I, like many others, did not grow up in the age when dinosaurs roamed the earth. However, I was that kid who owned packets upon packets of cheap-o plastic, made-in-China dinosaur toys, the kind you find as pinata stuffers. I had a gaudy, neon-yellow, velcroed wallet that I carried around for the sheer fact it had a blue Tyrannosaurus Rex on it. I knew all the dino names as a 4 year old, could spell Pteranodan, Diplodocus, Ankylosaurus, Ichthyosaur, Rhamphorhynchus, Dimetrodon, Plesiosaur and others even better than I can spell Schwarzenegger today. I was contending the differences between Deinonychus and Velociraptor before even the Jurassic Park movie had come out and rendered nerdy speculation irrelevant. I thought the fabled Ultrasaurus was “da shee-yut” as we said in the ’90s (well, not me personally since I was a dinosaur nerd) and stood audience to the naming dispute regarding the biggest dinosaur who ever lived…. I also had a pink shirt with a brontosaurus on it. In darkness, the shirt depicted a dino skeleton that lit up ever so dimly in glowing yellow paint, but was awesome nonetheless.
The point is: you don’t have to be a little dino-freak like I was/am to appreciate the coolness to be found from the superb puppetry/animatronics in “Walking With Dinosaurs – The Arena Spectacular”, the new gold standard for reviving our fossilized predecessors. Short of getting John Hammond to dig up some ancient mosquitos from amber, this is as real as it gets. My fingers are crossed that they make their way to the United States, San Antonio specifically. It has my money already, Walking With Dinosaurs just needs to name a price.
Raptors in Public: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Uhxq2Qh0aM
Behind the Scenes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0elMRThXL8&feature=related
Main Website: http://www.dinosaurlive.com/
Edit: I went to the show November 2014 in Austin, TX; it was freakin’ awesome. The fluidity of the animatronics was unmatched with anything I’ve seen before and the scale of it all was outstanding/daunting. The “combat” betwixt thunder-lizards left a little to be desired, but at a 1 and 1/2 hours show where even the stage transformed to suit the mood, I was very impressed. Photos will be forthcoming in my Portfolio section!
Arcen Games is full of great ideas. I want to get that out there. This indie company is going places and I want to see it happen due to brilliant contributors, great support, and creativity that pours into every product. That said, I’d love to report that I was floored by how amazing A Valley Without Wind is, but that just isn’t the case. This title is chock-full of promise, a real amalgamation of classic gaming archetypes merged with modern technological scale, but I ultimately set my hopes a little higher than the watermark that it did achieve. An emphasis on breadth cuts into the depth of the game’s core foundation, an unfortunate sacrifice for a game that could be one of the “greats” with more effort.
