take a satirical scalpel to the myth of the modern liberated woman. We see Regina has spread herself willingly for Dinobot and is in the process of being shredded out of her clothing, but her face shows a sudden confliction, and her text bubble informs us that she is having second thoughs about this sexual pairing. At issue, it seems, is the beast's ability to communicate.

Far from the hulking mass of raw masculinity she had desired of her random fling, she is disturbed to find that the object of lust is a complex creature with its own thoughts and desires.

This simple but bold statement about female chauvinism sparked outrage and change, the ripples of which we still feel to this day.

In Literature

While the most obvious and well-known example of this type is Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park, a story that lifted whole scenarios and characters from the Dino Crisis series (despite the fact the novel was released 9 years before the game) , there are several gems that went unnoticed by publishers and Hollywood. Far from the cynical rip-off that Crichton and Spielberg foisted on an unsuspecting public, these stories show a passion for the series and a devotion to its spirit.

Picking up where things left off in 2, DragonMad07's earnest and moving series, Dino Crisis 4, Part 2 is notable not just for its lyrical prose, but also for the fresh and exciting direction in which it takes the series.

While her bizarre numbering choice in the title sparked confusion and apathy, there are few who take issue with the story itself, and leatherbound copies can be found in the home libraries of most every discriminating reader.