World War II Pilot Lt. Mike Wired is gunning down enemy planes in the sky when he’s shot down. He ejects out his plane only to be sucked into an alternate dimension with – ta da! – dinosaurs. Mike is suddenly armed with a gun and a wrist communicator and makes his way through a dino universe to find out how and why it appeared.

Dino Stalker features full Guncon 2 support – but the gameplay doesn’t lend itself well to a light gun. Players use the d-pad with their thumb to move and turn. The A and B buttons are used to strafe. A + B executes a sniper mode. The C button (located at the barrel bottom) is used to switch to a special shot. The Guncon 2 has a d-pad but you have to use your thumb while your index finger is on the trigger. Then with your left hand, the thumb and middle finger have to be on buttons A and B to strafe. If the config sounds like it’s too complicated for a gun game, it is. It’s very difficult to thumb your way around, turn, strafe, or switch to another gun mode when a storm of dinosaurs are running and leaping towards you. Dinosaurs will come at you from all sides, and turning to shoot, not to mention an occasional strafe to dodge, is a pain.

Switch to the Dual Shock 2 and most of the stress is relieved. Every button is accessible and you can use the left analog to move and right analog to aim. Turns are faster with the Dual Shock 2 and it’s much easier to switch to different weapon modes.

To help you fight the endless number of angry dinos, Capcom has laid the area with health, time extenders, and weapons. The weapons – machine guns, grenade launchers, flame throwers, missile launchers and more are at your disposal. You get a nice radar at the bottom of the screen to see where dinos are and which ones are set to attack.

The Dino Stalker engine is pretty good. There’s fog in the distance but everything moves at 60 fps and most objects are destructible. Tons of trees can be shot down, windows can be shot out and tons of objects explode. The dinosaurs are modeled well and many can be on screen at once with no slow down. The sound is also good with plenty of environmental chirps, shrieks, and deep roars.

Dino Stalker would have worked much better as an on-rails shooter. The boat and car levels gave a glimpse at how much faster and fluid the shooting would be without having to control the character. The mix of arcade action and player control is too messy to work all at once. But resorting to the Dual Shock 2 makes the game lose a lot of its bite.