Are Dino Crisis 1 & 2 Worth Playing Now That They're On GOG?
With the arrival of Dino Crisis and its first sequel on PC, it's scarcely been easier in the past 25 years to enjoy these unique survival horror titles. First released in 1999 for the original PlayStation (with Dreamcast and Windows ports to follow), Dino Crisis is exactly what it says on the tin: a survival horror game featuring a menagerie of massive, prehistoric monsters. The originalwas a critical and commercial hit on its initial release, and, while its popularity hasn't been quite so enduring as that of other PS1 games, fans still have an appetite for Dino Crisis.
The series is in the midst of a mini-revival at the moment, with Dino Crisis available to PS Plus Premium subscribers since October 2024, and the first two games now available for purchase on PC. Whether a player has never touched the series before, or has logged several hundreds of hours in every single game, it's easy to get caught up in all the talk around it, and wonder: "should I be playing Dino Crisis, too?" Here are all the pros and cons of getting into (or back into) Capcom's long dormant dino survival series in 2025 and beyond.
Dino Crisis 1 & 2 Are Now Available On GOG
The Survival Horror Series, Ported To PC
A major benefit to playing Dino Crisis is that it's never been easier. No longer do players have to spend hundreds of dollars on retro hardware, or fiddle with fan patches and virtual machines to make Dino Crisis' 25-year-old PC port work properly: now, they can simply buy Dino Crisis 1 and 2 on GOG. The games cost $9.99 USD each, but can also be purchased as a bundle for $16.99. They can also be downloaded directly from GOG's website - no need for another launcher.
Of course, Dino Crisis 1 and 2 have undergone some serious enhancements that go beyond the bare necessities of making them work on modern PCs. It features higher resolution, and more in-depth color than the original version. Several issues with stable performance and corrupted save files have been fixed. A full suite of graphical options allows Dino Crisis to be customized to run smoothly and look its best on almost any PC. And bonus features from the originals, including post-game challenges like Dino Duel and Operation Wipe Out, have been faithfully ported over.
Why Dino Crisis 1 & 2 Are Worth Playing
A Treat For Survival Horror Fans
Simply put, for anyone with even a passing interest in survival horror or retro games as a whole, Dino Crisis is absolutely worth playing in 2025. Regardless of its fancy, enhanced PC port, the game stands on its own merits: Dino Crisis has been favorably compared to Resident Evil since its inception, evoking a similarly tense atmosphere, and demanding a similarly strict sense of resource management in order to survive. Fans of RE and similar survival horror staples will find a lot of familiarity in Dino Crisis.
But what's even more interesting about Dino Crisis is how it innovates on survival horror tropes. Sure, players will be fighting dinos, solving puzzles, and managing supplies to survive, but each of these familiar aspects of gameplay have unique wrinkles in Dino Crisis. Combat is faster and more dangerous than in Resident Evil, andfeatures what can only be called status effects: the protagonist, Regina, will sometimes be disarmed, or bleed profusely, and have to resolve these to regain her advantage. This adds an extra degree of tension to its already terrifying gameplay.
For those who have only played the Resident Evil remakes, know that Dino Crisis doesn't have the same kind of snappy, modern movement; it uses tank controls like the original RE.
Inventory management is complicated by a series of color-coded stash boxes; although players can store excess items in them, they can only access them from other boxes of the same color, which requires a little extra advance planning. Dino Crisis 2 takes the familiar dual protagonist structure of Resident Evil, but forces the player to switch between them multiple times instead of splitting them into two different campaigns. Each protagonist has a unique gameplay style informed by their signature weapons, and swapping can help open new paths.
So, for total series newcomers, Dino Crisis is almost certainly worth checking out now that it's on PC due to its unique perspective on survival horror and evolution of gameplay tropes established by similar series. But what about those who have played the game before?
Why Dino Crisis 1 & 2 Are Worth Replaying
Two PS1 Classics Reborn
Ultimately, it comes down to the player and their individual experience with the series. But for anyone who's enjoyed Dino Crisis in the past, it's almost certainly worth revisiting now. Besides the graphical and performance improvements now available in the PC port, if it's been a decade or more since their last run of Dino Crisis, then it's worth replaying just for the rediscovery and the nostalgia of it all.
And besides that, if Capcom is planning a bigger Dino Crisis revival, then there's never been a better time to catch up. But even if it's not, Dino Crisis is an excellent game in its own right, and deserves a look by anyone interested in the survival horror genre, similar game series, or even just dinosaurs in general.
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