Dinosaurs have always been a good subject for video games, whether that’s playing as a Dinosaur tearing innocent people apart, or unloading rounds of machine gun fire into their scaly faces, or beating them to death with clubs, or fighting them as a giant ape on Skull Island. I think most people enjoy a good Dinosaur game. In many ways they have had just as much success in the video game medium as they have had in any other, and in this article I am going to run down my 10 favourite Dinosaur games from all platforms.

10/ Turok Dinosaur Hunter

For the Nintendo 64, this game didn’t have the largest variety of Dinosaur species. Just Velociraptors and one Tyrannosaurus Rex with the odd Pterosaur tossed in.

Still it more than made up for it with its engaging and somewhat unusual premise. The game took place in a bizarre fantasy land called simply The Lost Land, that mixed various time periods together. For instance the penultimate boss is a Tyrannosaurus Rex who has been cybernetically enhanced.

He has a robot laser eye and can breath fire!

The game spawned an entire franchise beyond even just video games with the character of Turok even gaining his own short lived comic book series too. In some ways Turok works better as a fantasy game rather than a Dinosaur one. Still it was a very engaging and exciting game all around.

9/ Dino D-Day

As crazy as its title would suggest, this 2011 game is set in an alternate universe where Hitler cloned Dinosaurs during World War 2.

Its true that its graphics are somewhat sub par for the time it was released, but I think it more than makes up for it with its wild premise as well as the large variety of Dinosaur species too. Everything from the classics like Tyrannosaurus to obscure creatures like Protoceratops.

I always like it when people merge two genre’s that you’d never think of putting together. Dinosaur and World War 2 games? Yet it worked and managed to bring something new to both genres.

In this respect the game kind of reminded me of the Ray Harryhausen classic Gwangi which similarly managed to blend the unlikely duo of Dinosaur movies and Westerns to great effect too.

8/ Jurassic Park: The Game

Released for several platforms in 2011, this Telltale game would prove to be somewhat polarising in a number of ways.

Still I must admit whilst it wasn’t perfect I did think it was still probably one of the better Jurassic Park games.

It had an original story, that actually served as a direct sequel to the original game (though it would later be contradicted by Jurassic World). The Dinosaurs are also every bit as scary as their film counterparts and the deaths are really quite gory and explicit.

In fact to be honest I’d say that was the best thing about the game was how creative the ways both the supporting characters as well as the main character were killed by the Dinosaurs.

This was actually an advantage that the games had over the films, as often the deaths in the movies were a little bit more straight forward. I feel the makers of the game had a little more fun with their dinosaurs.

7/ Peter Jackson’s King Kong The Official Game of the Movie

An all around excellent game. It follows the same basic plot as Jackson’s equally brilliant film version, but it obviously expands on the story too.

You get to play as both Kong and the main human protagonist, Jack Driscoll at different points throughout the game. As Kong its brilliant to fight head on often with multiple Vastatosaurus Rex’s (fearsome descendants of the Tyrannosaurus Rex) but my two favourite parts of the game are as Driscoll.

One is when a V-Rex knocks Kong off the edge of a cliff and you have to rescue Ann from it as Jack. Its one of the most intense moments in any game trying to hold off a V-Rex inside tiny little ruins with only a piece of bone!

The other is when the V-Rex again corners you and you have to summon Kong himself. You really feel all 4 of the main characters terror as the Rex relentlessly smashes down the walls of the rotten fortress they are trapped in.

I found the setting of this game effective too. Skull Island is a truly horrifying place, filled with rotting bodies, crumbling ruins of a once great civilisation and hideous monsters lurking round every corner.

Its a fitting setting for Kong as it just adds to the tragedy of his character that in many respects he has never fit in anywhere as the place he is taken from is so heinous.

Overall a very effective and exciting game.

6/ Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis

One of the best Jurassic Park games, this was not an adventure game, rather a platform building one. The player’s task was to create a version of Jurassic Park that would gain a 5 star approval rating.

Of course there are many obstacles to your goal, with the flesh eating Dinosaurs ironically in some ways being the least of your troubles. Tornado’s strike the island, your dinosaurs get sick, you run out of money and go bankrupt etc.

The game probably has the largest collection of different species of Dinosaurs of any Jurassic Park title, though sadly you can’t use them all. Still overall this was a brilliant game as it treated the Dinosaurs like real animals rather than as unstoppable monsters.

In this respect it really captured the spirit of the original Jurassic Park movie better than any other game in the series.

5/ The Lost World: Jurassic Park

Based on the film and book of the same name, this game however doesn’t really have a story. You just play as 5 different characters through a series of levels.

The reason I rank it so highly is because you get to play as both a Velociraptor and a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

I loved the T-Rex levels so much. Though they could get a bit samey, it was still brilliant being able to kill hundreds of Raptors and human soldiers. It was quite explicit when you killed people as either the Rex or the Raptor. Your human victims would scream for mercy as you tore into them with your claws as the Raptor, whilst as the Rex you’d hear both your Raptor and human victims scream in agony and their bones snap as you crushed them to a pulp in your jaws.

The levels as the other characters, a Compsognathus, a human soldier, and Sarah Harding are still enjoyable, but nothing can quite match playing as the T-Rex. Still it is brilliant the way the game allows you to explore this vastly different world from so many different perspectives, from the Compy that’s no bigger than a Chicken, to the humans who don’t belong in the Lost World, to the absolute king of all the Dinosaurs, the Tyrannosaurus Rex.

4/ Yoshi’s Island

Again in some respects more of a fantasy game, still as Yoshi is technically a Dinosaur then I’m going to list it.

Yoshi’s island is a prequel to the Mario series. It sees the evil Kamek attempt to kidnap two babies Mario and Luigi (both of whom are foretold to stop King Koopa, AKA Bowser in the future)

Though he is successful in capturing Luigi, Kamek ultimately fails to capture Mario who falls lands on Yoshi’s island, where all the Yoshi’s decide to band together to protect baby Mario from Kamek and his minions, rescue Luigi, and finally bring the boys to their parents.

Yoshi’s island is an absolute classic. Visually its absolutely stunning with all the levels being unique and beautiful in their own way. There is also a wide variety of monsters too, made up of plenty of old classic Mario foes, and plenty of new ones.

Its always fun to play as Yoshi and this game really helped to establish a lot of his most iconic traits such as his ability to turn his enemies into eggs and his crazy flutter jump.

When you think about it, Yoshi really is an unstoppable killing machine! He kills his enemies by eating them alive, and he can eat just about anything, but on top of that he can also turn the people he kills into weapons too!

Don’t be fooled by his cute appearance, Yoshi is one of the most dangerous Dinosaurs in any work of fiction and that’s what makes him so fun to play.

3/ Dino Crisis

One of the ultimate horror survival games. Dino Crisis was made by the creators of Resident Evil. Indeed at the time many critics dismissed it as being just a rehash of Resident Evil, with the Raptors standing in for the Zombies and the T-Rex standing in for the Tyrant.

The premise was also somewhat similar in that both revolve around a team going to investigate a remote area where an experiment has gone wrong, leading to monsters overrunning the place. In Resident Evil’s case it is because of an outbreak of the T-Virus that turns people and animals in Zombie like mutants, in Dino Crisis’ it is because of Doctor Kirk’s third energy experiment which creates a rip in the time vortex and allows Dinosaurs to emerge into modern day.  The main characters in both games is also the only female member of the team, Jill Valentine in Resident Evil, Regina in Dino Crisis.

Finally both sequels see the government get hold of the secrets of the experiment (Kirk’s third energy program, the T-Virus sample) which later thanks to their recklessness results in it getting loose in a big city. Raccoon City in Resident Evil’s case which is overrun with Zombies and eventually nuked, and Edward City in Dino Crisis which is eventually destroyed by Velociraptors.

Still whilst it can’t be denied that it did reuse a lot of the same game mechanics and tropes as its more famous predecessor, overall Dino Crisis managed to stamp out its own identity.

The Raptors were different to the Zombies in that they were a lot faster, more intelligent and could leap out of seemingly nowhere at the player without warning. Also the Tyrannosaurus was far bigger and much more terrifying than anything in the Resident Evil series too.

Also I personally though Regina was a lot better than Jill Valentine. Jill was always a bit too wet and mopey for me. Regina however was far more badass, and snarky. No scene demonstrates that better for me than when the Tyrannosaurus first smashes its way through a window and corners Regina in a tiny little room and she just responds with “you’ve got to be kidding me!”

I think its a shame that Regina is not more famous. The dry, fearless T-Rex and Raptor slayer definitely desevres more respect in my opinion.

I’d love to see a Dino Crisis film with Famke Janssen as Regina.

She’d be so perfect for the role its not true!

Dino Crisis is not without its faults. Like some of the Resident Evil games its a bit slow and it also doesn’t have the greatest variety of Dinosaurs. Still overall its a brilliant game that still holds up thanks to its atmospheric and engaging story.

2/ ARK Survival Evolved

One of the most recent Dinosaur games for the PS4 and X Box One. This game doesn’t have a story. Instead you simply have to train Dinosaurs in order to survive. The game has probably the largest selection of Dinosaurs of any game. Everybody’s favourites are here, Tyrannosaurus Rex, Spinosaurus, Giganotosaurus Allosaurus etc.

I do miss the lack of a story like the Dino Crisis games, but ultimately I can’t rate it as anything but a classic due to the sheer amount of Dinosaurs you get to train as well as the detailed lost world the player can inhabit.

1/ Dino Crisis 2

An oldie but a goodie, Dino Crisis 2 may look a bit primitive by today’s standards but for me its still the best Dinosaur game for a number of reasons.

To start with it has a great selection of Dinosaurs, also its fast paced (rectifying the problems of the first game.) However its story and setting is really what elevate it.

I love running through the crumbling ruins of old cities and military bases (always littered with mutilated bodies) that the Dinosaurs have overrun, finding out how the humans were eventually overcome. And then there is the twist that it was not by Dinosaurs, but a mysterious group of Helmet wearing women from the future.

Trust me it actually makes sense. One of the Helmet women, Paul I always found to be quite unnerving. It was the way she was so child like, yet still somewhat intelligent in other ways. She couldn’t speak and would act like a helpless child, yet was smart enough to use a gun, work a computer etc. You were left to wonder how much of the young woman she once was is left in there.

Dino Crisis 2 much like the first game would make a great movie. Hopefully one day it will get the recognition it deserves.

Thanks for reading.

 

So much for draining the swamp.

Yes sadly it seems many people’s dreams of a peaceful co-operation between Russia, the US and Syria just went up in flames.

Donald Trump like the immediate US Presidents before him is apparently desperate to start a war after all.

Naturally many of Trump’s supporters such as Paul Joseph Watson who only supported him due to his anti war stance, and his desire to limit American intervention in the middle east have now turned on him.

Whilst some people have criticised Watson and others such as Lauren Southern for apparently “flip flopping” on Trump personally I admire them for sticking to their principles.

They only supported Trump because they believed he was a better option than Hillary Clinton in terms of foreign policy. Now that Trump is seemingly pursuing the same destructive foreign policies that Hillary wanted in toppling Assad then they are calling him out on it.

 

I will say there has already been a lot more criticism from Trump’s high profile supporters for his actions in Syria than there were from Obama’s for his many war crimes.

Trump’s Syrian strike not only classes him as a war criminal, but also reveals him to be a spineless, weak man who is easily manipulated by those around him into changing his position in the blink of an eye.

Courtesy of Ben Garrison cartoons.

Abby Martin, former host of Breaking the Set actually warned of this many months ago saying that she felt Trump’s biggest problem was the way he was too easily influenced and prone to changing his mind all the time.

See here in this video.

Trumps actions in Syria could very well lead us into a full scale conflict with Russia. It remains to be seen if Russia and America can smooth things over, but still he is taking a huge risk over what is ultimately a pointless endeavour.

To start with it is not known yet if Assad was even guilty of the recent chemical attack. I am not saying that he wasn’t, but its certainly not proven and in some ways it doesn’t make sense for Assad at this stage to gas his own people when things are generally heading in his favour. ISIS and Al Qaeda were both in retreat, peace talks were going ahead and at that point Trump was limiting intervention in the middle east. For him to suddenly blow that does seem a little unlikely, though again we still don’t know for sure.

Personally I think that this smells of another Saddam has weapons of mass destruction, Benghazi debacle, a lie cooked up to goad us into being ready for a pointless and bloody conflict.

Whatever the case even if Assad does turn out to be guilty then removing him is still the worst of all options. To start with it risks a war with Russia which could in turn escalate into a Third World War! Remember Syria is close allies with Russia, who in turn are close allies with Iran and China. The end result of Trump poking and prodding Syria and Russia could see the US, the UN, Russia, Iran and China all aiming nukes at each other. Russia is also no lame duck either. It has weapons capable of destroying an area the size of Texas.

Russia has already tore up a 2015 military operations agreement it had with the US, which gives both sides open communication regarding air operations. There is now a much greater risk of American and Russian jets accidentally shooting each other down!

Even if there somehow isn’t a war between Russia and America then removing Assad will make things worse for Syria. It will completely destablise the country just like Iraq and Libya and shatter it into a thousand pieces leading to more deaths, and another refugee crisis. It will also give ISIS a footing and lead to a greater rise in Islamic extremism (the very thing Trump promised to fight).

Ironically these are all the things that people (myself included) were terrified Hillary Clinton would cause if she got in. To be fair I do still think that Hillary would have caused a conflict with Syria and Russia if she had been elected President.

Just last night Hillary Clinton said she wanted the US to launch an attack against Syria and for Putin to be held accountable for his actions.

See here Clinton calls for Bombing Assad’s Air Fields.

Hillary Clinton called for Bombing Assad Hours Before Trump Airstrike

So its not a question of “if only Hillary had won” its more that sadly Trump was no alternative after all. No matter who the Americans voted for it seems war was inevitable.

It funny in a tragic way how Obama and Trump really are no different after all.

When Barack Obama was voted in in 2008, people hoped that he would be a positive change and end the conflict in Iraq and limit American intervention in the middle east.

Just like Trump he promised to do that and the two candidates he was up against, John McCain in 2008 and Mit Romney in 2012 were also both crooked war mongers. Thus Obama at the very least was seen as the lesser of two evils. Obama however ended up not only increasing the use of drone strikes significantly from George W Bush, but he too destroyed an entire country, Libya, in an illegal invasion.

Flash forward to 2016 and many people myself included hoped that Trump would be a positive change in terms of foreign policy and limit American intervention in the middle east as he promised to improve relations with Russia and leave Assad alone. He also went up against a candidate who was a crooked war monger, Hillary Clinton too.

However barely 3 months into his Presidency Trump has already carried out a war crime and an illegal attack on another sovereign state.

If you weren’t duped by Obama in 2008 being a positive change then you were probably duped by Trump supposedly draining the swamp in 2016.

It seems there is no escape. Its always the same war mongers running things from behind the scenes, using a spineless puppet as their front man. You can vote Democrat or Republican, Trump or Clinton, Obama or McCain and the result is the same. More wars.

Its time in my opinion that the left abandoned identity politics once and for all. Rather than constantly fight each other over trivial stupid things like gender pronouns, white male privilege etc. The left seriously needs to get its arse in gear and try and find a way to reform the current corporatist system that favours endless wars and expansion.

 

 

Sorry David Bowie these people couldn’t be heroes for one second!

Not everybody has what it takes to be a hero. In some cases its because they are weak, cowardly, selfish or amoral. In others however they can be strong, brave, dashing, handsome, sexy, noble, have all the right ingredients on paper, but fail for one simple reason. They are completely fucking useless!

In this article we will briefly look at what I feel are the 4 most useless heroes on television. All of these characters really did mean well. They all have the heart of noble warrior, but sadly the competency of Homer Simpson.

4/ Emma Swan (Once Upon A Time)

I am sorry to have to include her here. I do like the character. She has an interesting backstory, great characterisation, and Jennifer Morrison who plays her is brilliant in the role.

Sadly however she makes this list simply because she NEVER saves the day. Seriously try and find me a main villain of the series that Emma has actually defeated?

In series 1 it is Henry who in a way brings down the Evil Queen. He is the one who stops Emma from eating the apple which forces Emma and the Evil Queen to work together which ultimately reveals the truth.

In season 2 it is Snow who kills Cora (following Rumple’s orders) in season 3 it is Rumple himself who kills Peter Pan, whilst Zelena the Wicked Witch is defeated by Regina.

In season 4 the snow queen is stopped by Ana, whilst Rumple is beaten by Belle. The Author meanwhile is beaten by Henry.

In season 5 Emma does kill Hook to be fair and she also killed Cruelle in season 4. Even then however Cruella couldn’t kill anyone and Hook also wanted Emma to kill him. Finally Hades the main villain of season 5 is killed by Zelena.

I haven’t seen the 6th season yet. Maybe Emma finally stops the badguy herself but really for the so called saviour its pretty poor that in the first 5 years she only killed two main villains, one of whom couldn’t kill anyone and another who wanted her to kill him.

This is pretty much what always happens in Once Upon A Time. The badguy is completely unstoppable and is about to kill everyone, Emma included, but then someone else bursts in and saves the day leading the viewer to wonder why Emma is called the saviour.

3/ Merlin (Merlin)

Again I liked this show a lot and Colin Morgan who played the character was excellent in the role. Sadly however Merlin ultimately makes the list as not only does he fuck everything up in the show but he is also technically a traitor to his kind too.

The premise of Merlin is that magic has been outlawed in Camelot by the tyrant Uther Pendragon. However an ancient prophecy states that one day Arthur and Merlin will bring magic back to Camelot.

Only problem is that this never happens! Now to be fair I did used to think that this was quite a good twist on the legend that Merlin’s knowledge of the great future caused him to make the wrong decisions. However I have changed my opinion now only in that it would have been better if he and Arthur had at least accomplished something before Arthur’s death.  I get that they needed to have Arthur die just like the myths but they should have had Arthur at least bring magic back before he died. Ultimately Merlin just looks like someone who supported two regimes that persecuted his own kind and turned his friend Morgana evil.

2/ Kendra the Vampire Slayer

The short lived slayer from Buffy’s second season. Kendra is most famous for her dodgy accent, but she was also quite a useless slayer too.

Granted she never went rogue and tried kill people like Faith. Still as a Vampire Slayer she has a pretty poor track record. She is killed by Drusilla barely a year into being a Slayer.

To be fair Kendra unlike the others on this list is meant to be lame. She is meant to highlight how Buffy is a superior Slayer as Kendra never thinks for herself. Still it cannot be denied she was a pretty lousy and unimpressive Slayer.

1/ Hawkman (Arrowverse)

The most useless hero. Hawkman is reborn over and over only to be killed by the exact same guy, Vandal Savage each time. Vandal Savage kills him over 200 times.

Then when Hawkman finally defeats him (only with help from two teams of heroes) Vandal returns and kills Hawkman again in a one on one fight, before going on to drink his blood.

No matter whatever the time or place, Hawkman will always be Vandal Savage’s little bitch.

I don’t think that it was a good idea to have Vandal Savage kill Hawkman and Hawkgirl so many times. It just made them look too inept that they couldn’t beat one guy for over a thousand years. Though Hawkman does finally triumph over Savage at the end of Legends of Tomorrow, but still its only with help and the score is still something like Vandal Savage 270, Hawkman 1.

Overall I’d say that’s a poor track record for any hero against his enemy and just makes Hawkman look all the more inept.

On top of that the only reason he was picked for the mission was because he was deemed unimportant by Rip Hunter and thus if he did die then it wouldn’t make that big a change in the timeline.