June 28, 2010
Nintendo to Debut Dinosaurs in 3-D
A screenshot from Battle of Giants: Dinosaur Strike. From IGN.
Most dinosaur-themed video games seem to fall into one of two categories—the ones that give players a ridiculous arsenal of weapons to gun down dinosaurs and those that allow players to be the dinosaurs. To be honest, I have always found the latter type of game to be a bit dull—one can only bite, stomp, and tail-whip virtual opponents for so long before it gets old—but gaming giant Nintendo is hoping to breathe new life into dino-fight games with its forthcoming Battle of Giants: Dinosaur Strike.
According to previews of the game given at the E3 gaming conference, Battle of Giants will allow players to navigate a customizable dinosaur through a virtual world. As they run through the jungle they will occasionally encounter dinosaur opponents, at which point the game will shift to pit one dinosaur against the other in a bit of button-mashing action. Interestingly, Battle of Giants is going to be released for the new Nintendo 3DS system, a handheld bit of hardware that claims to achieve 3-D effects without the need for glasses. This gimmick alone will surely draw some attention, and perhaps we will see more 3-D dinosaur adventures in the future.
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Looks a LOT like the old Playstation fighter “Warpath: Jurassic Park” from the screenshot.
I was playing Beyond Good and Evil the other day, one of the things you do in the game is take photographs of different animals. I think that’d be a cool idea for a dinosaur game- play as a time traveling scientist that studies (not just hunts) prehistoric wildlife. Add a little Indiana Jones style intrigue, and voila!
That sounds cool. What’s interesting is that if the dino-on-dino fight games only have three combat options, there’s a huge gap open for some game designer to look closely at a fast-moving, active, intelligent species like raptors — and develop good complex martial art moves for those creatures, variations on biting, nipping, slashing, stomping and so on that’d be closer to the complex moves in the martial art games.
You could also introduce social dominance within the pride or pack to the raptor player, new players following established leaders till they learn the moves, then moving up in the ranks as they hunt and defend territory.
The animals’ behavior is often seen as complex and birdlike, so why not incorporate some of that complexity into the game design? The ones in the movies don’t just bite, stomp and tail-whip, they’ve got a lot of variety to the jumps and bite types.
Maybe someone will give that a thought sometime.
It doesn’t take a hardcore gamer to see that this “new” game is just a scaled up version of “Battle of Giants: Dinosaurs” that was released for the DS a year back. From the screenshots, the stages and roster have not changed a bit apart from a visual graphic upgrade. Gyp alert!!!