It's pretty safe to say Dino D-Day is a different kind of World War II shooter, mostly because it features dinosaurs. The resurrected beasts serve the Nazis and join the fight to overwhelm Allied forces in multiplayer combat arenas. It's a great concept for an online shooter and results in all kinds of inane humor, like ducking under a sheep tossed by a Dilophosaurus while sprinting by a poster of a benevolent Hitler cradling a baby dinosaur. But as much potential as there is to have fun jumping around as a Velociraptor while an Allied soldier tries to shoot you down with a Thompson sub machinegun, Dino D-Day just doesn't play very well.
The faults are many, from the map designs to the controls to the classes. Digital Ranch gives unique abilities to each of the twelve classes, three of which are Nazi dinosaurs. To compensate for their inability to reload guns, the dinosaurs have different ways to attack and varied movement speeds. Meanwhile the rest of the available combat classes are human and rely on traditional weapons and a few special abilities, from medkits to calling in airstrikes in the form of flying, exploding pterosaurs.
Since the premise of the game is totally ludicrous to begin with, it's within reason that the Allied Jack Hardgrave class gets magically powered-up fists after three consecutive kills, and that the Ilona Vike class can toss a jackrabbit onto the field to distract any nearby Velociraptors. The larger issue is the guns, from the rifles to the SMGs, doesn't feel particularly responsive or powerful, and the presence of dinosaurs significantly throws off the balance of combat.
For a game where dinosaurs are the major draw, only three controllable dino classes don't feel like enough. The Desmatoschus is essentially a walking tank with irritatingly imprecise aiming that makes consistently hitting targets more of a chore than it should be. Its slow movement speed makes it an easy target on purpose, but also makes it one of the most boring classes in the game. The Velociraptor and Dilophosaurus are by comparison much more interesting, mostly because they both get instant kill attacks. Aside from the bullets fired from guns the Raptor is the fastest thing on the map, which is especially frustrating when it high jumps over a barrier, pounces on your face and instant-kills you with a lethal bite to the neck.
The Dilophosaurus can scoop up sheep and launch them at targets and ram into Allied soldiers, scoop them up in its mouth, then toss the mandible-bound victim into another for a follow-up kill. It's a bigger target than the Velociraptor so it can't avoid bullets as effectively, but it can easily get stuck in doorways and other tight spaces thanks to a sloppily implemented third-person view.
Save for those fortunate enough to be carrying a spare jackrabbit, the Allied soldiers don't seem especially well-equipped to handle a coordinated dinosaur rush. It can make for unpredictable gameplay for all the wrong reasons, especially on maps where the action is funneled into areas too tight to accommodate any kind of orderly fighting. This is especially true in the King of the Hill map types where you'll frequently see pterosaur bombs spammed at the single capture area or an entire team camped out around the one or two points of interest on the Objective maps. It dissolves the usefulness of most of the class abilities, turning combat into chaos.
Perhaps chaotic combat is realistic. If dinosaurs were to actually roam the battlefield with guns strapped to their shells and primed to launch sheep from their mouths at a moment's notice, I'm pretty sure even the most well-trained soldiers would freak out. Yet this game clearly isn't about realism, and the systems built in to provide balance between sides don't maintain traction when the bullets start to fly.
What Digitial Ranch did manage to do quite well is build in a sense of humor. Allied soldiers will make Jurassic Park references after being killed, maps are littered with Nazi dinosaur propaganda posters, and nothing can quite match the sight of seeing a gigantic lumbering styracosaurus blasting shoulder mounted turrets across the Fortress Objective map. The writing throughout, though not the focus of the game, is well done, with some great descriptions in the fake newspapers on loading screens and impressive attention to detail, such as how the Desmatosuchus fires its back-mounted gun by biting down on a strap running through its mouth.
Bugs, lag and a tiny player base also affect the experience. Often there aren't more than 30 players online at any given time split across two servers, which is usually enough to get only one decent game going. For a multiplayer-only game, the low player numbers is something to consider if the premise is enough to make you want to play. To date the game has also remained glitchy, with a strange bug popping up from time to time that turns players into floating guns.
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