If you walk off in the wrong direction, you could end up in a completely vacant wing of a building. The weird part is how much empty space there is. The city looks terrific, especially because its hulking angular shape seems like it would be impossible to actually live in it’s interesting simply to run around the city as a dinosaur. Most of Cityscape takes place inside one massive futuristic city, through streets, buildings, and underground tunnels. Otherwise you’re wide out in the open, waiting to be shot like an animal at a game reserve. There’s glimmers of it, like the outstanding City Hall level, where you chase the senator through his office while he screams in terror at the “evil bird lizard.” Many of the indoor levels feel closer to the claustrophobic disaster movie atmosphere that the developers were going for, but it really depends on how interesting the level geometry is, if it gives you opportunities to hide and pounce. Playing as a dinosaur, however, never rises to the level of chaos that it should. I’m focusing on the dinosaur side of the game because playing as a human is pretty much what you’d imagine – perhaps slow and awkward, but about what you’d expect out of a sci-fi dinosaur-killing game from 2002. On the other hand though, dinosaurs can eat humans to regain health, which is gross and awesome. They just have claws and run fast, and their Dino Vision power is a hand-me-down version of the thermal camera used by the humans. While humans get all manner of fancy sci-fi gadgets and weapons, dinosaurs are much simpler. It’s a clever touch, even though that means the dinosaur missions are exclusively about where to get lunch.ĭespite the emphasis turning the tables, it gives the impression that dinosaurs were an afterthought in this game. As a human, you need to complete objectives, like escorting a senator to safety as a dinosaur, you just have to eat stuff, like senators. The game lets you play through the campaign from either side of the battle, and they mirror each other: you go through the same levels, but with opposite goals. When DinoCorp’s plans go horribly awry, they accidentally unleash dinosaurs on a human colony, and a military operation is called in to clean up the damage. But rather than continue the series as it was, they let the dinosaurs fight back. Not only did they have experience making hunting games, they had even made, specifically, a dinosaur hunting game, Primal Prey, which is the best qualification you could ask for. The new developer, Sunstorm Interactive, was a perfect fit for taking over the Carnivores franchise. That also might explain why rampaging around as a dinosaur – the ultimate power fantasy – is so weirdly unsatisfying.Īctivate Dino Vision to track your meals in the dark Cityscape adds both those things, which explains why the game is closer to Predator than a hunting simulation. In an interview with the online gaming site HomeLAN, the producers said that fans of the Carnivores series had demanded two features: playable dinosaurs (who can blame them?) and multiplayer. Cityscape is vastly different, more like a sci-fi action movie where the prey and the hunters stalk each other through jungles and cities.Īccording to the producers of Cityscape, this drastic change in direction was based on fan feedback. The first three Carnivores games, developed by Ukrainian studio Action Forms, were hunting games, set on a distant planet inhabited by dinosaurs that humans have turned into a game reserve. Getting to play as a dinosaur was new for the Carnivores series. In Carnivores: Cityscape, you can play as a human defending against a dinosaur outbreak, or you can play as a dinosaur.
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