When it comes to retro-styled games, especially those that feel like they’re not just making the game look like something from another era, but perhaps control a bit like it too, being a reviewer can be a challenge. On the one hand, you could argue that being true to an experience meant to emulate another time (perhaps like having a modern game using the awful tank-style controls used back in the day), would be important to old fans looking to get a full taste of gaming from an earlier time. On the other hand, you could simply conclude that over the decades controllers have evolved substantially and allow for there to finally be more sensible controls, so ignoring that for the sake of authenticity is dumb. I don’t know whether Acre Crisis was looking to go authentically retro, or simply made some very poor decisions… but either way it’s a game with some issues.

You’ll be playing as a member of an elite squad being sent into the jungle to investigate some strange happenings in an area near an experimental scientific facility. While it was supposed to have been shut down years ago, that doesn’t appear to be the case, so predictably it doesn’t take very long for things to go bad. Waking up in the wreckage, it’ll be up to you to find what members of your team you’re able to, determine what’s going on, and then simply try to survive the best you can. The fact that it quickly becomes clear that you’re dealing with aggressive dinosaurs obviously does not bode well for your chances of making it, but with a machete, limited ammo, and some determination you’ll need to do your best.

If you thought the description of what’s going on, and what you’ll be doing, sounded interesting you’d be right. The only issue would be if the developer somehow dropped the ball in a number of ways, pretty well wrecking the chances of the experience being worthwhile. Unfortunately, in a core area this absolutely applies, and that has to do with the controls for attacking and/or shooting. For whatever reason this is done with the A button, making you take your thumb off the right stick that was allowing you to aim. That’s just mind-bogglingly stupid from a design perspective but the implementation of most elements in the game isn’t much better. When near buildings or structures clipping is rampant, the environmental sounds tend to just be odd, and everything just plays awkwardly as a whole. I’d hoped maybe Arcade mode could at least allow for some fun, but pretty well every time I jumped into it, after the 5 second grace period to start, I was attacked by multiple dinos before being given a chance to do much of anything at all to prepare. At best this would be a test of your patience, but in general the game feels like it was never playtested, or at least no feedback was considered for long before shoving this into the eShop.