DINO HAZARD Preview

DINO HAZARD, available in beta via Steam Early Access, is the least “cyberpunk” cyberpunk game I’ve ever seen. Its introductory cinematic may allude to a chaotic future society plagued by social inequality, and there may be an undercurrent of megacorporation dominance running throughout the story (or what I played of it), but once it gets going, the best descriptor for DINO HAZARD would be “robo Jurassic Park”. Not that such a descriptor would be a bad thing; if anything, the less something is burdened with the label “cyberpunk” these days, the better off it’ll probably be.

Set in 2147, DINO HAZARD introduces us to a dystopian Rio De Janeiro, a place where the Chronos megacorporation, during their search to invent a source of infinitely renewable energy, accidentally created a colossal time portal. The less you think about the absurdity of this concept, the happier you'll be. Trust me. Naturally, from their accidental time portal poured countless dinosaurs and other assorted prehistoric creatures. Rather than eradicate their newfound reptilian friends, though, the Chronos corporation instead transported them all to a heavily guarded, high-tech island somewhere off the coast, letting them breed and thrive indefinitely. Well… I use the word "thrive", but really, the dinosaurs were being kept alive as big game for future hunters looking for the thrill of a lifetime and a T-Rex head or two to mount on their wall.

That's where we begin our DINO HAZARD journey, in a heavily regulated -style hunting ground for rich adrenaline junkies. Of course, things quickly turn sour when an evil AI computer virus takes over the island. Before long, it sets all the dinosaurs free, decimating the island’s population and leaving only a few survivors left to fight the AI and maybe—just maybe—escape with their lives. The Early Access build of the game doesn't elaborate much on the story beyond that; it focuses a lot on introducing characters and 'setting the scene'. With that said, it does give the impression that there's a lot more to explore in the full game: more twists, more relationship development and more lore.

The gameplay, along with the game’s pixel art aesthetic, takes after 16-bit top-down RPGs of yesteryear, taking particular influence from Jurassic Park on the SNES. As you gather your party of survivors (whom you can name as you wish), you’ll traverse the open island, completing mission-critical objectives on a quest to restore communications with the outside world. Oddly, for a party-based RPG, the story saw characters splitting up a fair amount. One quest, for example, saw a security guard character splitting off from his two companions in order to activate a communications post. Quite why this was necessary I’m not sure, and it certainly didn’t make the combat any easier. Regardless, I did only get to play an early chunk of the game. It’s too early to tell whether the trend of splitting up continues through the duration.

I’d hope not, as DINO HAZARD’s turn-based combat can be challenging at times. There are a range of different attacks and defensive moves available to each character, based on their class (Hunter, Soldier, Ranger, Doctor etc.) and which weapons they’ve got equipped. Most moves spend some of a character’s stamina (abbreviated ST), and firearm attacks exhaust a limited ammo supply too. If you’re diligent in scavenging around the world, healing items can be found in abundance, which is a relief as some of the enemies you’ll fight—even through the course of the opening story missions—can deal massive amounts of damage, sometimes wiping out over half of a character’s pool of HP in one swipe of a tail or flick of some claws. If a character dies in combat (which happened to me once), the game isn’t over, but they’re out-of-commission for an indefinite period of time. I never actually figured out how to revive a downed character, and I ended up, shortly afterwards, in a no-win situation where the story, which must have failed to account for a downed party member, threw me into an instant “Game Over” following a certain cutscene. I had no way to move on from this and had to restart the game. Thankfully, it wasn’t that far through, and restarting wasn’t much of a setback. Still, it was a nuisance.

Of course, this is a game still in development, so issues like that are to be expected. In a similar vein, I’ve got no problem with overlooking the slightly wonky localisation job. Make no mistake, it’s not a bad translation, but there are a few instances where the localisation cracks show. Overall, however, I’ve been left majorly impressed by the current showing of DINO HAZARD. I look genuinely forward to seeing how the game shapes up and the story pans out when it finally releases.