Review: Carnivores Dinosaur Hunter HD

Posted by angelcruz2241991 on September 25th, 2013 | 15 Comments | Tags: Carnivores: Dinosaur Hunter HD

When I start to play a video game, I need to be interested, or I won’t enjoy the game. I need something that grabs me and pulls me in. Carnivores: Dinosaur Hunter HD, did the opposite for me. With not too many dinosaurs and a crazy amount of grinding, it kind of deterred me right from the start and will probably deter you too.

If you have been following PSNStores for a while, you know that this is not the first Dinosaur Hunter title. It started out in the PlayStation Minis program, and even back then, we didn’t like it that much. If you’ve played the Minis game before, there’s not much new. You go around on a series of islands, and every so often you shoot a dinosaur. However, now being solely on the PS3, the game utilizes all the correct button and controls you would expect to be using when playing an FPS, and they work. Sadly, there is no look inversion for players who are accustomed to it, which is not a good thing. I like to play inverted sometimes, and the game not giving you the option is a definite negative.

Like I said earlier, the only thing you do in this game, is hunt dinosaurs. The game starts you off in its generic UI, and you pick your weapon of choice, gadgets, and what island you’ll be hunting the dinosaurs on. You are placed on the island and you start hunting. The game gives a few pointers on how to play, and then you’re free to go wherever on the island you wish. Every single one of the islands is absolutely huge, which might be a cause to one of my problems with the game. After walking around for about 6 minutes, I had not found one dinosaur. I was expecting a more densely populated landscape, so that I could actually get to hunt some dinosaurs. The only pointers you get to where a dinosaur might be, is a little device that tells you if a dinosaur can hear you and/or see you, and their distant cries from across the island. It gets to be very frustrating, as I just want to shoot dinosaurs, and not go on a crazy long hunt for one.

Another problem I have with the game, is the grinding. To unlock new islands, weapons, or gadgets you need the game’s two main currencies, money and points. The money is used to unlock the weapons and gadgets, and the points are used to unlock new islands. Both are earned by killing dinosaurs. The problem with it is that every time you kill a dinosaur, you get a very minimal amount of currency. It takes forever to unlock something new, really making the game a boring grind-fest. It really puts you off and makes you not want to play the game.

There a few other features to the game, but they really don’t add much to the experience. Those things are the leaderboards, the trophy room, and the game’s added move support. The leaderboards are typical and work pretty much like any other game that has them. It ranks you by your score, money, and number of trophies collected. Nothing special, but people with friends who play the game might find it a bit useful. Secondly, there is the trophy room. Basically, when you are hunting dinosaurs, if you have a trophy license you can transport the dead dinosaur’s carcass to your trophy room. All you do inside the room, is look at the dinosaurs. It’s interesting, but I’d much rather admire the dinosaurs while hunting them.

I was very eager to try out the Move controls; I haven’t played a game that’s supported them in quite awhile. However, they were nothing to be admired. The Move controller just takes the place of the right side of your controller, with all the button controls being the same, and just using the controller to aim. After playing like this for a bit, I decided to switch back to the controller, the better option and the way the game was meant to be played.

Speaking of admiring the game, brings us to the graphics and technical side of things. Unlike the Minis title that came before it, Carnivores Dinosaur Hunter HD is very pretty. The islands are very lush with trees and nature, and it all looks very good. Even the dinosaurs looked “realistic”; the game didn’t lie about the HD in its title. I wasn’t expecting the game to run this smooth either. In my time with the game I never experienced a frame rate drop, or anything else wrong with the graphics or frame rate. There is no soundtrack in the game, but the way the dinosaurs sound is pretty good.

All in all, Carnivores Dinosaur Hunter HD is just a boring game. With it being far too hard to find dinosaurs, just not enough different kinds of them, and having way too much grinding, it’s pretty hard to find fun in the game. I would only play this is you know you are going to like it, and you are a big fan of the hunting game genre.

A copy of this game was provided by the publisher for review purposes. This review is for the PlayStation 3 version of the game. For more info on our review policy click here.