Sunday, December 15, 2013

Steam Ops: Dino D-Day

Dino D-Day
800 North and Digital Ranch


Dino D-Day was released for the weekend on Steam and I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to give my 1 hour impression.  This is by no means a proper review, but I am always looking to give impressions on upcoming Steam titles.

I imagine the premise was all that made the developers fall for this game.  Some guy from 800 North studios and Digital Ranch jumping up and down excitedly and saying, "And then the dinosaurs can shoot the Nazi's, while the raptors slash away the bad guys...rawr...slash...pew!"

The game features different classes of soldiers and dinosaurs.  Some dinosaurs have melee combat, while other characters have WWII guns.  Each character has a singular perk and special ability.  The raptors can do super jumps while the diplo can headbutt its enemies.

Fighting in a deathmatch arena felt like a mix of Team Fortress mixed with old Call of Duty gameplay.  Apart from the thrill of actually manning a dinosaur, it felt very primitive and linear to play multiplayer.  If you were a melee fighter you could easily get owned by a projectile, while snipers were pretty much the king of the arena.

The game had glitches when I tried to create a room for multiplayer and it kept crashing and going back to the title screen.  I also could not get my Xbox gamepad to work with it.  It was not responding.

Graphics looked like old Counter Strike mods and clipping was a bit prevalent in the textures.  Overall, the premise of dinosaurs and machine guns was not enough to get me wanting to play. It is only $2 on the Steam catalog, but lots of mods are free if you own Half-Life multiplayer.  800 North and Digital Ranch should learn to tighten the gameplay and add some depth outside of the dinosaur selection.

Cool concept, bro.

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