Carnivores: Cityscape

It sounds as though someone is constantly throwing rocks that are landing with heavy thuds around you. Actually, it is supposed to be the sound of running feet. Sometimes they are your own, sometimes to the victims.

Just who the victims are remains to be seen.

Carnivores: Cityscape is a hunting game masquerading as a first-person shooter. It is a PC game released by Sunstorm Interactive and Infogrames. Though graphically very well done, the game does not seem to have a lot of depth to it.

Players can participate in the hunt either as a human – armed with several different weapons, of the rifle, shotgun or grenade launcher variety – or as a dinosaur – armed with big teeth and claws.

There are 20 missions available in the game, each of increasing difficulty, but each with a common theme. For the human, it is to kill the dinosaurs. As a dinosaur, it is to kill and eat the humans.

And, in case that wasn’t clue enough, this program is rated Teen for blood and violence.

Once you get past the simplicity of the scenarios, you will be treated to a game that is excellent graphically – although there is a bit of a perspective problem. The agents in the game – judging from the trees, rocks and other environmental elements – seem about two feet tall. And the first dinosaurs encountered, or played as, are even smaller. (The dinosaurs ranged from the Coclophysis bauri, a small pack-hunting predator, to the Giganotosaurus carolinii, a 42-foot long beast that is bigger than the Tyrannosaurus Rex.) However, lighting in some scenarios does an exceptional job of creating suspense.

As a human agent, you begin by trying to eliminate a bunch of dinosaurs from a valley. Of course you have to get to it first. You will have to wend your way down a rock face to the valley below, which is where you will encounter the beasts. The dinosaurs you are hunting don’t seem particularly bright. They all attack in the same manner, and gnaw at your knees.

If you decide to play as a dinosaur, you merely have to exit the spacecraft you were traveling on and get to the other end of a valley. Of course, there are a lot of armed humans between you and there.

The game features a mixed bag when it comes to the soundtrack. Some of the ambient sounds are quite good, as is the music. But then there is the thumping, which passes for footsteps. You can hear them coming a long way off. Either that or your own footsteps are echoing like crazy in the immediate vicinity.

The game also has power-ups along the way – like recharges for ammunition and health packs. There is nothing worse than dying, and as the camera pulls back from your death scene, seeing the power-up just on the other side of a bush.

The controls are fully customizable, and though the initial configuration may seem a little awkward and require about a 5-10 minute introduction through combat, you will be able to change them any way you wish to make the game more user-friendly.

Carnivores: Cityscape doesn’t have an evolving storyline that makes it the type of game that haunts you. Yes, the plot is that a spaceship bearing the dinosaurs has crashed, releasing them into various elements and aspects of the planet’s environments. You will have the option of hunting in canyons, sewers and subways, as well as streets. But that is essentially the game. The objectives are very simple, and there isn’t a greater goal waiting to be realized. Hunt – that’s about it.

Of course, if that is what you are looking for, this is the perfect game.

Install: Easy.
This game only takes up 360 megs of hard-drive space.

Gameplay: 7
The scenarios are very simplistic, and sometimes the environments are the same with just different goals, but the game does play very smoothly once a scenario is launched. There were some minor stability problems in the opening developer cutscene, but nothing was experienced during gameplay.

Graphics: 8.3
The environments are simply wonderful to look at, and the animation is very well done.

Sound: 7.4
This is a mixed bag – some elements are wonderful, others are somewhat silly.

Difficulty: 5
The initial control assignments can be simplified easily, making this a simple game to jump into and play.

Concept: 6
Take a hunting game, give players a chance to play as either the hunter or the animal, and then put the adversaries in different venues, and you have the essential elements of this game.

Multiplayer: 8
While the AI doesn’t seem all that high, in addition to the deathmatch-style of gaming, this program allows players to team up (as either humans or carnivores) for a joint hunt. Up to eight players can group and play through the scenarios in partnership.

Overall: 6.9
When you stack a game like this up against other recent FPS programs – like C&C’s Renegade, or Alien versus Predator 2 – Carnivores comes up a little short. But for those seeking a shooter game with simple objectives, some nice moments of tension, and great graphics, this could be a game you will enjoy.