➤ Dino Squad, the review 🎮

La Dino Squad review brings to mind the now fairly numerous games starring the Dinosaurs, in this case armed and armored, committed to challenge each other in a territorial multiplayer mode in which you have to conquer and defend towers to score higher than the opposing team.

It is basically the same formula that we experimented exactly a year ago with Full Metal Monsters, and which in many ways is inspired by a television series of the 80s, Dino-Riders, from which a line of toys was drawn which was also successfully distributed in Spain, which remained in the hearts of nostalgics.

In fact, we are talking about a theme that can only excite, especially when the charm of huge and lethal creatures such as dinosaurs are combined with flamboyant armor, futuristic weapons and special abilities.

If we add to this mix also a good technical sector, a gameplay able to withstand six-on-six clashes well with a lightning-fast matchmaking (but sometimes suspicious: how many bots are there on the servers?) And the free model. freemium, declined in a not too invasive way even with its inevitable microtransactions, the potential is undoubted.

Gameplay

Dino Squad is absolutely not lost in chatter, to the point that the present tutorial is optional and must be recalled specifically. This means that once the game is started we can immediately launch ourselves in the middle of a battle, choosing one of the three dinosaurs initially available and starting to collect experience points to be able to upgrade it, unlock new skills and possibly new ones. weaponry; although the latter are generally protected by a paywall that implies the outlay of hard currency, given with a certain parsimony but obviously obtainable by putting your wallet.

Once on the field, the goal is to conquer and maintain control of a series of towers, with some unprecedented facets represented by the need to destroy the panels if they are managed by the opposing team, before being able to recover them.

I controls touch are placed as a mix between the best layouts for the shooter genre and the more traditional ones, with the hateful manual fire: an excessively cumbersome solution, unless you have two right thumbs, which requires you to leave the control of the camera to be able to shoot.

Here, in this case on the right side of the screen there are two virtual sticks: the first, invisible, only adjusts the view, while the second activates the fire and can be used when we are near a target, assuming that fortunately the ammunition of our weapons is always infinite. A semi-automatic lock-on system makes it much easier to land hits, even if this mechanism ends up unbalancing the experience a bit, especially where certain units are used.

The system is therefore saved in a corner, giving us good precision and good reactivity, but focusing above all on the different characteristics and equipment of each selectable dinosaur.

As mentioned, initially we will be able to count on three types of creatures: Reaver, quick and elusive but puny, armed with a shotgun, ideal for conquering points of interest and falling back; Primarch, a rather slow but resistant tank equipped with a machine gun that inflicts moderate damage; and Archon, a relatively balanced precision marksman. It is possible to change the dinosaur at each respawn, but above all to enhance our roster from match to match, possibly resorting to score multipliers linked to the vision of short advertising trailers.

Technical realization

Dino Squad includes six different ones scenery, fairly large but characterized by often generic solutions, especially as regards the textures. Different is the speech related to the dinosaurs, which appear well made, with their specific equipment, and are equipped with a good set of animations: the roster has a total of seventeen specimens, so it is quite rich.

The interface is functional, with a mini map at the top right and very few icons crowding the screen, which can therefore be entirely dedicated to in-game action. On iPad Pro the experience is always fluid and well defined, without uncertainties, but as mentioned the great speed of matchmaking and some situations that are a bit too linear make one think of the presence of bots on the servers: it is difficult to understand how things really are.

Comment

Tested version iPad (0.5.5) Digital Delivery App Store, Google Play Price Free Resources4Gaming.com

7.8

Readers (5)

8.0

Your vote

Dino Squad is a multiplayer shooter capable of proposing a fascinating theme, that of armored dinosaurs clashing for control of the territory, and to concretize it in a convincing way thanks to well-made touch controls, as well as a gameplay that greatly benefits from the characterization of every single creature available. The units are in fact all different and this makes the action more varied and interesting, adding an important strategic element in the composition of the teams. The matchmaking is extremely fast and we have not encountered problems related to excessive latency, but it is not clear if and how many bots are present on the servers to facilitate the start of the matches. We are certainly talking about a title destined to grow, and first impressions are positive.