CARDILLAC DINOSAURO

Gameplay at first seems to be very similar to any good ol' brawler: you got your punch and kick buttons, and you simply mash the attack button until your foes fall before you. I don't know why, but for some reason beating the crap out of the badguys never gets old in a good brawler. But of course, Capcom goes and builds off this basic formula, starting with the characters; there's four to choose from, each having their own status. I've only played as Jack T., who seems to be the main protagonist of the series, and is of course the all around type. But from what I've heard, the status of the other 3 heroes are diverse enough to create their own experience. And it doesn't stop there; of course there is the good ol' power attack pressed by pushing attack and jump (you can also just hold down one button and push the other, that worked for me), which obviously costs you some life if you hit with it, but there's also the running attack: by motioning in the same direction twice your character will dash off in that direction, and with a press of the attack button, they do a running attack (Jack T. does a slide tackle). These running attacks are really handy, and are great for just sliding into a mass of enemies or even destroying multiple barrels that house pick ups and power ups.

Speaking of pick ups, like other brawlers, there's items you can pick up that will either increase your health or your score. Health items are obviously food, and come in all shapes including salads, meat, and even a pack of gum, and in addition to giving you a health boost these items will also boost your score. The second type of pick ups come in the shapes of money, wrist watches, jewelry, and the like, which only boost your score. And boost the score you must, for if you break certain scores you'll gain a one-up. Lastly, there are the weapons, and these come in all sort of flavors. Of course you got your knives, wooden board (which will actually break if you use it too much), and the like, but you also have guns. You get magnums, bazookas (which you actually re-spawn with should you continue the game after losing your lives), Uzis, shotguns and rifles. Each gun has a certain amount of ammo, and of course there are rare ammo pick ups you may find, and should you run out of ammo the gun can actually be used as a throwing weapon, save for the rifle, which is used like a wooden board. Using the guns, especially the SMG, is a good way to keep the badguys back, and even comes complete with little ta ta ta flashing over the gun like in a comic book.

Despite all the various ways you have to keep the badguys down, you will be brought down again and again. You'll loose lives and see the continue screen an awful lot. Does this mean that the game is too hard? To be honest, it's one of the more easier brawlers I've played. It's not too easy, but it's not so hard that you'll be pulling out your hair over the insane times you've been knocked down and had to continue. Fortunately, Cadillacs and Dinosaurs has its own way of helping the player level the playing field. First, every time you come back to life after losing a life a bunch of bombs bombard the screen moments before your character arrives. This not only knocks back the baddies but it also does a fair amount of damage to them. When you continue, you not only get a scene of your character punching the enemy in the face, but you also get the back-to-life-bombardment and a bazooka. I really liked this, and it helps just knock out some bad guys and stop them from mercilessly pounding the crap out of you seconds after you lose a life.

Enemies in the game range from regular thugs to tough muscle men to even the dinos that walk the earth. Most enemies aren't too terribly difficult, except for the fat men, who have that annoying jumping attack that knocks you down. Argh. Some enemies also try to pop in and throw grenades at you, but with good use of jumping and dashing you can dodge their sorry attempts to asplode you and hopefully catch a few baddies in the bombs. The dinos, which turn a shade of red when hostile, will attack anything that happens to be in front of them, be it you or the badguys, which can actually make them useful if you're good at dodging. There is this one bad guy named Walther (or something like that) who looks like the stage one boss and appears in every level. This guy's some what annoying, but is pretty easy to beat down if you know how to use your abilities and weapons. There's really only a couple of bosses that are annoying, mainly the boss in the Garage level (or Episode as the game calls them) because he's pretty fast an he throws boomerang like things (which damages his own men as well).

One of the only few gripes I have about this game is it's length. If you're expecting a quick 20-30 six stage brawl, you're out of luck because this game takes you across eight stages to stop the bad guys in their Dino-abusing scheme. It doesn't really take away much from the game, but first time players will defiantly find themselves wondering when the heck will this game end.

Gameplay score: 9/10 – A good mix of challenge, characters, and items that will keep pretty much anyone happy. Though a couple of the bosses are annoying and that Walther fellow and that spike ball guy get annoying as well, they don't really deduct much from the game play. The fact that your character is aided by a bomb drop before coming back to life helps, as does the bazooka you get after continuing. It just makes the game crazier and more over the top.

Sounds
The sounds in this game are great. Of course there's the gun shooting, the punching noises, the sounds of barrels breaking and the like, the game also has a fair amount of voice work. Characters' grunts, moans, and death noises are pretty clear, and have this neat echo-like effect. Your character also says something when using their desperation move (Jack T. exclaims “Final Uppercut!”), or while picking up food (“That's Good!”, as Jack T. says). The voice overs didn't seem too annoying for me, even when I took Jack T. and made him spam his “Final Uppercut” move.

The music of the game adds to the mood excellently. Though the only tune to get stuck in my head was the “Continue” music, the soundtrack isn't all that forgettable and just has that awesome “Arcade Sound” to it. The music is not at all annoying, or too repetitive, and again sets the mood nicely.

Sound Score: 10/10 – Prepare to shout “FINAL UPPERCUT” or “THAT'S GOOD!” randomly; the sound effects are good, and the music nice. If you're a person who likes emulators, you defiantly won't find yourself shutting off the noise in annoyance.

Graphics
The graphics for this game are pretty nice, and even though they're not done in a total comic book style, they do go nicely along with the comic book like effects such as the word bubbles and the 'SMACK!' and 'POW!' that pop up when you hit people sometimes, and the little ta ta ta and pow that appears over your guns when you shoot them. The characters are designed nicely, and fit into the environment nicely. The graphics are, obviously, are two dimensional, and are drawn nicely. The game is both nice to look at and watch, and greatly help to draw the gamer into the world of the game. Though for some reason, the protagonists don't have faces.
As far as character design is concerned, they did a nice job here. Rather than just rehash the same sprites and make them different colors to signify different strengths of the same enemy, they stay the same all throughout. The only real problem I have is when you blow someone up, they blow up into somewhat generic meaty chunks, complete with flying eyeballs. While they way the execute this is not over the top or gory, it does seem a little out of place, and those darn eyeballs may make it a little gross for some players.
Graphics Score: 9/10 – The graphics are pretty nice for this game, which makes it both great to watch and play. The character sprites aren't rehashed like in other brawlers, and the comic book action words are a nice touch. Though the blood and meaty chunks do seem just a bit out of place sometimes. Especially the meaty chunks and eyeballs.

Setting

C&D is set 450 years in the future after a planet-wide disaster destroyed most of civilization. While details of the disaster were only hinted at in the comics, Chadwick gives a very thorough and plausible-sounding explanation of what happened. (Chadwick will never be accused of slouching on his science.) The world after the apocalypse isn't a desert wasteland, but rather a lush, jungle world where dinosaurs, mammoths, sabertooth cats, terror birds, and every prehistoric animal you can think of live side-by-side. How it got that way is one of the central mysteries of the series.

In tone, the setting is a mix of "The Lost World," Indiana Jones, and "An Inconvenient Truth," with a dash of Mad Max thrown in. Schultz drew his inspiration, and his art style, from many classic comic strips, such as "Tarzan" and "Prince Valiant."

Humanity is scattered into tribes that live on scraps of old world technology. Most of the action takes place around the ruins of New York City, which has become an archipelago of skyscrapers named "The City in the Sea." One of the main characters is Jack Tenrec, an "Old Blood Mechanic" who restores antique Cadillacs and preaches a form of environmentalism so unyielding it would leave Al Gore shell shocked. Sexual tension comes in the form of Hannah Dundee, the voluptuous ambassador (and spy) from the neighboring Wassoon tribe. Add to the mix a dozen colorful characters, from marauding poachers to a muscle-bound female villain who could bully Hulk Hogan into crying uncle.

The conflict between environmental stewardship and technological progress is a central theme of the series, with some characters trying to prevent the ecologic mishaps that led to the earlier disaster and others pushing for mankind to once again reign over nature. A healthy black market exists for dinosaur body parts, and the tribes repeatedly send expeditions into the interior in search of natural resources and old world technology. Those expeditions often don't return.

There also is plenty of political intrigue. Various factions in the City in the Sea vie for control of the tribe while the Wassoon jealously eye the vast hoard of old world relics their neighbor possesses.

And don't forget the Grith, an intelligent race of humanoid dinosaurs whose thought processes are so alien that no humans can understand them... unless they play Scrabble.

Content

C&D may be only 144 pages long but it is a densely packed 144 pages, with two columns of small-type text on most pages.

Black-and-white illustrations coming almost exclusively from the comics make up the bulk of art. Schultz himself evolved as an artist over the course of the series, so some of his early work lacked the attention for detail that later issues possessed. Also, some of his best work appeared in the comic's final issues, which were published after C&D was released. The result is the art in the book is a mixed bag, although much of it is of higher quality than what you would find in most other roleplaying products. A disappointing exception is a bestiary that features several full-page renditions of silly-looking prehistoric animals. These images largely came from Schultz's early work, when he portrayed dinosaurs as tail-dragging behemoths.

As far as written content, Chadwick begins with a history of the disaster and how mankind managed to survive hidden underground. After the routine "what is roleplaying" introduction, he delves right into character creation (discussed below). A lengthy and nicely illustrated equipment section is next, with helpful pricing guidelines for various items. Next comes a section about GMing (here called the "referee") that contains many of the system rules. Rules for combat follow, and after that the relatively short bestiary. Then there is "The Known World," a guide to the world of the Xenozoic and the many characters who inhabit it.

Unfortunately, a rather boring adventure ends the book. The characters are ordered by the ruling council to journey to a research station to solve a mystery and then journey back to report their findings. It's about as prosaic as it sounds.

While the adventure itself is not up to snuff, much of the content is. Chadwick goes into great detail about equipping and launching expeditions, traveling overland, keeping equipment in tiptop shape, and encountering creatures in the wilderness. Yes, C&D makes much use of random encounter tables, but here they're put to good use given this is a setting heavy on wilderness exploration.

There also are rules for creating your own tribe as well as a nifty table that allows GMs -- I mean, referees -- to randomly generate NPC motivations using a deck of poker cards.

While most rules are straight forward, at times Chadwick goes overboard on emphasizing planning and resource management. C&D, in my mind, really is a story-driven setting with its roots in adventure literature, but Chadwick aims for a simulationist approach: He seems to think that roleplaying in the fantasy world of the Xenozoic should be treated as realistically as exploring the American frontier of the 18th century. My guess is most players will just want to fight dinosaurs and uncover pre-cataclysm secrets, not spend a lot of time figuring out how much food and equipment they will need on their expedition.

System

C&D uses only two types of dice: d6s and d10s. The system at first seems blissfully simple, but once you get into the details of combat, it bogs down.

Characters have six attributes: Strength, Constitution, Agility, Education, Charisma, and Intelligence. All work pretty much as you expect them to. In addition, there are a number of skills linked to each attribute. Attribute levels are determined by rolling dice for random numbers or by assigning points. Skill levels are determined by choosing a background profession and by assigning bonus points to those skills you want to beef up.

Each attribute and skill is ranked from 1 to 10. A player must roll equal to or less than the governing attribute or skill on a d10 for an action to be successful. Say your character needs to repair a car and has a mechanic skill of 5. He or she must roll 5 or less to succeed. Some tasks require characters to use two skills or attributes, so they add the two together, divide by half, and then round down to get the target number.

Tasks can be easy, average, or hard. An easy task is twice the governing attribute or skill level. An average task is equal to the level. A hard task is half the level, rounded down. I rather like the simplicity of assigning difficulty, finding it infinitely more user-friendly for referees than picking arbitrary target numbers.

Simple is not how I would describe combat.

Combat basically uses the same task resolution rules as above. However, there are so many situation-specific rules for attacks, damage, and healing that require you to add, subtract, multiply, divide, or get the square root that they quickly become overwhelming. Keeping track of damage is a headache, given different body parts have different hit point values. Then there is a funky initiative system allowing some characters to take from two to five times the number of actions as others in a single turn, which really unbalances gameplay.

You also can be required to roll a lot of dice, particularly if you're using automatic weapons. One example given in the book has a character rolling 25 d6s in a single turn!

The combat system really defeats the overall pulp tone of the setting. Again, C&D is about two-fisted adventure, gun fights, and facing prehistoric monsters. Combat should be quick and light, allowing players to move from one scene to the other in relatively rapid succession. But the rules system here is unnecessarily complex and, at least when involving automatic weapons, potentially very deadly. It may be a great system for a gritty military game (such as Twilight: 2000), but here it's just out of place.

Conclusions

I'm a big fan of the comics, so I was happy as a Domo-kun chasing a kitten to find a roleplaying game based on them. I even bought two copies of the book. (They're pretty cheap these days.) I don't consider my money wasted because there is a wealth of information about the Xenozoic world, plus several helpful tables, maps, and rules for exploring that world. But it all comes attached to a combat system I really don't want to play and isn't a good fit for the types of adventures the setting lends itself to.

My suggestion is C&D is best used for background for building your own Xenozoic adventures using a pulp-friendly system. The first to comes to mind is Savage Worlds. (And given a "Space: 1889" campaign is in the works for the SW system, is there any possibility Pinnacle will come out with its own C&D rulebook in the future, provided it gets the publishing rights?) Another good fit would be the Ubiquity system that powers Hollow Earth Expedition. Heck, move HEX up 500 years, tweak some of the character classes and weapons, and get rid of the hollow earth concept, and you essentially have C&D.

Story Score: 10/10 – While the story of Cadillacs and Dinosaurs is like any ol' arcade game, the uniqueness of what it is based on makes it stand out a little. This isn't just some wanna be Double Dragon or Final Fight game...this has it's own storyline and setting in the world of arcade games, and boy is it pretty unique and awesome.

FINAL SCORE: 10/10
Now I know all through this review I said the game is pretty awesome, and as honest as I can be as a fun seeking gamer, it is pretty awesome. You got a game with a unique concept mixed in with an improved Final Fight stye game play, and all held together with that Capcom charm. If you like Capcom, Final Fight, beat 'em up games, Old-School 2D games, or any combination of the three, Cadillacs and Dinosaurs is sure to entertain you and your friends. Defiant recommend, so if you see it, give it a try, and get ready to rock a world dominated by Cadillacs and Dinosaurs!