Carnivores: Dinosaur Hunt Review: Slow And Tedious

Carnivores: Dinosaur Hunt is an unexciting first-person shooter about taking down gigantic dinosaurs that often leave the player frustrated.

From the title, Carnivores: Dinosaur Hunt sounds like a game full of excitement, conjuring up images of ferocious battles with gigantic dinosaurs in exotic, pre-historic landscapes. In reality, it's exactly the opposite - a slow, tedious crawl through monotonous levels with little to no reward and a poor currency system that often hinders the player's feeling of progression.

Developed by Digital Dreams Entertainment, Carnivores: Dinosaur Hunt is a first-person shooter that is focused on hunting dinosaurs. The player, armed with a map and a weapon of their choosing, must stalk various species of dinosaurs without alerting them to their presence. Then, as one would expect, it's time to take aim and fire, hopefully bringing down one of the large reptiles to claim a reward.

Unfortunately, the actual hunting process is never as fun as it would seem on paper. Although there is a map to work with, the dinosaurs are often spaced far apart or too close together, causing dull traversal for what seems like miles to encounter one of the creatures or to scare all of them off with one missed or unsuccessful shot.

Carnivores: Dinosaur Hunt tries to help players by implementing a "breathing" system, which hypothetically lets players see weak points on each dinosaur by pressing a button to breathe while aiming, but even when lining up the shot shot, it's still rarely an efficient take down. Instead, the dinosaur often requires at least one more shot to kill, which would be fine except getting shot scares it (understandable), and it runs off as fast as possible, and scattershot subsequent fire is much less accurate and much more infuriating to experience.

This is important because ammo is a coveted resource in Carnivores: Dinosaur Hunt. In each level, there is only a limited amount of ammunition, and once it's exhausted, that particular run is over. There's never any chance to get more, which makes it even more frustrating when ammo is wasted because a dinosaur ends up bolting.

There is a form of in-game currency that can be used to upgrade weapons but the problem is that the same currency is used to unlock weapon upgrades, character upgrades and hunting licenses, and it's not always easy to acquire. The player is gifted currency by successfully killing a dinosaur and transporting it back to base; however, the amount each dinosaur yields is often quite low and not enough to quickly rack up points to unlock new upgrades or licenses.

Because of the currency limitations, the player is often put in a loop of saving up money to unlock new licenses to make more money to unlock more upgrades, which is frustrating because without the upgrades, it's difficult to kill dinosaurs and without killing dinosaurs, there's no way to buy upgrades.

Carnivores: Dinosaur Hunt isn't all bad. It's still a thrilling accomplishment to take down huge dinosaurs like a tyrannosaurus rex or a triceratops after following them around, hiding in the bushes with a gun poised and ready to fire. Unfortunately, the tediousness of the hunt outweighs much of that excitement, and the slow progression system often feels like a hinderance instead of motivation to keep playing. There are quite a few moments to enjoy, especially for gamers that might prefer methodical shooters, but Carnivores: Dinosaur Hunt still manages to trip over its own feet, making hunting dinosaurs feel more like a chore and less like a triumphant conquest of enormous reptilian beasts.

RELATED ARTICLE: 10 Best Video Games For Fans Of The Jurassic Park Series

Carnivores: Dinosaur Hunt is available now on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. Screen Rant was provided with a digital PS4 code for the purpose of this reivew.

Source: https://screenrant.com/