Assault's starting pistol would be a joke if most of the enemies could get near you.
It's worth noting that Orion was actually released last week in an even more bugged form -- this review is based on the newly patched 1.1 version. Considering that one of its persisting bugs is that if you join a game, you often can't join another one until you quit out completely, you can imagine what the original version was like. It remains a mess though, from small things like cars not making a crash sound when you hit something (and only a weird clicking thing when you hit a dino) to its glitchy server browser.
Even if everything worked properly though... Dino Beatdown isn't that much fun.
Even if everything worked properly though, without things like T-rexes routinely clipping through the sides of buildings, menus refusing to accept clicks, or getting mugged by dinosaurs while the "Dinos Remaining" HUD element tells you they're all in the great Jurassic Park in the sky, Dino Beatdown isn't that much fun. It's essentially just you and four friends against wave after wave of rabid dinosaurs on needlessly large maps, collecting credits for survival and using them to buy better weapons and character perks for future waves. If you die, you're out for the rest of the wave, unless you have enough cash to buy an extra life. Rinse and repeat, possibly as a different class or driving a vehicle until it's time to move on to one of the map's other bases and continue the fight. Don't be a Dinosaur Loser
The basic idea isn't too bad, and there are plenty of toys to play with, but there's very little depth. For starters, there are only three types of dinosaur available -- raptors, flying things that you'll probably mistake for pterodactyls but aren't, and the T-rex. All are dumber than rocks. Raptors swarm in armies, jumping ridiculous distances to get in your face, and running around almost randomly if they don't have a target in front of them. Clever girls, they are not. The flying critters pick players up out of nowhere and make you flail wildly until they drop you, potentially to your very irritated death if you don't have a jetpack. The T-rex... well... is a T-Rex. They're not exactly big on subtlety. All of the AI is utterly dreadful, as you can see every time you get up high and watch them at work.
Tribes: Ascend. It's out, it's awesome, and it's very well tested. Just saying...
The first thing I noticed is that while I do have other options - sneaky Recon and med-gun wielding Support - picking the jetpack using Assault class means that neither the raptors nor the flying dinosaurs are much of a threat anymore. Orion's only fix for this is to give the T-rex the ability to pull deadly boulders out of its ass and hurl them at you in protest, which honestly says a lot about its attention to detail on the enemy front.
There's none of the tension of something like Killing Floor or Left 4 Dead.
Things got even more tenuous when I realized the best ways to triumph are usually the ones that involve being incredibly boring -- just camping on things out of their reach, or hiding in the base where only the easily killed raptors ever venture. There's none of the tension of something like Killing Floor or Left 4 Dead, and the core dinosaur-killing combat is nowhere near interesting enough to compensate. Most weapons lack punch, enemies don't react satisfyingly when shot in the face, and when death comes, it's often out of nowhere. Several times, it was like my character had just had a heart attack and collapsed. Living Fossil
This would be the case even if Dino Beatdown was polished and perfect -- but as mentioned, it's far from it. Even ignoring the bugs, it's a game of rough edges, from its graphics to the amateurish interface to conveying what you're meant to be doing. Just for starters, it makes almost no effort to tell players what the hell we're meant to be doing -- indeed, you have to pull up a second HUD just to flag the upgrade stations. Depending on server settings, you can start with between 0 and 5000 credits to buy stuff, but can't actually make purchases until you activate the generator that starts the first enemy wave. That's stupid. In addition, if you join a game midway through, you'll get no bonus cash to help replace your lousy starting weapon and catch up with the team.
OH HAI, I'M IN YOUR BASE CLIPPING THROUGH YOUR WALLS.
Orion feels like a late-in-development mod, with some interesting ideas but a long way to go. The basics are there, ready to be tested and evolved, and their rough edges worked over with virtual sandpaper by an understanding community. If that was what Dino Beatdown was, it'd be plastered with words like "promising" and "ambitious." But it's not. It's out and it costs money, despite being far from ready for prime time. Even as a quirky indie release with a budget price, Orion asks for too big a leap of faith that it'll eventually work out.