Dino Stalker (PS2)
Publisher: CapcomDeveloper: Capcom Platform: PlayStation 2Price: ¤59
In Dino Stalker, players must use a brown raincoat with time-travelling abilities to follow attractive young dinosaurs home and pester them with anonymous phone calls.
Of course not - it's time to blow the dust off your light gun and get trigger happy with the Jurassic era. Dino Stalker does for the Dino Crisis series what Gun Survivor did for the Resident Evil series, only much, much better. American WWII fighter pilot, Mike Wired, is caught in a time warp during a dogfight and finds himself trading the Nazi hordes for pterodactyls and T-Rex's in a light gun game that does things a little differently.
For the first time in a light gun title, players aren't restricted to an on-the-rails experience, but instead have full control - with free roaming environments, the likes of which haven't been seen outside a FPS. But with such innovation comes the game's biggest drawback. Controlling your character is a much slower affair than the nippy, pre-rendered jaunts of other light gun romps and the pace is severely hindered. Once you get used to the concept of having to both control your destiny AND blast anything that moves, you'll find much to enjoy here.
Dino Stalker is as beautiful as it is unique, with lush backgrounds and brilliant scaly ones, while the sound effects are satisfyingly meaty.Playing with a control pad is a waste of time, but plug in a G-Con gun and you'll be in shooting heaven.
Like all games in the genre, a question mark hangs over Dino Stalker's long-term appeal, but Capcom has certainly atoned for the bilious Gun Survivor, adding something new to a stagnant genre.
Neil McGreevy
