Zombies and dinosaurs actually have more in common than you might think. They're both fairly unintelligent and operate almost entirely on predatory instinct, they both move in a lumbering fashion and they both want to eat your flesh. But the most important things that zombies and dinosaurs have in common is a genre called survival horror and a publisher called Capcom. You've undoubtedly heard of Resident Evil, almost certainly know that Dante is the star of Devil May Cry and probably have at some point come across mention of Onimusha. However, you'll be forgiven if you haven't heard of Dino Crisis, as it's an old PSOne series - and the third instalment, Dino Crisis 3, is surprisingly an Xbox exclusive. So, the question is, just how prehistoric are you feeling?

Don't want to delve back into the land that time forgot? Well, no problem, because Dino Crisis 3 is set in the 26th Century! On a routine mission via Jupiter, the crew of a small ship come across the Ozymandius, a huge colony ship thought lost for three hundred years. They send a shuttle to investigate, but something screwy is going on and the Ozymandius's defence systems are activated, destroying both the ship and the shuttle, and scattering the crew (who are equipped with spacesuits and jetpacks) around the outside of the Oz's enormous exterior. One of the survivors, Patrick, meets up with his comrade Sonya, but before they know it, a gigantic T-Rex (with quite grim looking skin that doesn't seem to be covering its muscles properly) eats one of their friends and it's about to make light work of them, when a bunch of even grimmer looking giant maggot things turn up and burrow their way into the T-Rex en masse, devouring it from the inside out. You almost feel sorry for the big bugger. Saved (for now) from a confrontation with a giant dinosaur, your first order of duty is fending off the infestation of these slug-like things before they make you their next meal.

The story for Dino Crisis 3 is actually pretty cool - my only disappointment with it is that it doesn't really follow on from Dino Crisis 2, and I was hoping it might shed light on that game's incomprehensible storyline, which left me thoroughly confused and expecting a continuation in the sequel. Instead it's an entirely separate tale, with the only common factor being the mention of Third Energy, something that caused the crisis in the previous game. As you progress through the massive colony ship (upon which there is only one survivor, a sexy teenage girl by the name of Caren) the story gradually unfolds through some beautifully rendered cut scenes and through the files you download from the ship's computer. It's a good bit of sci-fi fun and while it's not the most plausible storyline, it is watertight and, more importantly, makes sense, leaving you with a good feeling of satisfaction and resolution at the end of the game. There are also a couple of nice twists, although I did see the first one coming a mile off!

So then, a brave move, setting Dino Crisis 3 on a massive spaceship and giving it an entirely futuristic feel? Yes indeed, and while it would have been nice to have some sort of hydroponics dome to explore, or maybe even a bit of time travel or jump to an alien world, the level designs are excellent and the ship's design is so cool that it never gets boring. The graphics are beautifully shiny and polished, with all the scenery featuring perfectly smooth gradients and gleaming, reflective surfaces. The look of the ship itself is both distinctive and unique; indeed, it's one of the coolest designs I've ever seen for a spaceship, in a game or even in a film. You get a map of the entire Ozymandius from the beginning and you can see just how massive it is; getting from one end to the other is going to be a serious mission! Each section of the ship has a different purpose and often a different look, and the amount of detail put into the banks of computer consoles, industrial machinery and functionality throughout the ship is extremely impressive, giving the whole game a high budget feel to it. Adding to that high budget feel is a large number of exciting, well directed and graphically gorgeous full CGI cut scenes, which crop up whenever there's a new boss dino to introduce, whenever there's a plot twist to unfold or whenever the ship first changes its formation in a new way.

Yes, you heard me right - a big part of the gameplay puzzles is the fact that each section of the ship can be manipulated to changes its formation, thus linking up passageways or unlocking doors that were inaccessible beforehand. The first change you make joins the two halves of the front deck together, allowing you to get into the part of the hangar you need to access to find a security pass. Each section brings new formation changes, some of which have to be carried out multiple times, and each time you watch a cut scene with the ship changing, it looks lovely. It also makes the game more of a challenge, because the map screen (which is fully 3D) obviously changes accordingly, so getting your bearings can be a struggle at first, although you do get used to it and the 3D map, while not initially easy to use, is a real godsend when plotting routes around a section. There's even one section that starts off vertical, so you climb down through a series of shafts, then you later have to make your way back through it when it's horizontal with zero gravity - so even though there is backtracking, more often than not you're not simply retracing your steps. Of course, the justification for having a transforming ship (that of energy conservation and a couple of other factors) is utter nonsense from a sci-fi perspective, and it would never, ever be justified in reality, but it doesn't matter, because the formation changing is a unique idea that works in the gameplay's favour.

Unfortunately, there's a whole list of relics taken from classic Resident Evil that work so greatly against the gameplay that it will ruin the game for a lot of people. The main culprit? Those damn movie-style camera viewpoints! Yes, as with Resident Evil, rather than a camera that follows around behind you, each room is viewed from multiple viewpoints, either static or scrolling, depending on where you are in the room. While this just about worked for Resident Evil, it all but destroys the playability of Dino Crisis 3. A lot of the time you're constantly assaulted by a great number of dinosaurs beaming into the room, and you simply can't see them most of the time. The computer auto targets your nearest foe, so it becomes a very simple case of using your jetpack to speed around the room, hammering the fire button and boost jumping periodically to avoid the biting snake things (named Rigels, as you later discover), the speeding velociraptors (which are sometimes cloaked and electrified!) or the strange primate/reptile hybrids you face later on. You don't know what you're shooting at, but you know you're hitting it, so you just keep going and eventually the dinos stop coming and you've cleared the room.

Of course, you could just head straight for the door if you wanted, but you get tactical credits for each kill, with the amount of credits increased for each combo kill (you get a few seconds to secure your next kill for a combo), which allows you to buy loads of stuff at the shop, found with the save terminals you come across regularly throughout the ship. The old style save system is here - you have to save manually and the game counts the saves against you in your final ranking. However, you also have an elimination meter, which gradually fills as you kill dinos. You get a bonus for the amount of kills you have when you go to a save point, but you get no bonus unless it's at least a quarter full, and this discourages you from saving too often. It's annoying that you have to cash in your elimination each time you go to the save point though, because it's the shop as well, so you end up conserving decent ammo (your default gun is accurate but weak) because it's expensive to replace, rarely do you find any in the levels, and coming back to the shop too soon means forfeiting a bonus on your eliminations, which of course you need to buy more supplies.

As well as being able to buy ammo for your wide shot and laser weapons, you can buy WASP drones in three varieties, which you launch and they automatically attack the enemy. The Tempest is the best, hovering around and shooting the enemies with rapid fire laser blasts, the Juggernauts are okay, bouncing around and slamming into dinos (often knocking them over for a few vital moments) and then the Infernos are crap; they hover, they don't particularly home in on the enemy, then they explode, often knocking you flying in the process. Unfortunately, these drones also double as keys on doors or panels, so you never really want to use too many of them, in case you come across a door that needs unlocking, don't have enough, and then have to head back to the nearest save point and (you got it) forfeit that bonus if your elimination meter is low. You can also buy medi packs of three sizes, a limit breaker (which supes up your weapons and booster pack for a short while) and increase the amount of each weapon and medi pack type you can carry; although these upgrades cost a lot, you get ammo or a medi pack when you upgrade, which is good. Finally, you can increase your health, booster and elimination bars too, which is the priciest thing of all to do.

One of the big problems within the gameplay is the difficulty of getting combos, mainly due to those camera problems. Your combo is cancelled if you take a hit (and you have to be very careful anyway, as those dinos will take you out with only a couple of attacks until your health bar's a lot bigger), so you have to jump and boost around, shooting wildly and releasing WASPs in the hope that you'll get another kill on a dino you can't actually see before the combo fades away. The worst part is, the two decent weapons (wide shot and laser) don't accurately target enemies half the time when you're moving - so you have to stop, close to the dino in the case of the short range wide shot, and shoot them when you can't see them, hoping that the shot is accurate and that you don't get leapt on by a raptor lurking just off screen that you can't see coming. You can go into third person, but the cursor takes so long to aim and you can't move while doing it, so it's very hard to use it effectively unless you're in a safe spot up high, or if you're fighting a boss and can time your shots just right. The combination of the bad auto-targeting and the dodgy camera angles makes the gameplay feel very repetitive and it's a real shame, considering all the effort that's gone into the game.

There's not a huge range of dinos, although the ones in here look very realistic, with fluid animation and fantastic detail on their freaky looking bodies (which don't have all their skin on properly!) The bosses are enormous and the battles are prolonged affairs, where you have to stay the distance and dodge various attacks (often extremely hard with those infernal camera angles!) while you very gradually edge down their massive energy bar, which stretches across the whole damn screen. They're exciting and the bosses look brilliant, but you don't feel like it's quite a fair fight, because most of the time you just can't see the boss and thus have little idea which attack it's about to unleash next.

While the graphics are top notch, the sound is only average - the sound effects are all fine, although none stand out, while the dino noises are enough to let you know that the dinos are there, but they're forgettable. The music is unforgettable for the wrong reasons - that maniac who likes to torture synthesisers is back, and the tunes are for the most part overly fast, repetitive and often irritating - although not half as bad as Dino Crisis 2, which really was insanely awful! The tune for the save rooms is nice and relaxing too, and it does establish a couple of strong orchestral themes, in a Japanese sounding synthesised way.

Dino Crisis 3 is very much an old school survival horror game and even at the time it came out, it was fundamentally flawed with the combination of using a boosting jet pack in 3D areas and trying to match that up with set camera angles that only serve to confuse your movement and prevent you from seeing the enemy. However, with Resident Evil 4 firmly established as a classic and the days of the camera angles now but a distant (and painful) memory, Dino Crisis 3 is really only a game that fanatical survival horror fans like myself will enjoy and be willing to persevere with, despite the flaws, just for the challenge of completing the game and finding out how it ends.

Reviewed by Geoff Holland for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).