Review #634: Dinotopia - The Timestone Pirates

 Turns out Dinosaurs can't make everything better.

 Do you remember Lady Sia? It was one of the earliest GBA games, it's kinda sloppy but quite fun. Turns out the same developers also made Turok Evolution on the Advance, an unfairly hard, but also a helluva fun 2-D action game on the same console. These people also made Dinotopia - The Timestone Pirates. And they blew it.

 I know nothing about the books it's based off of, but the story has to do about bad guys stealing dinosaur eggs and the main character, whoever the hell he is, trying to retrieve them. There's very little story, exposition or context as to why you are doing what you are doing or why what's happening is happening, so I wouldn't bother trying to think to hard about it. The game is mercifully short, but even then it felt like it wore out its welcome by the 30-minute mark. It also attempts to mix various styles: Sidescroller, Flying stages and submarine stages, but none of them work well. At all.

 The first bunch of stages have you playing as the guy on foot, as you explore each stage in search of a single dinosaur egg so that you can exit the stage. These levels are the worst, you have no idea of where you are going or where you should go. They make no sense. You'll end up just fumbling about, trying not to die(Since there are no checkpoints) while you try to find the egg, and maybe the switch that opens up the level's exit. After you are done with those chores you'll be doing a few sidescrolling flying stages. The first one is so irritating because some obstacles are almost impossible to see coming. I lost more lives on the first flying stage than I did on the rest of the game. Once that's through, there are four lame submarine stages in which you must, once again, find eggs. The submarine is either too fast or too slow, so it's hard to avoid hitting things. The boss of the underwater sections  is so hard to figure out... you have to stay put on a certain spot so that a falling barrel bounces on top of you onto the giant fish, and then it's toast. Finally, you go through more 2-D Sidescrolling mazes, this time while riding a dinosaur. The camera is SO zoomed-in that it's impossible to avoid incoming damage, the game compensates for this by being generous with healing pick-ups.

 Dinotopia on the Gameboy Advance manages to hit all three Bs: Bad, Bland and Boring. There's absolutely nothing good about the game, and I usually like scraping the bottom of the barrel for redeeming qualities, but this game has none. Well, maybe... that it sorta kinda looks like Lady Sia? But isn't even half as good. Even fans of the book won't find anything of value here, what's more, it's in their best interest to avoid this cart so as not to tarnish their enjoyment of the books. Few games are this incompetent, at least it's short.
 1.5 out of 10