Dinotopia: The Sunstone Odyssey

Dinotopia faces its ultimate challenge, and you will face yours.

NA release: 31st July 2003
JP release: N/A
EU release: N/A
Developer: Vicious Cycle Software
Publisher: TDK
NGC Magazine Score: N/A
Mods Used: Widescreen Hack

The Dinotopia miniseries was something that I remember being a sensation here in the UK, something that was massive when it came out, only to become something few remembered afterwards. It was a story about a dad and his teenage boys that crash land on an island inhabited by humans and talking dinosaurs (at least the herbivores, the carnivores are just dinosaurs). This game isn’t based on the show, but the book itself, set 10 years later when the dad is killed by a T-rex and his kids have different reactions. One joins the evil outsiders for revenge against dinosaurs, while the other honours their dad by choosing to become a guardian.

This game gave me a great sense of deja-vu, but I’ve definitely never played it. It’s a really basic action adventure game with extremely linear levels and nothing but fetch quests. As you level up, you get more combos, but it doesn’t really change it up much as all of them are still just mashing the A button. Positioning doesn’t matter, so it all feels like a low quality Ocarina of Time. In fact, this whole game kind of feels like it’s from an alternate timeline where Ocarina of Time didn’t show us how to do these things well. Your block can’t be broken and somehow protects you from all sides (your piddly mallet somehow stops a large dinosaur biting the back of your neck), so all you need to do for fight is block when you’re not attacking.

There are a few different sections to mix things up. There are a few flight levels, nowhere near as good as the ones in Turok Evolution. Then there’s also you get to control a large mechanical mech thing, something that you have to work towards for many levels. It just plays the same as being on foot, except the block doesn’t seem to work. On this level, you have to destroy all the other mechs, and one fell through the level, so I couldn’t continue. I had a quick scan at the rest of the game and there’s not much else of note (you even replay the same levels a few times).

What is of note, however, is the dialogue and voice acting. The writing is overly flowy, with characters spending ages talking while saying absolutely nothing. The voice acting is atrocious (especially with the bad British accents) yet there was something familiar about, looking up and there were five voice actors: Jeannie Elias, Maurice LaMarche, Tress MacNeille and Billy West. All accomplished voice actors, including the voices of Kif, Leela and Fry in Futurama (which was in its final original season when this came out). There’s one moment I found amusing because I couldn’t take a sage seriously. Not because he was a dinosaur waffling on about nonsense, but because he was speaking in the voice of Zapp Brannigan. That said, this or every elderly female character sounding like Mom are the only highlights of this game.

Dinotopia: The Sunstone Odyssey is a hugely boring time all-around, a cardinal sin considering it stars prehistoric creatures. It does little justice to its beloved source material, the original narrative is an absolute snooze, combat fails to tie things together and despite its short runtime, the adventure really drags. It fails as an action RPG, misses the mark compared to even the weakest Dinotopia works, and in the end, is best left to extinction.
Shane Battams, The Pixel Empire

Remake or remaster?

There’s nothing worth experiencing here other than the bad voice acting.

Official Ways to get the game

There is no official way to get Dinotopia: The Sunstone Odyssey.