ORION: DINO HORDE Review for PC

Okay. I’m philosophically on board with the premise of Orion: Dino Horde. You’ve got dinosaurs, you’ve got shpessh mareens, you’ve got guns (kind of fits right in with that second one, there), you’ve got various permutations of co-op and counter-op online game play. It’s a fairly sweet suite of things that go bang and or raw.

Take one of the most popular genres, especially amongst the PC crowd, give ‘em a chance to yell at people and blow things up with increasingly loud guns and grenades and what have you, and occasionally bring a T-Rex around the corner to threaten doom and wait. Wait just a sec. That T-Rex PICKED UP A BOULDER AND THREW IT AT ME. Either this is Halo: Dinosaurs Evolved, or Orion’s playing fairly fast and loose with, you know, biology.

If this was a real thing that happened, Dr. Malcolm and those kids would’ve been 31 flavors of screwed. So in lieu of actual plot, as I was completely unable to glean any whatsoever from the heavily multi-player-focused experience, you’ve got dinosaurs and dudes with guns, who are obviously in mortal conflict over, well, anything really.

I guess dinosaurs really hate power generators, as they keep going after ‘em with ridiculous tenacity. In the Survival mode, these very generators - positioned a ridiculous distance away from your base - are your lifeblood, and must be protected from the onslaught of raptors, pterodactyls, and other huge lizards by’ oh, we’ll cut to the chase. Dinosaurs come, you gun ‘em down in waves, then break back to the barracks to buy new guns.

This works until your generator’s completely trashed, or until everyone on your side is dead. Fortunately, a mortally wounded soldier can get a pick-me-up by destroying an enemy unit while woozy, which is opportune because even on a high place, with your back against a solid rock wall, you can still just crumple over dead. I’ve been breaking down the footage for some time now and I still can’t understand what exactly transpired here.

Oh well, maybe it’s time for me to be a dinosaur myself, that’ll clear my head. In the Rampage mode, you have the option of taking a member of either faction around one of these really lush maps to rampage. Unfortunately, while the concept of being a dinosaur and chewing up smaller prey should be pretty awesome in practice, the controls and clipping issues make it an exercise in futility.

 That small prey will gleefully faze right through your huge, tank-like body as you thrash your mighty head around and attempt to back up, which happens at a rate of about a tenth of a mile per week. Other modes include team death matches, free-for-alls, king-of-the-hill and apparently getting picked up by a flying bogey and getting taken for one psycho Billy freak-out of a ride.

An EXP system further convinces me that everything is turning into RPGs, as does the cash rewards for each kill which can be spent on augments and armaments. Orion: Dino Horde’s by no means perfect, but there’s a lot to like in the little things. Unlike this little skittering ankle-menaces here. Or, if they’ve got you down, just take leave of your senses, jetpack up the side of a mountain, take in the admittedly beautiful landscape, then plummet to your death.

junk jack x