It’s hard to believe that Disney’s Dinosaur came from the programming team that brought us Rayman 2, and the same publisher who released Tarzan and the recent Walt Disney World Quest: Magical Racing Tour. Although Ubisoft is listed right next to Disney on the box-art for Dinosaur, a quick look at the credits doesn’t show them doing any real design or programming for the game. In the game, it’s painfully obvious that the brilliant design of characters, levels, and music that usually grace Disney and Ubisoft games, never made it to Dinosaur. Each level is somehow blander than the one before it, and the characters are shapeless polygonal blobs against the landscape. Where one would expect great music, Dinosaur disappoints again with tedious repetitive tunes that barely mask the annoying dialog and silly animal sounds. The best thing going in this department is the brilliant CG movies between levels. If only it were enough to encourage someone to suffer through the boring, ugly gameplay!

Being a licensed game, you can imagine that Dinosaur plays close to the story in the movie. But for those who might not have made it to the theater for this one, you play Aladar, Zini, and Flir cooperatively. Kids will likely have their own favorite from the movie, but Aladar is the obvious hero. He can cover a lot of ground in the game, too, but you’ll need to make the most of Zini’s tree-climbing abilities and Flir’s aerial assault and scouting to win the game.

Somehow, the gameplay feels more suited to the first platform I remember seeing this on, Nintendo’s Game Boy Color. Level-based puzzles and cooperative use of the three characters’ holds sway through the entire game, and each level contains specific objectives needed to progress to the next round. Puzzles tend to be simple, and usually require you to gather items, defeat enemies, and protect any friends or good dinosaurs. And really, that’s all there is... The only other element to mention is a nice Glossary of dinosaurs found in the game, with a slide-show interface and brief descriptions. In the first level or two, you tire quickly of how simple the puzzles are and how weird the cooperative element works. Any character can move alone, or you can combine all three and designate a leader the other two will follow, as you move through levels. Of course, each character has special abilities, but nothing matters too much since the levels aren’t interesting. It’s sad, but in the end I imagine this game’s target audience (young children who loved the movie) is likely to be bored quickly. Unlike Game Boy Color games, where we’re used to simple presentation, the lack of interesting texture in either the characters or the levels, and the repetitive style of completing each level, just doesn’t fly for PlayStation.

The only difficult thing about finishing Dinosaur is working with difficult, awkward controls in one-dimensional levels containing enemies that aren’t challenging and objectives that do little to excite even the youngest gamer’s gray-matter. I’m not kidding; it’s that bad. I really tried to look for more challenge, but it simply wasn’t there.

Dinosaur includes analog control with Dual Shock support, and yet each character moves around sluggishly. Visual cues are often so deceptive that it’s hard to know where you can and cannot go, mostly because poor texture and blocky graphics leave you confused about objects. To their credit, Disney almost always insists that their games include plenty of ‘helper’ features in case gamers get lost or are beaten easily, and Dinosaur is no exception. Both with the ability to save progress in a level by finding rocky markers and by finding characters who give you hints, Dinosaur does salvage a little playability, but just barely.

Controls are kept simple, and learning one character’s moves applies to each of the other two. Aladar moves slowly, but has the strongest attacks, while Zini and Flir move quickly, but lack any real firepower. By collecting lightning bolts, you can store special attacks, useful for strong enemies or multiple attackers. Fruit is the ‘power-up’ item, and you’ll need a lot of it to recharge health and heal sick dinosaurs you find along the way.

I wanted this game to be great, and expected nothing less than excellence from Disney Interactive and Ubisoft. So, my bias may not apply for someone who loved “Dinosaur: The Movie,” and just wants to play her favorite characters on PlayStation. Still, after playing and enjoying more than a few games designed for the younger set, I can’t help but say that Disney’s Dinosaur is less than average. The darker side of license games rears its ugly head...