10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Very fun! A great idea neatly done...great value., November 16, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: Carnivores (CD-ROM)
Carnivores is a really fun game to play. The interface is quite simple, just like a first person shooter, but the object is to hunt dinosaurs. You choose a weapon (limited to X-bow, shotgun, or rifle), a hunting terrain, and a dinosaur species to hunt. You have options like tranquilizers (for you PETA folks), radar, scent mask, and camouflage, but these lower your score. As you progress in skill, you get to hunt more ferrocious beasts, until as an expert you can hunt T-Rex. The first time I used my game call on the Tyranosaurus, I about fell out of my chair! The game can be set at varying degrees of difficulty. If you set the choice to AGGRESSIVE DINOSAURS and HIGH SENSITIVTY, you are just begging to wind up in T-Rex's jaws. Also, while you are hunting stegosaurus, it is not uncommon for an Alosaurus to stalk you. The sounds are well done and set an eerie, lonely atmosphere. The graphics are good, so you can run it on a low-end Pentium. Don't expect Quake 2 or the like....this is a simple game with basic graphics, but is one heck of a lot of fun. There is no gore here, the violence is not graphic.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Suprisingly good budget shooter, January 1, 2005
= Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars
This review is from: Carnivores (CD-ROM)
I've only bought two budget games (those cheesy ones that sell for less then twenty dollars) in my life. One was a mind-numbingly awful shark hunter game, and the other was Carnivores. To my suprise (Which is still intact today), Carnivores is a suprisingly good budget shooter, well worth its bargin bin price.
Carnivores takes place in the far future, where you are the newest client of a dino-hunting corporation that's set up on a planet in space. Yes, the story is non-existant, but at least they tried to give a solid reason why you're hunting dinosaurs with a shotgun.
For your dino hunting adventures, you get to hunt with three weapons. A shotgun thats powerful (but very noisy), a silent crossbow that features a complex aiming system, and the powerful but limited sniper rifle. Although you only get three weapons, thats more then enough for plenty of dinosaur hunting action. One feature I really liked is that you can choose to hunt with sedative rounds (tranquilizers), which puts your prey to sleep instead of killing it, thus earning you more points.
The dinosaurs you hunt are varied, each offering a uniuqe challenge. The Parasarlophosis for example, is harmless, but has an excellent sense of hearing and can detect you from a mile away, making it almost impossible to find one. The Triceratops is peaceful, but if you disturb it (or shoot it) from close range, its going to come after you and stomp you to death. And of course, the meat eating dinosaurs want to eat you, and all of them have excellent senses of smell, so be carefull!
To make your hunt easier, you can equip items and equipment such as camoflage, scent reducing chemicals, and a very handy radar. Bear in mind though, that using the equipment will lower your score (you get points by killing or sedating your target dinosaurs).
The world of Carnivores is quite amazing to walk through. Although the graphics are average at best, each world feels alive and vibrant. Lush tropical forests, desolate deserts, jungles, beaches, ancient temples, and even a pyramid or two are some of the places you'll encounter on your journey. Other dinosaurs such as Galamimuses walk around, looking for food and running from you when you fire or get too close. The audio portion of the game is excelent. Birds and insects squack and screetch in jungles, desolate and lonely wind blows across the deserts. A lake splashes under a late afternoon sky. A T-rex roars in the distance. All of it adds up to a rich and imersive atmosphere.
Suprisingly, Carnivores is a scary game. Unlike games where you hunt Bambi or turkeys, the dinosaurs in the game fight back! If a meat eater sees you, it will stop at nothing (literaly) to get to you. If you're hunting a stegosaur, theres a good chance you might run across a velociraptor (who will immediatly come after you). There were several moments during my playtime where I lunged out of the chair in fright! Such as the time I had an Allosaur lined up in my crosshairs, and I was suddenly ambushed and killed by a velociraptor from behind. Staying on your toes and remaining alert will save your life many times. And when you first hunt the T-rex? Be prepared to be scared out of your wits. The first time I sounded the T-rex roar, I jumped out of my seat! (When you hear a T-rex roar, RUN! Not that it will do you any good).
Other little touches add nice depth. If you want to leave a hunt, you have to go through a brief waiting period ("Preparing for evacuation"), meaning that if you're being chased by a hungry dinosaur, you cant just leave the game instantly. You can change the amount of dinosaurs in a hunting area to suit your tastes (fancy hunting three T-rex's at once?). There's even a feature where you can view your trophies in a hunting room.
I do have a few complaints with the game though. Hunting the meat eaters (the velociraptor and Allosaurus) is more difficult then it should be, due to the fast walking speed of the creatures. They walk very fast, making it extremly difficult to line up a head shot (which you need to kill them), meaning that you'll die many times due to one missed shot. This may be realistic, but it does get annoying. There could also be some dino vs dino struggles that could take place. Its a bit strange to see a Stegosaurus calmly eating some grass while a gigantic T-rex thunders right past it (ignoring the stegosaurus as well). My other complaint is once you unlock all the weapons, stages, and dinosaurs, you really dont have anything else to do except just keep playing over and over again, meaning that the game can get repettitive.
But in the end, Carnivores is a suprisingly good budget game that I dont hesitate to recommend. If you find it for under ten dollars, I'd get it. Its a great bargin.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
