The stars of Warpath are the dinosaurs themselves. Although the rest of the game may not be a total blast, the ability to take control of many of the dinosaurs from the Jurassic Park movies is great on its own. The dinosaurs have been modeled to perfection and look extremely nice. Realistic textures have been applied to help make different points of “damage” that change depending how you are attacked by your opponent. Suppose a raptor lunges at your stomach and takes a huge slash at it. If it was powerful enough then chances are you’ll find a nice, big bloodied texture replacing where your skin once was.

There are of course, the most popular dinosaurs that we all know and love, including the small but agile and deadly Raptor, and the monstrous Tyrannosaurus Rex. Featuring their ever famous roars and screams, those are easily the most recognizable of the bunch. There are, however, others that either weren’t really in the movies, but are dinosaurs that could easily fit into the Jurassic Park universe, so it works rather well. What got a bit repetitive, though, was that there were at least four dinosaurs that were not all that different from the Tyrannosaurus Rex, but simply changed around a bit.

This is not the type of game where you should go in expecting the type of depth you might find in a game like Tekken, Virtua Fighter or Soul Calibur. Even though it is possible to pull off combos and special moves that would inevitably make it easier to defeat the other dinosaur, I found myself (and my friends) coming to the conclusion that this is strictly a button masher. I made an attempt to learn how to utilize the combos in situations where they would be useful, but I ended up having a better chance of pulling them off by simply pressing all the buttons over and over again at once.

The environments that the battles take place in are designed so that there is some interaction with them, which is more than can be said for most other fighting games. Remember the scene in the original Jurassic Park where the Tyrannosaurus Rex bites through the dead wire while rain pours down on the heroes? That same scene is featured in Warpath, with the exception that the wire is live and electrified. If you (or your opponent) are unfortunate enough to be thrown into the wire you’ll suffer an electrical shock that will surely stop you from going back. In the gas station stage it’s possible to cause some major damage by being tossed onto the gas station itself and having it explode. None of these interactions are especially amazing, but they add to the atmosphere and is something that is usually overlooked in other games.

Unlocking secret characters is a piece of cake, though it is annoying. Simply pick any character and beat the game on any given difficulty level. Sometimes nothing will be opened, but certain dinosaurs will open up secret dinosaurs as well as other modes that weren’t available before. Speaking of modes, Warpath has all the standard ones that most other fighters have, but a neat addition is an “encyclopedia”, where you can check up on information about the dinosaurs that are in the game. Chances are you won’t look at it more than once, but hey, at least you can use it as an excuse to play the game more. “Mom, I’m learning! See!”