Video Game / Primal Carnage

Primal Carnage is an Asymmetric Multiplayer game developed by Lukewarm Media, an independent company. The game's premise centers on a team of mercenaries being sent to an island to correct an experiment gone wrong. This takes the form of shooting up some dinosaurs. In the game, you get to play as several types of dinosaurs and pterosaurs. The basic gameplay can be described as a mix of Left 4 Dead's Versus Mode and Team Fortress 2, and follows many of the same principles, but with dinosaurs. Besides, who doesn't want to play as a big red Tyrannosaurus rex chomping down on overconfident humans?

“The Island”, a strange hidden world where man has taken the ultimate leap in science, where the long lost wonders of the distant past have been recreated, wonders which walk hand in hand with atrocities of the darkest nature. At present the facilities lie destroyed and abandoned, all the experiments have ceased, the buildings empty, the screams... silenced. The most meticulous of plans could not prepare them for the horrors they set upon themselves, horrors now running free across The Island.

The humans must reclaim the island they once owned, and destroy the creations that have turned upon them. But for the dinosaurs, the island is now their home, and they will not allow this to happen so easily. Two deadly predators from opposite ends of Earth's history clash on a tropical paradise. The question is: which one will come out on top? Well, that's up for you to decide...

The official site can be found here. Development was largely dependent on donations for some time, and those were encouraged with inside peeks. (Donations have now been closed, however.)

A sequel, Primal Carnage: Extinction, was launched in late 2014 and left Early Access in mid-2015. The game is more or less an "upgrade" of the original game, with more features, playable dinosaurs, and game modes added. A prequel spin-off single-player game, called Genesis, was announced a couple of years earlier, but has since been put on hold, most likely to focus on developing Extinction.

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Contains examples of:

• Abandoned Area: All the maps take place in and around the decaying, abandoned Phoenix International facilities, including shipyards, an oil well derelict, the airbase, research facilities, vehicle stations, a lumber mill, giant aviaries, and weather monitoring outposts.
• Abandoned Laboratory: Several maps are set in or around such regions, in particular the Waterlogged arena, which is set in a gargantuan underwater facility containing numerous dinosaurs in frozen stasis.
• Acid Attack: The Cryolophosaurus has very similar attacks to the Spitter of Left 4 Dead 2. It can lob acid projectiles from great distances; these blind and do damage if they hit a human, but they also create pools of acid which do damage over time if humans stand in it. If a human is killed by getting spat on or stepping in acid, they get reduced to a glowing green skeleton.
• Acid Pool:
  • The Transfer map has a few giant vats of acid scattered around the map. These are normally inaccessible, but the Pteranodon is able to pick up humans and drop them into the vats, which, obviously enough, is instant death.
  • As well as spraying humans directly, the Cryolophosaurus can place down temporary pools of neon green acid (which do damage over time to anyone that steps in them) to scatter groups of humans and do scratch damage as they're focusing on attacking other dinosaur players.
• Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: Many of the alternate skins for the various dinosaur and pterosaur species are extremely vivid and garish, some of which even give them bioluminescence.
• Animals Not to Scale:
  • The Tyrannosaurus is portrayed as being about a third larger in dimensions than the real animal. One of the loading screens has a journal entry with one of the mercenaries expressing incredulity at intentionally making the king of the dinosaurs even more monstrous. The Spinosaurus is also a bit larger than the real animal, at just over eighteen metres rather than around fifteen metres.
  • Both Spitter class dinosaurs, the Dilophosaurus and Cryolophosaurus are much smaller than they should be. The Dilophosaurus is about half the size (so not quite as extreme as Jurassic Park), while Cryolophosaurus is only about a third as big.
  • The Pteranodon's wingspan is only about two-thirds the width of the real animal (specifically the male), but both it and the Tupandactylus are portrayed with much broader wing membranes than probably would have existed in real life.
  • The Oviraptor is shown as being roughly human-sized, but the real animal was only about the size of a medium dog, too small to have been a real threat to an adult person. However, the closely related Citipati, whose remains were initially identified as those of Oviraptor, actually was human-sized and many media depictions of Oviraptor are actually based on it.
  • One of the eatable carcasses in the Waterlogged map is an elasmosaur chained to a platform. However, it's absurdly large, far larger than even the Spinosaurus, making it likely three or four times bigger than the largest known plesiosaurs in real life.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • When a player has very low HP, the game will highlight all health stations on the map as glowing red outlines which are visible through walls (the health kits for humans, the carcasses for dinosaurs). The same occurs if the player is low on ammunition; the game will highlight all the item pickups on the map in glowing gold outlines.
  • Because the game only allows one, or at the most, two (if it's a particularly big match) Tyrant players on the battlefield at the same time, the player class selection menu does not allow someone who was a Tyrant play them twice in a row so other players can have a turn.
  • Commando players can see when other players are at low health via red outlines, allowing them to prioritize placing down health regeneration stations (because they disappear after several moments).
• Armor-Piercing Attack: Certain weapons, such as the Scientist's PX Assault Cannon, will ignore the armoured regions of certain dinosaurs, including the otherwise bulletproof skull of the Pachycephalosaurus.
• Artistic License – Paleontology:
  • This isn't meant to be scientifically accurate, of course, but the game partially subverts the trope...
  • On the one wing, the Pteranodon are naked, have pointed wingtips (although they're more rounded in the final model), grasping feet, are a bit misproportioned (more so in their prototype model), have wings that fold incorrectly (similar to the pterosaurs from the Walking with Dinosaurs series), and may be slightly too small, but on the other wing, they are quadrupedal and toothless, and vault from the ground using their wings like real pterosaurs. This is addressed by the developers in forum posts, which state that the Pteranodons had their pycnofibres removed for "cosmetic reasons", although the "Alpha Pteranodon" skin has pycnofibres. Like the feathers on the raptors, there is also the issue that the early builds had trouble with complex textures so it took awhile to get anything but smooth skin finished. The Pteranodon can also pick up humans, which the real animal definitely couldn't do.
  • The developers have invented a fictional species called Novaraptor ("New thief"), created in-universe through genetic engineering. They were still featherless and had anatomically impossible hands, but the developers fixed the hands after the community spoke out, and Pre-Order Bonus skin is accurately feathered◊. Tyrannosaurus, Spinosaurus, and Dilophosaurus got their hands fixed as well, and this is passed on to the other theropods. Additionally, later skins on both the Novaraptor and Oviraptor very frequently have full feathers.
    • Oviraptor is an alternate "predator" dinosaur with the same abilities as the Novaraptor. It's perfectly anatomically correct (aside from being fairly oversized), but the real Oviraptor probably wasn't quite so fast of a runner, and certainly not as deadly.
  • Tyrannosaurus rex: For the most part it's okay, what with the horizontal body posture and all that, but a few minor details leave, er, something to be desired. It's notably about twice the size of a real T. rex, has a Jurassic Park-esque boxy head and has armored, crocodile-like scales, rather than the tiny, pebbly scales of the real animal (this is Hand Waved as being genetic modification).
  • The Dilophosaurus is a Jurassic Park-esque venom spitter, though without the neck frill. Word of God says it's because they were genetically engineered to be venomous. Unlike most Dilophosaurus in media, this one is nearly to scale to the real animal, and not the one from Jurassic Park.
    • Cryolophosaurus has the same Hand Waved venom spit, but is also fairly slimmer than the real animal, with a narrower head. Both the Cryolophosaurus and Dilophosaurus are depicted with raptor-like feathers in some of their skins, but they were both probably too primitive to have anything more than emu-like filaments.
  • Averted with the Carnotaurus, which has the correct forelimbs (that is to say, no fingers and practically no arm movement at all.) and is depicted as a very fast hunter with a hard time turning, as according to recent studies.
  • Spinosaurus for the most part looks pretty decent, but it spends mostly on land in the game, though a bone isotope analysis of Spinosauridae members indicates this was only partially the case. However, in an earlier teaser it was depicted as an adept swimmer. Recent studies have suggested that the limb proportions of Spinosaurus was much more unusual than previously thought, but the game's model was finished years prior to this discovery. However, the developers confirmed they might alter the current model and make a new skin showing the new anatomical features.
• Ascended Extra: Both the Cryolophosaurus and Tupandactylus were skins in the original game (of Dilophosaurus and Pteranodon, respectively). The Mission-Pack Sequel Extinction made the two into completely separate characters, although with mostly similar play-styles.
• Ascended to Carnivorism: The dinosaurs are able to heal by eating the meat of carcasses strewn around the map... even the Pachycephalosaurus (although it's been hypothesized that it may have been somewhat omnivorous). The lore states that these Pachycephalosaurus were genetically modified to be able to subsist partly on meat.
• Asymmetric Multiplayer: A team of vicious dinosaurs versus a team of toughened mercenaries. The humans have a variety of interchangeable guns and other weapons, while dinosaurs attack with teeth, fangs, and other natural killing tools.
• Attack Its Weak Point: In most cases, shooting the head does the most damage to the dinosaurs, but some have armoured portions of their body that are more resistant against damage, such as the Ceratosaurus and Pachycephalosaurus, which have skulls that resist incoming bullets (useful because they attack mostly by ramming headfirst), but have less defended flanks and backsides.
• Aura Vision: The Oviraptor's special ability allows it to see the outlines of all humans through walls for several seconds. Humans with low health will be highlighted with red outlines, allowing the Fragile Speedster dinosaur to prioritize those which are already weakened.
• Ax-Crazy: The Pyromaniac comes across in his profile to be rather disturbing, to say the least.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: All the dinosaur-hunting mercenaries have a tuxedo skin.
• Bad Vibrations: As another obvious Jurassic Park sendup, Tyrant class dinosaurs have thunderous footsteps which are audible from some distance. These get louder and cause the screen to slightly shake when they're closer to alert players to their approach.
• Battle in the Rain: The Airbase map is set during a raging thunderstorm at night, although the moon peaks through the clouds so the players are still able to see.
• Beak Attack: The primary attack of both the Pteranodon and Tupandactylus is to spear humans with their beaks, which they can do both in the air and on the ground. The Tupandactylus in particular is basically a flying Charger, as it's able to ram and knock away multiple targets at once.
• Bear Trap: The Trapper can place down bear traps which will do significant damage to any dinosaur that runs off them, and pin smaller dinosaurs to the ground, however, several dinosaurs can disable these traps, such as the Cryolophosaurus or Dilophosaurus spitting on them, or the Acrocanthosaurus' stomp attack.
• The Berserker: The Carnotaurus, since it is very fast and hits really hard, but lacks resilience.
• Bioweapon Beast: There's some indication in lore snippets to suggest the dinosaurs were originally created and genetically enhanced for less-than altruistic reasons, augmenting them with unnatural abilities and greatly increased strength and ferocity than anything they should normally have.
• Blade Spam: The Novaraptor and Oviraptor's primary attack is a rapid flurry of slashes and bites which, unlike most other dinosaurs, can be performed while running. The Novaraptor also has a "Frenzy" ability that greatly increases the speed and strength of this attack for several seconds as well.
• Blocking Stops All Damage: Tyrant class dinosaurs and the Pachycephalosaurus have a "brace" ability which allows them to take an 80% reduction in damage (however, the ability drains stamina and you can't run or attack while it's in use). How exactly tensing up your body turns bullets into scratch damage isn't explained, but that's probably for the best.
• Boom, Headshot!: As you might expect, hitting the dinosaurs in the head does the greatest possible damage in most cases. Except for some dinosaurs with armoured skulls like the Ceratosaurus, which takes reduced damage, or the Pachycephalosaurus, which deflects bullets.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • All the humans, with the exception of the Trapper, have the option to pick an MK pistol as their secondary weapon. It has mediocre damage and range, but its firing speed is good and it doesn't have any special gimmicks to take into account.
  • The Scientist's default sniper rifle. It has decent rate of fire and clip size, and has good damage. The alternate rifles are one which pierces armour and does massive damage, but it has a smaller clip and abysmal firing rate, and a gimmicky poison-dart rifle which does only moderate damage at first, but stacks higher and higher damage for every hit made on the same target, culminating in a 100% fatality on the eighth shot, but as you might imagine getting eight hits in a row on the same target in rapid succession is rather difficult.
• Boss Warning Siren: When the humans capture the last checkpoint in "Get to the Chopper", a distant Tyrannosaurus roar will sound out to alert everyone that Tyrant class dinosaurs are now available in play.
• Bottomless Pits: Several maps are located on top of plateaus bordered by impassible cliffs. These maps tend to give a slight advantage to Pteranodon players. Rather than needing to lift humans to a fatal height, they can just toss them off a cliff to kill them. Interestingly, if a pterosaur player flies too low beyond the cliff, they'll rapidly take damage until they die or ascend back to the playable area.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Most of the information for the individual mercenaries states each has some character flaw which Phoenix International finds questionable, but they hire them anyway because they're all the best at what they do.
  • The Pathfinder is stated to be a bit of a wild card because he lives out in the wilderness most of the time and is outright disdainful of the Phoenix International corporation.
  • The Pyromanic is noted to have violent tendencies, an unhealthy obsession with fire, and is more than a bit of an alcoholic.
  • The Trapper is noted to be an internationally wanted criminal for animal trafficking, poaching, and other uncountable offences.
  • The Commando is noted to be a lone wolf loose cannon who went rogue during a military operation during his past as a soldier in the Middle East.
  • The Scientist is a downplayed example. It's mentioned that she's had numerous clashes with authority in the past, but what exactly is not explained.
• Camera Perspective Switch: The humans are played from a first-person perspective, the dinosaurs are played from third-person. If a human is being mauled, kidnapped, or eaten by a dinosaur it also swaps to a third-person perspective.
• Capture the Flag: There's a game mode called Capture the Egg, which functions as a modified version of Capture the Flag. Humans are tasked with retrieving dinosaur eggs while dinosaurs have to defend their nests.
• Carnivorous Healing Factor: The dinosaurs heal a small amount of health whenever they successfully perform a bite attack on a human (implying they're ripping chunks of flesh out). One of the main gimmicks of the Tyrant class dinosaurs is that they One-Hit Kill humans by eating them, regenerating a large portion of their health in the process.
• Cast from Stamina: Several dinosaur attacks require stamina to use, as does the Tyrants' "brace" ability, which greatly reduces all incoming damage but drains your stamina while active.
• Chained by Fashion: Most of the dinosaurs have shackle or chain cosmetic clothing items, meant to show how they've escaped from captivity. These have special chain clattering sound effects accompanying them.
• Chainsaw Good: The Pyromaniac has a "flamesaw" that's part flamethrower and part, well...
• Character Class System: Both humans and dinosaur characters are based around this style of gameplay, although it differs slightly. There are only five human characters, but all of them have weapons and items that are interchangeable before spawning. There are twelve different selectable dinosaur classes, but their abilities cannot be changed; however, there are five "subclasses" which the twelve species are separated into.
  • "Tyrant" class dinosaurs are Mighty Glaciers with massive health pools, the ability to One-Hit Kill humans by stomping on them or eating them, and a roar that is able to empower their fellow dinosaurs for short periods. There can only be a maximum of two of them at once.
  • "Bruiser" class dinosaurs are moderately durable, have armoured regions of their bodies, and share the ability to passively bulldoze humans by running into them at high speeds.
  • "Predator" class dinosaurs are fast, agile, and vicious, with snapping and biting attacks that can be performed while running. They have to ability to perform a "pounce" attack that pins a human to the ground while they're mauled to death.
  • "Spitter" class dinosaurs are fast, agile, and physically weak, but have the ability to lob toxic projectiles from great distances, and can quickly replenish their stamina bar with their roar.
  • "Flyer" class dinosaurs (or technically, pterosaurs) have the ability to fly unlimitedly, possess a peck attack that can be performed in midair, and can mark humans on the map (making them visible to all other dinosaurs).
• Checkpoint: The Get to the Chopper gamemode requires the humans to first capture a sequence of outposts within a time limit before they get access to the helipad. Successfully capturing an outpost turns that into the new spawn point for the human team.
• Cherry Tapping: There's an achievement for killing a Tyrant using a pistol (this can also be done with the Commando's Desert Eagle, which does much more damage than the standard MK, at the expense of firing speed).
• Close-Range Combatant: The Pyromaniac and the Pathfinder are most much more effective at dealing with dinosaurs close up, as they wield a shotgun and flamethrower respectively (although the Pyromaniac can also swap out his flamethrower chainsaw for a shotgun-grenade launcher combo). Both also have flares that blind dinosaurs when they get too close.
• Combat Medic:
  • The Commando is able to drop first-aid kits on the ground which have an area-of-effect healing aura, healing a small amount per second to anyone who stands near or on it; the effect stacks if it overlaps with another health kit on the ground. He can also choose to drop ammo refills too, but as you might imagine, an overwhelming number of Commando players choose the health kit over it.
  • The Scientist has a tranquilizer dart gun which can be used offensively against dinosaurs, but can also heal other humans a small amount of health if shot by it and provides them with a temporary durability buff.
• Comeback Mechanic: If the humans capture the last checkpoint in Get to the Chopper, the dinosaur team unlocks the use of the Tyrant class, which was otherwise restricted beforehand in this game mode.
• Competitive Balance: All the dinosaurs have various abilities, strengths and weaknesses that give them advantages and disadvantages.
  • The Spinosaurus has the most health of the Tyrants, but it's staggeringly slow, its huge size makes it a big target, and it has no way to defend itself from behind. The Acrocanthosaurus is faster and has a powerful Area of Effect attack, but's smaller and has much less health than the other Tyrants. The Tyrannosaurus is between the two in terms of health and mobility.
  • Of the Bruiser class dinosaurs, the Carnotaurus has moderate health and does the most damage when ramming, but its turning speed is bad and its actual attacks are weak. The Ceratosaurus is much slower, but it has armoured skin, more health, and its much better at killing humans by slashing and biting at close-quarters. The Pachycephalosaurus has by far the least amount of health, but it's the fastest and most agile, and has an armoured skull able to deflect most bullets.
  • Compared to the Novaraptor, the Oviraptor has much less health, but even greater speed, pounce strength, and stamina. However, the Novaraptor's slashing attack is much stronger and can be enhanced further with its "Frenzy" ability, while the Oviraptor only gets a non-offensive ability (allowing it to see the outlines of humans and whether they have low health).
  • The Cryolophosaurus has a useful Area of Effect attack allowing them to place down pools of acid, but the Dilophosaurus has a blinding spit, slightly more health, and a venomous bite that drains health. The Cryolophosaurus tends to be more useful for crowd control, while the Dilophosaurus is better at killing individual targets.
  • The Pteranodon has the ability to potentially kill humans in a single attack by dropping them to their deaths, but its alternate peck attack is relatively weak and its ability doesn't grant it any offensive buff. The Tupandactylus cannot pick people up, but it has more health, its attacks are much stronger, it has an Area of Effect dive-bomb to hit multiple foes at once, and its ability is blatantly better than that of the Pteranodon (the Pteranodon only marks humans, while the Tupandactylus does that and gets a stamina boost).
  • To a lesser extent, this is how the humans are set up. The Commando has a powerful, rapid-fire weapon, but its aim is poor, making it more useful against bigger dinosaurs and much less effective at hitting small ones. The Pathfinder has a shotgun and machete that does massive damage at close precision range, but terrible damage further out. The Scientist has a long-range sniper rifle that does high damage at any range (making it the natural enemy of pterosaurs), but few good defences for close-quarters combat. The Pyromaniac has weapons which are strong at close range and can take out multiple targets at once, but their range is extremely limited. The Trapper has guns that do mediocre damage, but his net-gun is capable of instantly incapacitating small dinosaurs.
• Cooldown Manipulation: All playable characters have stamina bars which drain when running, jumping, or, in the case of the dinosaurs, when performing secondary attacks. When emptied, characters are unable to perform these actions, but the bar will quickly refill by itself. However, some dinosaurs can speed this up via their roar abilities.
  • The Dilophosaurus and Cryolophosaurus can both instantly refill their stamina meters with their roar (explained canonically as them releasing built-up toxic gases inside their bodies), which is vital because their spit attacks rely on stamina.
  • The Tupandactylus can replenish some of its stamina with its screech as well as mark nearby humans (which makes them visible for several seconds to all dinosaur team mates). This helps to lead up for an attack, especially the powerful dive-bomb, which uses up a large chunk of stamina.
  • The Ceratosaurus has relatively low stamina, but its "leech" ability allows it to "steal" stamina from its targets by simply attacking them. This makes it harder for enemy humans to escape while allowing the Ceratosaurus to attack for longer.
• Container Maze: Many of the maps are littered with stacks of Phoenix International branded shipping containers that provide cover and divide the various regions of the map. In the Get to the Chopper game mode, these block off areas of the modified maps so that it's only possible for players to go in a one-way route.
• Convection, Schmonvection: There are multiple rock pathways across the river of molten lava that bisects the Volcano map. Despite the fact they are only a few inches above the flowing superheated rock, it does not do any damage unless you actually touch the lava (which is instant death).
• Cool Versus Awesome: The entire premise is playing as either a band of ragtag, battle-hardened mercenaries with ridiculously cool weapons, or genetically enhanced killer dinosaurs, in a battle to the death.
• Corridor Cubbyhole Run: In the Contingency map, players can periodically activate a containment failure protocol, which warns all people inside the atrium to seek shelter as tesla coils around the rim charge up, and any individuals within the atrium must immediately seek shelter. After that, there's about a minute before they let out a massive electrical pulse that will instantly kill everyone still inside the dome's interior.
• Cosmetic Award: Playing the game and completing challenges gradually unlocks unique skins, taunts, sprays, mutations, and clothing items for humans and dinosaurs. Although they can radically change the appearance of your characters, including some dinosaur skins and mutations which can change them into totally different species (such as Spinosaurus turning into Therizinosaurus or Deinocheirus), they have no effects on the character's attributes.
• Critical Hit: It's possible for one of your attacks to randomly do over three times more damage than normal (which it will briefly notify you with a "critical hit" notification).
• Crowbar Combatant: The Pathfinder can swap out his machete with a crowbar instead.
• Cryo-Prison: There are numerous dinosaurs frozen in refrigerated stasis pods visible in the Waterlogged and Borealis maps, as well as one mosasaur, although their purpose in canon is not made clear.
• Damage Over Time: The Dilophosaurus' venomous bite inflicts poisoning that does scratch damage, the acid pools of the Cryolophosaurus do damage for as long as humans stand in it, and the humans' incendiary weapons, poison darts, and explosives do burning damage.
• Damage-Sponge Boss: The Tyrant class dinosaurs have far and away the most health of anything in the game, making it nearly impossible for one human player alone, or even two together, to kill one, simply because it's possible to pump an entire clip into one point blank and not kill it. This issue is compounded upon by the fact the Tyrants regain a chunk of their health by eating humans.
• Damage Reduction: Tyrant class dinosaurs and the Pachycephalosaurus have the ability to "brace", allowing them to take greatly reduced damage (80% reduction). However, they can't attack or run while bracing and the ability drains stamina for as long as it's active (to prevent players from bracing nearly indefinitely).
• Deadly Gas: One of the Scientist's secondary items are gas mines which release a toxic cloud that both damages and drains the stamina of any dinosaur that sets them off.
• Deadly Lunge: The Novaraptor and Oviraptor have a pounce attack that is very similar to that of the Hunter in Left 4 Dead. The attack will kill any pinned human unless another human interrupts the attack by damaging the dinosaur, or if the dinosaur's stamina runs out in the middle of the attack.
• Death Flight: Because they're extremely slow and cumbersome on the ground, the Pteranodon's primary method of attack is to quickly swoop down, grab a human, and either fly up and drop them from a lethal height, or toss them off a cliff. However, the Pteranodon will automatically drop the human if another player shoots and hits them.
• Death from Above: If the Pteranodon grabs and drops the Pyromaniac from a fatal height, he will explode on impact. This can actually kill people down below if he falls on them.
• Death Is Gray: When a player has critically low health, the colour of the game will become desaturated (with the exception of health stations, which become highlighted with bright red outlines through walls).
• Death Mountain: The Forest Chasm maps (with both a green and snowy variant) are set high in the cliffs, with one particularly large gorge that cuts the map in two and several bridges that connect the two regions.
• Death or Glory Attack: The Novaraptor's roar ability "Frenzy", greatly enhances its attack speed and strength for a few moments, but completely drains its stamina, meaning it can much more easily slaughter a group of humans clustered together, but it can no longer run away.
• Difficult, but Awesome: The Pteranodon' has relatively low health and is very slow on the ground, but it has a grab attack that lets it pull humans up into the air and drop them to their deaths. This is a One-Hit Kill move if done right, but it's far easier said than done; the Pteranodon has to swoop right down to the ground, pick out an individual human with the grab, and pull them up to a fatal height (or above a cliff) without being shot even once, as being damaged will cause the player to drop their quarry prematurely.
• Dinosaurs Are Dragons: Several of the cosmetic mutations obtainable for some dinosaurs modify their appearance to intentionally look more draconic.
• Domed Hometown: Multiple different maps are set in and/or around massive domed aviaries (presumably used for keeping pterosaurs).
• Do Not Run with a Gun: Human characters cannot sprint and shoot at the same time. Most dinosaurs also can't run and attack at the same time, but it varies between species (Bruisers can attack by running, for example).
• Double-Edged Buff: The Novaraptor's roar greatly increases its attack speed and strength for several seconds, but at the cost of completely depleting its stamina, preventing it from running or jumping for a few seconds, making it harder to escape if the attack fails.
• Drinking on Duty: The Pyromaniac's flavour text states that he's much more cooperative and open to teamwork if he's continuously filled with alcohol (this does not factor into gameplay, but he had to have gotten all those Molotov cocktail bottles somewhere...).
• Easter Egg:
  • There's an eatable carcass of a Liopleurodon on the Waterlogged map (which looks exactly like its appearance in Walking with Dinosaurs, minus the massive size), but it's tucked away far below the rest of the map. This is the only place in the entire game where it appears.
  • The computer screens on the Borealis map show a list of dinosaurs in the game... plus a sparse mention of the Triceratops, which is not in the game, but was considered as a character repeatedly in development.
  • There are fifteen boxes of dinosaur-themed cereal hidden around the various maps; finding all fifteen unlocks the achievement "Primal Cornage".
  • In one of the maps, there's a secret room on the edge of the arena that is only accessible with the Dilophosaurus. Finding it unlocks an achievement.
  • It is actually possible to find the Pathfinder's dog in-game (something that was planned as a gameplay mechanic but ended up scrapped in early development).
• Eating the Enemy: The Tyrant class dinosaurs' main attack is a bite that will eat any human caught by it; this is a near-instant One-Hit Kill attack that also allows the Tyrant to regain a portion of their health.
• Energy Absorption: The Ceratosaurus' roar ability "Stamina Drain" depletes the stamina of any enemy bitten while active and adds it to the stamina of the Ceratosaurus.
• Escaped from the Lab: From what little lore is available, the dinosaurs seem to have been grown (or at least stored) in chambers filled with fluid-filled vats rather than being hatched from eggs. At some point, the dinosaurs eventually escaped from their containment, turned against their creators, and went feral in the tropical environment.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": All the humans are listed merely by their profession, although they all have names which are referenced in the loading screens and the Flavor Text for the skins.
• Excuse Plot: There's a very vague backstory given about why there are genetically enhanced dinosaurs running loose and why there's now a group of mercenaries sent in to exterminate them, but the game doesn't have a story mode, so none of it factors into the gameplay.
• Expy:
  • Many of the dinosaurs (and pterosaurs) are very similar to the Special Infected from Left 4 Dead. The Novaraptor is agile and can pin foes down like the Hunter, the Dilophosaurus has a spit that screws up vision like the Boomer, while the Cryolophosaurus sprays acid like the Spitter, the Carnotaurus rams foes like the Charger, the Pteranodon can grab players and force them to move against their will/drop them into something nasty like the Jockey, and the Tyrannosaurus is big, strong and deadly like the Tank.
  • The Human team has many similarities to the Mercs from Team Fortress 2, but condensed (since there are less of them). The Pyromanic is a mix of the Pyro and the Demoman (due to his use of both incendiaries and explosives, and being a Violent Glaswegian), the Scientist is the Sniper and Medic (main weapon is sniper rifle, also has items to encumber foes, and can heal allies), the Commando is the Heavy with some bit of Soldier (high damage dealer with rapid-fire weapon, but able to shoot off a long-range explosive), the Trapper is the Scout mixed with the Spy (fast with small low-damage firearms, but can one-shot kill enemies with a knife), and the Pathfinder is similar to the Soldier (damage dealer that uses a shotgun).
• Falling Damage: Jumping off a too-high ledge will cause some damage, depending on high the fall was. This is especially true with large dinosaurs, which take proportionately greater damage even from moderate heights. The Pteranodon can also kill humans by exploiting fall damage, as its secondary attack allows it to pick them up and drop them from a fatal height.
• Feathered Fiend: The Oviraptor is portrayed as accurately feathered, while the Novaraptor has a feathered variant. Both are vicious predators easily capable of killing humans in a single attack. Interestingly, one of the Oviraptor's rare skins turns it into an emu, of all things. Several other dinosaurs also have feathered skins, and, as skins are purely cosmetic, it doesn't affect their killing abilities one bit.
• Fire-Breathing Weapon: The Pyromaniac's main weapon is, rather obviously, a flamethrower. It's very good at tackling multiple targets at close range, but not those further away. Also, there's a chainsaw attached to the bottom.
• Foe-Tossing Charge: The Bruiser class dinosaurs (Carnotaurus, Ceratosaurus, and Pachycephalosaurus) all have this as their signature attack; rather than needing to press an attack button, they can passively bowl over humans by running into them, which deals high damage and sends them flying.
• Forest of Perpetual Autumn: The Desertion Post map is the only one in autumn red and orange tree colours, which is strange because most of the rest of the map seems to take place on a tropical island, or take place on a snowy mountain peak.
• Fossil Revival: The backstory of the game has all manner of prehistoric animals brought back from extinction via genetic engineering for reasons unknown. It's mostly just an Excuse Plot for humans versus dinosaurs, however.
• Fragile Speedster: The Oviraptor is even faster than the Novaraptor, but also frailer. The pterosaurs also (obviously) have the greatest mobility of any characters, but as flying animals, they don't have much health and it doesn't take many shots to kill them.
• Friendly Fireproof: Each team can only hurt members of the other team, even in the case of things that should logically damage everyone equally, like pools of fire and acid. Players on the same team will also phase right through each other to avoid bumping into one another or blocking each others' paths.
• Friendly Sniper: The Scientist. Her backstory notes that she grew up around animals, studied in fields of zoology and palaeontology, and worked as a big game warden in Botswana before she was hired by Phoenix International to take on even bigger game...
• Gathering Steam:
  • The Scientist's poison-dart sniper rifle works like this. It initially only does mediocre damage, but each shot delivered shortly after the other does slightly more damage until the dose is lethal. Actually getting there is much easier said than done: you need to get eight shots (the equivalent of an entire clip) into one target within a few seconds of the previous shot for it to inject a 100% fatal dose.
  • A more conventional example are the Bruiser class dinosaurs, which can attack by ramming the humans. However, the attack only works after they've built up some speed and only does maximum damage after reaching top speed.
• Genetic Engineering Is the New Nuke: The dinosaurs were genetically modified to be more badass than their real-life counterparts.
• The Ghost: Triceratops and Kaprosuchus are both referenced in different community-made maps, but neither animal appears anywhere in the game (not even as carcasses). This is a reference to the fact both species are supposedly "upcoming" but little update has been made on their status in years. There is also a hidden poster referencing Quetzalcoatlus as the "alpha" pterosaur in one of the maps.
• Giant Equals Invincible: The Tyrants are by far the largest and most durable of all the dinosaur classes, with 3000 or more HP (for comparison, a human has only 150 HP and the grenade launcher does a maximum of 500 damage), which it can regenerate by eating humans. It usually requires four or more team mates firing on one together to kill it.
• Giant Flyer: Pteranodon and Tupandactylus, both large enough to carry off humans and drop them to their deaths.
• Glass Cannon:
  • The Scientist can use her sniper rifle to dish out heavy damage to dinosaurs at long ranges, but seeing as her melee weapon is the weakest of all, and her sniper rifle is a liability at closer ranges, she will get swamped quickly.
  • The Cryolophosaurus is even more frail than the Dilophosaurus, but is significantly more deadly, swapping blinding venom for an acidic, burning spit.
  • The Novaraptor, when its "Frenzy" ability is active, becomes an extreme Glass Cannon. The ability completely drains its stamina, preventing it from running or jumping, but increases its attack speed and strength, turning it into a whirlwind of death.
• Godzilla Threshold: During the "Get to the Chopper" game mode, the Tyrants are restricted from class selection until the human team captures the last extraction point (meaning the dinosaur team has failed to stop them from capturing the previous three checkpoints). At that point, a sound cue of a distant roar will signal the imminent arrival of the king of the dinosaurs.
• Gone Horribly Wrong: While the exact details of the backstory are not made apparent, what is clear as that bringing dinosaurs back to life and making them tougher and more deadlier than what would've existed was a project that quickly grew too dangerous to control, leading to the complete abandonment of the island's facilities to its prehistoric creations.
• Goomba Stomp: In Survival Mode, humans can jump on Compsognathus to kill them.
• Ground Pound:
  • The Acrocanthosaurus's special ability. It will instantly kill any humans underfoot, causes significant damage and knock-back to anyone slightly further away (even through walls), and disables any nearby traps.
  • The Tupandactylus has a dive bomb attack that functions similarly (although not quite as strong). The pterosaur will swoop down from high-up and land on the ground with great force, causing considerable damage and knock-back to any humans nearby.
• Guns Akimbo: The Trapper dual wields Colt pistols (which can swapped out for mini uzis) as well as his unique Netgun which can ensnare small dinosaurs and prevent large ones from biting.
• Headbutting Pachy: The Pachycephalosaurus is the first non-carnivorous animal (although it still heals by eating meat in-game) to be made playable. Since it has no sharp claws or teeth, its only method of attacking humans is.... well, guess.
• Healing Shiv: The Scientist's tranquilizer dart pistol will damage and drain the stamina of dinosaurs, but it will give a small health boost and temporary damage reduction when shot at teammates.
• Heal Thyself: There's no Medic equivalent in this game (sort of, the Commando has the option of throwing down mini health stations, but they only last for a few moments and heal ten health in spurts, and the Scientist can shoot tranq darts at team mates to heal a small amount of health). Instead, humans have single-use health packs scattered around the map, which will reappear, but only after a while, to prevent people from simply camping a health station.
• Herd-Hitting Attack: Several dinosaur attacks are designed to prevent the humans from grouping too closely together.
  • The Tupandactylus' dive-bomb. It does moderate damage and leaves the player vulnerable because it requires them to soar very close to the ground, but it's an area-of-effect attack that can hit multiple targets and does huge knock-back, making it very useful for softening up or finishing off a group of humans bunched close together.
  • The Acrocanthosaurus' stomp works very similarly, but rather than doing moderate damage, it does catastrophic damage; the stomp is an instant kill to any humans right next to it and does huge damage and knock-back to anyone else slightly further away. Timing it carefully enough can allow the player to take out several humans at once.
  • The Dilophosaurus and Cryolophosaurus spit can lay down toxic pools that harm humans which step in it (draining stamina and health, respectively) and linger for a while. This is especially useful to prevent the humans from grouping too closely together, and for inflicting scratch damage to humans as they run around in a panic while other dinosaurs are attacking them.
• Hit-and-Run Tactics: This is essentially the play style of Carnotaurus and Pachycephalosaurus, which are meant to run in quickly, ram a few humans, and then flee to loop back around, because their attacks are otherwise cumbersome and the turning speed isn't very good.
• Hold the Line:
  • The "Get to the Chopper" game mode functions similar to the Control Point game mode of Team Fortress 2; humans have to gain control of a succession of checkpoints within a time limit (which has time added to it every time a checkpoint is captured), while the dinosaurs have to stop them.
  • This is effectively the gameplay style required for the human team in the normal Deathmatch game-mode. Individual humans stand little chance of survival without the support of their teammates, and victory basically requires the cohesion and cooperation of the group. Although you won't strictly lose if the group falls apart, it becomes much more difficult to secure victory.
• Hollywood Acid: The Cryolophosaurus is similar to the Dilophosaurus in that it spits damaging goo. However, rather than venom it launches glowing green acid. These can be aimed at the ground to create deadly Acid Pools which do Area of Effect damage to any human that steps in them (turning them into glowing green skeletons if it kills them).
• Homemade Flamethrower: The Pyromaniac's flamethrower is mentioned to be custom-made... as if the chainsaw attached to it didn't already make that clear. His alternate weapon, the "flame launcher" (a combination incendiary grenade launcher and shotgun) is also stated to have been constructed by himself from spare weapon parts.
• Horn Attack: The Ceratosaurus is able to ram humans with the horns on its head, while the Carnotaurus' secondary attack swings its horned head back and force to send humans flying.
• Hyperactive Metabolism: Because dinosaurs obviously can't use first aid kits, they instead heal by consuming rotting carcasses strewn around the map. The Tyrants are also able to regenerate some of their health when they eat people, as is the Carnotaurus when its "Ravenous Rage" ability is active.
• Improvised Weapon: The Pathfinder's machete was intended to be used to cut through impassible vegetation in the wilderness, but makes a highly effective close-range weapon against dinosaurs. His flares, originally meant for lighting the way through the dark undergrowth, is also highly effective at blinding dinosaurs.
• "Instant Death" Radius: It's generally an incredibly bad idea to be within several metres of a Tyrant, because nearly all of their attacks are One-Hit Kill with a huge range, and just walking over a human will instantly kill them. This isn't even mentioning the tendency for Tyrants to be followed by numerous smaller dinosaur players.
• Interface Screw:
  • Both the Dilophosaurus' spit and the Pathfinder's flares can blind enemy players.
  • Occasionally, sandstorms will occur in the Sandstorm Valley map which greatly reduces visibility, and whiteouts will occur in the Snowbound map which do the same thing.
• Interesting Situation Duel: Several maps have stage hazards which make the fight more difficult for either humans, dinosaurs, or both parties.
  • Most commonly, the maps will be divided by a cliff or similar precipice with narrow bridges crossing over it. These act as effective chokepoints for humans, although pterosaurs also have an easier time by simply knocking or dropping humans off the narrow bridges. The Volcano map has a variant; instead of a cliff, the map is bisected by a river of lava.
  • The Snowbound and Sandstorm Valley maps will periodically be obscured by whiteouts and sandstorms, respectively, greatly reducing visibility for all players.
  • The Waterlogged map has sections with electric generators which cause continuous damage if anyone steps near them.
  • The Contingency map is separated into a lower forest section and upper platform floor. Occasionally, an alarm can be sounded by a player that warns anyone in the atrium will be subject to containment contingency. After about a minute, the electric generators will One-Hit Kill anyone still within the centre of the map.
  • The Airbase map is set during a thunderstorm at night, making it harder for the humans to spot the dinosaurs in the darkness. However, there are also more open areas for humans to group around, with fewer hiding spots for dinosaurs.
• Invisible Monsters: The rarely seen "Hunt" game mode pits an invisible Novaraptor against a group of humans.
• Invisible Wall: Normally, geographical barriers like too-tall walls, the ocean, or cliffs are sufficient to keep the players inside the map. However, the pterosaurs are obviously able to fly over all of these, so they're subject to invisible barriers or will quickly die if they try to go outside the playable area.
• Isle of Giant Horrors: The game is set on an unnamed island where a company called Phoenix International was secretly conducting genetic experiments which resulted in the creation of physically enhanced dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals. They somehow got loose and now run amok across the former facilities, killing any human they might encounter.
• It's a Wonderful Failure: If the humans fail in the Get to the Chopper mode, instead of a cutscene showing the helicopter escaping the island, it has a cutscene of something bad happening to the humans or the helicopter, such as the helicopter pilot coming across one of the mercenaries' bodies, only to be ambushed and killed by a Novaraptor, or the helicopter being pushed over a cliff by a Spinosaurus.
• Jack of All Trades: Of all the dinosaur classes, the Novaraptor is the most evenly balanced. It's very fast and agile, has moderately strong attacks, can attack while running, it doesn't have any special gimmicks (outside of its "pounce" secondary attack), and has the most health out of all the small dinosaur classes. It's good at dispatching humans singly and great at causing chaos in groups of humans, especially when multiple Novaraptor players are attacking in a pack.
• Kidnapping Bird of Prey: Pteranodon's main attack method is to snatch up mercs in its talons and drop them from high vantage points.
• Kill All Humans: The dinosaurs, for reasons not exactly clear, have an insane bloodlust towards all humans, to the point that all of the different species are working together to slaughter them.
• Kill It with Fire: The Pyromaniac. He's called that for a reason. His flamethrower is an extremely useful weapon for killing smaller dinosaurs at a close-range, because it has a wide attack radius and does continuous damage.
• Kill Steal: It's possible for another dinosaur to hit a human that has been grasped by a Pteranodon, is in the process of being mauled by a Novaraptor or Oviraptor, and even while they're being eaten by a Tyrant. This can actually help them, because it's possible for their attack to fail if they get shot or don't have enough stamina.
• Klatchian Coffee: The Scientist can drop down crates of energy drinks which grant fifteen seconds of greatly increased speed to any humans which pick one up.
• Knockback: Several of the dinosaurs have attacks that can send humans flying, such as the Carnotaurus charge, the Acrocanthosaurus stomp, and the Tupandactylus dive bomb. This is particularly useful for disorienting groups of humans, or knocking them off cliffs, and it causes an amusing flying rag-doll corpse.
• Large and in Charge: The Tyrants are basically the defacto leaders of the dinosaur side, in part due to their ability to quickly decimate groups of humans with insanely strong (usually One-Hit Kill) attacks. The game encourages other dinosaur players to stay close to a Tyrant because their ability grants a temporary power up to all other dinosaurs close by, and a skilled Tyrant can make or break the dinosaur team.
• Lava Pit: Both the Volcano map in Deathmatch and the Phantom Caves map in Get to the Chopper have lava as a stage hazard. It's instantly fatal if you touch it.
• Lead the Target: The loading prompt with the Oviraptor gives the advice that, because it's so fast and agile, humans should shoot where it will be rather than where it is.
• Lethal Lava Land: The self-explanatory Volcano map is set on the slope of an actively erupting volcano. The landscape is covered in ash and a river of molten lava cuts the arena in two.
• Life Drain: When the Carnotaurus' ability is active, it will heal a large amount of health (slightly more than 300% damage caused) every time it damages a human while the ability is active (although it can be assumed it's merely ripping chunks out of them and eating them).
• Lightning Bruiser: The Carnotaurus, although it's quite a bit slower and weaker when it isn't charging.
• Limited Loadout: The game has a similar system as Team Fortress 2 for the humans, allowing one primary weapon, one secondary weapon, and one type of item. However, several characters have primary weapons capable of two different functions, such as the Pyromaniac's "flamesaw", which is half-flamethrower and half-chainsaw.
• Loading Screen: The map-loading screens provide a few tips on how to use the characters in battle, lore details, and a bit of a look into the personalities of the mercenaries.
• Long-Range Fighter:
  • The Scientist is the team's sniper, and all of her main weapons are specialized for picking off targets from a distance. They're bad at dealing at dinosaurs actually attacking because of their slow rate of fire and small clip size, but she can swap to a more effective secondary weapon (a pistol, a cattle prod, or a tranquilizer gun), so she's not totally helpless.
  • The Cryolophosaurus is most useful sniping humans with its acid projectiles from cover or some high vantage point. This is because, unlike the Dilophosaurus, its attacks do not inflict poison to make up for its mediocre bite damage, and it is both slower and less damaging than the Predator class dinosaurs specialized for close-range combat.
• Machete Mayhem: One of the Pathfinder's alternate secondary weapons is a machete. Its description notes it was originally meant for chopping through thick vegetation, but it does just as well chopping through dinosaur hides. True to form, it does a lot of damage, but as you might imagine, it's only really useful against smaller dinosaurs.
• Mad Bomber: The Pyromaniac. He has a wide range of explosive and incendiary weapons, including his flamethrower, Molotov cocktails, hand grenades, a flare gun, a grenade launcher, and sticks of dynamite.
• Mechanical Animals: All of the dinosaurs have a "Robo" skin, which turns them into... well, guess. It also gives them unique hydraulic sound effects when in motion. Interestingly, the "Robo" skin for the Oviraptor is the only skin it has which does not have feathers.
• Mechanically Unusual Fighter:
  • The Oviraptor is this compared to its Novaraptor counterpart. It's faster, weaker and trades in the Novaraptor's "feeding frenzy" roar ability for the ability to track enemies via pheromones (and highlighting more injured foes). It's intended to be played as an assassin-type character, sneaking in quickly to pick off weaker opponents and then flee.
  • The Ceratosaurus compared to the other Bruiser class dinosaurs. It's relatively slow and has low stamina, but it has powerful slashing and tail swipe attacks, unlike the Carnotaurus and Pachycephalosaurus, which rely on their ramming to kill enemies. The Ceratosaurus' "stamina leech" ability reflects this, allowing it to keep attacking relentlessly while preventing its targets from being able to run away.
• The Medic:
  • Despite drawing many similarities with Team Fortress 2, there's no direct Medic equivalent, since there are instead health stations scattered around the map, but the Commando has the option to drop health packs on the ground which heal ten health per second (although they will eventually disappear). Be warned though, these tend to be a favourite target for Cryolophosaurus spit, to prevent the humans from regaining their health.
  • A later update allowed the Scientist to heal her allies by a small amount of health and grant them temporarily increased resistance to damage by shooting them with her tranquilizer dart gun.
• MegaCorp: The dinosaurs were created by a company known as Phoenix International (an obvious expy of InGen from Jurassic Park), the logo of which is littered on background objects in numerous maps. This company then sent the mercenaries in after the project somehow went awry to try and clean up the mess.
• Mighty Glacier:
  • The Tyrannosaurus, of course. He takes a lot to take down and is capable of One Hit Kills, but he's a nice wide target, you can see him for miles, he's slow, and he can't fit into buildings.
  • The Spinosaurus even more so - it's incredibly durable and does very high damage, but is dead slow. The Acrocanthosaurus, on the other hand, is a little bit faster than both of them, but it's not as deadly and takes less hits.
  • Of the non-Tyrant dinosaurs, the Ceratosaurus qualifies as a downplayed example. It's by far the slowest non-Tyrant, but it has the most health, it's heavily armoured, and does tremendous damage in close-quarters combat with slashing and tail slamming attacks.
• Mighty Roar: Every dinosaur has a unique roar ability which gives them or their teammates some type of momentary buff. The Tyrants in particular have roars which greatly buff the attack strength, reduce incoming damage, or activate health regeneration for all nearby teammates.
• Mission-Pack Sequel: Primal Carnage has a sequel known as Primal Carnage: Extinction, which is more or less the exact same game with more features added, and effectively replaces the original game.
• Mix-and-Match Critters: The dinosaurs can obtain purely cosmetic "mutations" which can change aspects of their appearance to that of other species. For Pteranodon this is numerous other pterosaur species, such as Rhamphorhynchus, Quetzalcoatlus, and Pterodaustro, while Spinosaurus has mutations that make its face resemble various crocodilian species. A few skins also radically alter their appearance in the same way, but for their whole body.
• Molotov Cocktail: The Pyromaniac has this as one of his secondary items. When thrown, it lights up a large area of the ground for several seconds, setting any dinosaur that runs through it on fire.
• Monstrous Scenery: Brachiosaurus appear in the distance beyond the playable area of some maps.
• Mooks: The raptors are the foot soldiers. Although if they are used well, they can be just as dangerous as their larger partners.
• Multi-Mook Melee: Besides the main PVP, a wave-based PVE horde mode against A.I. controlled dinosaurs is also available. Since it's not the game's main mode, it's not quite as polished as dedicated horde shooter games like Killing Floor 2 or the like, but it can be played in co-op or even in solo offline if no one's online.
• Mutual Kill: It's possible to kill yourself and your enemy at the same time. Unfortunately, getting said kill does not count towards the kill count, presumably to discourage players attempting to suicide bomb.
• Net Gun: The Trapper's secondary weapon is this. It will incapacitate small dinosaurs and pterosaurs in a single hit, allowing him to knife them once netted, which is a One-Hit Kill. The net will wrap around the mouths of large dinosaurs, preventing them from biting for a few moments.
• Natural Weapon: While the humans fight with a wide assortment of guns, explosives, traps, and other armaments, dinosaurs rely on their claws, teeth, horns, tails, spit, and beaks to fight, and it is more than an even matchup.
• Necessary Drawback: Originally, the game had a "rock-paper-scissors"-like consideration between dinosaur and human class matchups. However, the addition of interchangeable weapons and more dinosaur types rendered this gameplay philosophy largely obsolete. That said, there are some general weaknesses each class possesses.
  • The Scientist is a good long-range fighter with a sniper able to do huge damage to dinosaurs from any distance, but her melee options are limited, making her extremely vulnerable to up-close attacks from small dinosaurs. Her armour-piercing sniper does more damage than her standard sniper, but its fire rate is miserable; her poison dart gun does stack damage and can guarantee a fatal shot, but it requires pinpoint accuracy eight times in a row.
  • The Commando has moderate-range, rapid-fire weapons capable of huge damage, but their accuracy tends to be low, making him good against big dinosaurs (Bruiser and Tyrant classes), but bad at hitting small ones. The carbine is more accurate and has less recoil than his standard assault rifle, but no rocket launcher and does less damage. The burst-fire has excellent aim and high damage, but it runs out of ammo quickly and isn't automatic.
  • The Pathfinder's shotguns do catastrophic damage, but only at close range. This makes pterosaurs possibly his worst enemy, as their gameplay style allows them to quickly swoop in. He is able to alleviate this with a flare that blinds dinosaurs which get too close.
  • The Pyromaniac has a weapon options are highly damaging at short range and very effective against small dinosaurs, but terrible at long range and have limited effect on large dinosaurs (although picking the flame launcher instead of the flamesaw will alleviate this, at the cost of being less effective against small dinosaurs).
  • The Trapper is an extremely effective unit against small dinosaurs, due to having numerous weapons (a stun gun, a net gun, and bear traps) capable of temporarily stunning dinosaurs, allowing him to One-Hit Kill them with his knife. These weapons are much less effective against large dinosaurs, however.
  • Tyrant dinosaurs have massive health and powerful moves, but they're a huge target and very slow. Bruisers have good speed and health, but overall terrible maneuverability. Predators are fast and have a One-Hit Kill move, but they can only take a few hits. Spitters have long-range attacks, but their strength is average and health is low. Flyers have unmatched speed and agility, but are obvious targets and difficult to attack with.
• Never Split the Party:
  • It's heavily encouraged for human players to stay together in a group, because many of the small dinosaurs have One-Hit Kill incapacitation moves (particularly the Pteranodon, the Novaraptor, and the Oviraptor) unless they're shot off by another player, and most large dinosaurs have too much health for one player to easily kill. Most of the characters also have placable objects (either in the form of traps or health/ammo pickups) which work best when they stick together in one location. A good sign the human team is struggling is if all the players are split up around the map.
  • This is true to a lesser extent with the dinosaurs, which operate best in a group of multiple different types to make up for their individual weaknesses. A Tyrant makes a huge, slow target that most of the humans will inevitably focus on, but when backed up by numerous small dinosaurs, they can swarm the humans while the enemy team is occupied with the bigger target. The Bruisers can do heavy damage to a number of humans at once, but have no One-Hit Kill moves and limited close-range maneuvering, making it much easier for others to finish off the weakened humans. The Spitters are not particularly strong individually, but their long-range venom and speed make them extremely good at weakening, disorienting, and separating the humans for the other dinosaurs.
• Never Trust a Trailer: One of the cinematic trailers shows a Spinosaurus coming out the water and fighting a Tyrannosaurus. However, there's no swimming mechanics in the game, and no dinosaur-on-dinosaur fighting.
• Non-Combat EXP: You get the most experience points for dealing the killing blow on an enemy, which is doubled if that enemy happened to be a Tyrant. However, a ton of other acts also give experience, such as healing or buffing your teammates, disabling traps, or performing certain roars (note that levelling up only unlocks cosmetics).
• Non-Fatal Explosions: The explosive projectiles are some of the strongest weapons in the game, but none of them can kill the larger dinosaurs in less than two hits. This is especially true with the Tyrants; even the Acrocanthosaurus can tank five point-blank rocket-propelled grenades, while the Spinosaurus and Tyrannosaurus can both tank six.
• Non-Malicious Monster: Zigzagged with the dinosaurs. Their primary motive canonically is defending their home against the human aggressors, whom have explicitly arrived to exterminate them. The presence of nests in several maps further implies parental aggression, which is explicit in the Capture the Egg game-mode. However, it's indicated they are unnaturally aggressive and, as seen in the Get to the Chopper mode, willing to attack humans which are trying to escape.
• Notice This:
  • Pterosaurs have the ability to highlight nearby humans with their screech, allowing all other dinosaur players to see the humans as glowing red outlines anywhere on the map. The Scientist's sensor mines also do the same thing for dinosaurs that walk over them, as do her tracking arrows, which highlight dinosaurs shot by them.
  • The Oviraptor has a similar ability, except that only the player can see the outlines, and the outlines will highlight humans that have low health; this is a very useful skill for a Fragile Speedster.
  • When your health is low, health stations (the one-use health kit stations for humans, and the rotting carcasses for dinosaurs) are highlighted in glowing red outlines that are visible through walls.
• One-Hit Kill: One bite from a Tyrannosaurus (or suitable Tyrant) is all it takes, and it can just step on humans, too. Fortunately, the humans have their own One-Hit Kill in the Trapper's Netgun (although it only works on small dinosaurs). Explosive weapons can also instantly kill smaller dinosaurs simply because they inflict massive damage.
• One-Hit Polykill: The Scientist's PX Assault Cannon is powerful enough to penetrate through multiple dinosaurs; shooting two Tyrants in the head with one shot is required for an achievement.
• Optional Stealth: Predator class dinosaurs get a small experience bonus for "ambush attacks" (that is, killing a human without getting hit), but it doesn't factor into actual gameplay as only kills matter.
• Palette Swap: Several of the newer dinosaur species are clear variants on the initial species with very similar animations, models, and attacks. They are mostly separated into "classes" under these designations. Of particular note is the Oviraptor, which is a faster, frailer Novaraptor, and the Tupandactylus, which is similar to Pteranodon, except its grab is replaced with a dive-bomb.
• Palmtree Panic: The Dead Tide map is set within and around a series of wave-eroded stone archways, sandy coastline, tide pools, and exposed coral reefs bordering the ocean at low tide. The plentiful archways and reefs make excellent hiding spots for dinosaurs, so this is an extremely challenging map for human players.
• Patchwork Map: All the maps supposedly take place on a single island, but there are tropical jungle, coral reef, deciduous autumn forest, arid desert, snowy mountain, volcanic, and swamp arenas with no indication how they all coexist. This must be one big island...
• Personal Space Invader: The Novaraptor and Oviraptor can pounce on a human similar to the Hunter from Left 4 Dead. This will pin them to the ground and do continuous damage, resulting in certain KO, unless another player shoots the dinosaur off or if the dinosaur player runs out of stamina in the middle of the attack.
• Play as a Boss: The primary gimmick of the Tyrant is the ability to play as a massive carnivorous dinosaur, far stronger than any of the other characters, able to kill humans in a single blow and tank a hail of bullets. Expectedly, there can only be one or two Tyrants max on the arena at the same time.
• Player Versus Environment: Survival Mode pits a group of human players against never-ending waves of AI-controlled dinosaurs.
• Play Every Day: The game encourages continuous play via weekly challenges which give huge experience boosts if completed (every time a player levels up, they are given a random free cosmetic item); if all three weekly challenges are completed, the player is gifted a free skin pack.
• Poisoned Weapons: One of the Scientist's weapons is a poison dart rifle. It's a gimmick weapon that does low damage at first, but each shot delivered in quick succession does slightly more damage until the dinosaur receives a lethal dose and dies, regardless of remaining health (although the dinosaur can drain half the poison by roaring).
• Poisonous Person: As expected, the Dilophosaurus is based on the Jurassic Park interpretation and can spit blinding venom and has a toxic bite that will drain their opponent's health.
• Posthumous Character: Parasaurolophus, Iguanodon, Elasmosaurus, Liopleurodon, and Stegosaurus all appear in the game on various maps, but only as corpses which function as healing stations for the playable dinosaurs. It's possible to see some of them alive in the menu animations, however.
• Power at a Price: The Novaraptor's "Frenzy" roar ability temporarily grants it greatly increased strength and attack speed, but drains its entire stamina bar once the effect runs out, preventing it from running or jumping.
• Powerful, but Inaccurate: The Commando's assault rifle does tremendous damage per second (up to 40 damage per bullet, with a clip of 50 bullets), but it has huge recoil, making it mostly a "spray and pray" weapon. He's very effective against large dinosaurs (where the huge target more or less cancels out the lack of accuracy), but is pretty bad at killing small, fast-moving dinosaurs and pterosaurs. His grenade launcher also qualifies; it can dish out a catastrophic 500 damage and hit multiple targets, but it tends to bounce and takes a few seconds to go off.
• Practical Taunt: The Trapper has a mock baseball throw taunt which throws a net. This net is actually capable of ensnaring dinosaurs similar to those shot by his Net Gun, although with the added humiliation factor of being caught by a slow, visibly-telegraphed taunt.
• Prehistoric Monster: The game lets you play as one of several different savage, man-eating dinosaurs (and pterosaurs), each capable of ripping any mercenary limb-from-limb. Although there's numerous indications that they've been genetically augmented far beyond what is normal, such as the Tyrannosaurus being larger, and the Dilophosaurus being able to spit venom.
• Private Military Contractors: The human team is a ragtag bunch of toughened misfits who've been hired by Phoenix International with what is probably truckloads of money to deal with the dinosaurs running loose on the island.
• Punch-Packing Pistol: The Commando's Desert Eagle pistol is actually quite strong, and does significantly more damage per shot than all of his semi-automatic assault rifles do (although they obviously have far greater rate of fire).
• Ragdoll Physics: Any human or dinosaur that's killed while in motion or blown up by an explosive will have their limp body fly about wackily. This includes the huge dinosaurs, so it's totally possible to send a T. rex flopping through the sky like a boneless bag of jelly.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The human faction. So far: a sexy scientist with a sniper rifle, a badass former US Army trooper, a Magical Native American tracker who believes Shotguns Are Just Better, an Australian poacher and an Ax-Crazy Violent Glaswegian with a flamethrower-chainsaw. This trope is even called out in the description on the website.
• Raptor Attack: Justified via Hand Wave in-universe. The raptors present in the game are explicitly a genetically engineered and enhanced genus known as the Novaraptor which is explicitly noted to be much more aggressive than any real dromaeosaur would've been. It's noted to come in two species, a featherless version resembling the typical archetype invented by Jurassic Park, and a feathered version (this is purely cosmetic in terms of gameplay).
• Recruiting the Criminal: The Flavor Text for the Trapper says that he is wanted around the world for "uncountable offences". Basically he is a prolific poacher and criminal but his experience in capturing large dangerous animals means the "unknown peoples" hand-waved his criminal record because he was much too valuable to pass for the near-suicidal job of hunting genetically-modified dinosaurs.
• Regenerating Health: The Acrocanthosaurus can activate a temporary healing ability in nearby dinosaurs with its roar (explained in Flavor Text as releasing pheromones that promote accelerated immune responses).
• Remixed Level: The Forest Chasm and Utility Base maps both have winter-themed alternate versions that cover everything in snow.
• Revenue-Enhancing Devices: There is a store in the menu that allows players to purchase exclusive cosmetics (such as skins, mutations, clothing, and taunts) that don't affect gameplay in any way (besides, obviously, changing the physical appearance of your characters). These can run a pretty penny; a bundle of skins (four skins) can cost nearly as much as the game itself!
• Ribcage Ridge: Several maps are littered with the skeletons of giant dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals.
• Riddle for the Ages: Why did Phoenix International create an island of dinosaurs? How did they all get loose? Why do they want to exterminate the dinosaurs now? The game has no real story and Flavor Text tidbits do little to shed light on any of these questions.
• Roar Before Beating: The game actually encourages this, as each dinosaur has a unique "roar" ability which grants them and/or others a temporary buff of some kind. Since the effect is short-lived, it's better to roar right before charging into a group of humans.
• Roguish Poacher: The Trapper's backstory states that he is an internationally wanted animal poacher and trafficker, but Phoenix International was willing to overlook his extensive criminal record because of his invaluable knowledge in capturing large, dangerous animals.
• Savage Spinosaurs: The Spinosaurus is the biggest and strongest playable character in the game; it has a staggering 3500 HP (300 more than the Tyrannosaurus and 500 more than the Acrocanthosaurus) and, like the other Tyrant class dinosaurs, can kill humans in a single hit by eating them or just walking over them.
• Secondary Fire:
  • Both the Pyromaniac's primary weapons have two offensive options in one. His flamesaw has a flamethrower as a medium-range burning weapon and a chainsaw underneath for dealing with small dinosaurs up close, while the flame lobber functions as both an incendiary grenade launcher and a rapid-fire shotgun.
  • The Commando's main weapon is a semi-automatic assault rifle with a rocket-propelled grenade launcher underneath it. Both are very powerful but rather inaccurate and have no way to aim them.
• Shifting Sand Land: The self-explanatory Sandstorm Valley map, which is set in an arid, sandy level where sandstorms occasionally occur that obscure visibility for a few moments.
• Schmuck Bait: There are first aid kits and ammo pickups scattered across the map, but they tend to be in out-of-the-way corners or right on the outside of buildings, away from strategic holdout points. This is a game where it's a very bad idea to get separated from your team.
• Ship Level: The self-explanatory Docks level, which, as the name implies, takes place at a shipping port along the coastline. A large portion of the level takes place on a huge shipping tanker parked at the dock with numerous shipping containers still piled on top of it.
• Shock Stick: The Scientist's last-resort melee weapon is a cattle prod which can electrocute dinosaurs and drains their stamina.
• Shockwave Stomp: The Acrocanthosaurus' special move allows it to perform a powerful stomp which instantly kills any human underfoot and does considerable damage and knock-back to those slightly further away. This attack also penetrates through walls and disables any nearby traps.
• Short-Range Shotgun: The Pathfinder's shotgun can do over 300 damage at point-blank, but it quickly dissipates to scattered scratch damage from more than a hundred feet away. The stat bars for all of the different shotguns gives them huge damage, but terrible range and fire-rate.
• Shotguns Are Just Better: The Pathfinder seems to believe so. It does tremendous damage to dinosaurs at close range, enough to kill all the smaller dinosaurs in one or two hits. One of the Pyromaniac's alternate weapons gives him a grenade launcher-shotgun hybrid weapon.
• Shout-Out:
  • All the playable dinosaurs are clearly Jurassic Park-based in some way or another. There have also been a lot of promotional images and videos showing Tyrannosaurus fighting (the now playable) Spinosaurus.
  • A few of the human classes bear resemblances to some characters from the JP franchise as well. For example, the Trapper seems to be a mix of Robert Muldoon and Roland Tembo, while the Scientist has some similarities to Sarah Harding.
  • The Tyrannosaurus Ashland skin heavily resembles the colour scheme of the Tyrannosaurus in Walking with Dinosaurs, and the Acrocanthosaurus "Salt Plains" skin that of the Allosaurus. There is also one Pteranodon skin named "South American Ptera", and one of the carcasses in the Waterlogged map is a dead Liopleurodon that is coloured exactly like the Walking with version.
  • The Spinosaurus has a community-made skin known as "Primigenus". It looks almost exactly like the Spinosaurus as it appeared in Primeval, which the skin's creator has confirmed was intentional. The Novaraptor also has a skin known as "Deino" which resembles the raptors in the series (complete with long quills over the body).
  • Hidden in several different normally inaccessible areas of a few maps is an egg surrounded by wall scrawls that say "THE EGG IS A LIE".
  • A few of the achievements reference other media, such as "Top Gun" (kill 86 flying pterosaurs^note 1986 being the year Top Gun was released), "Come Fly With Me" (win a Get to the Chopper match as the human), and "Clever Girl" (kill a dinosaur from behind as the Scientist), "Life Finds a Way (fully recover from near-death as a dinosaur), and The Magic World (say "please" in the chat).
• Shown Their Work: Despite the large amounts of Artistic License and Rule of Cool, the game does have a few subtle hints that the creators did their research:
  • Pteranodon walks on all fours, is toothless, launches quadrupedally from the ground, and is explicitly stated on the official site NOT to be a dinosaur, and one of the skins is correctly depicted with pycnofibres. Also, Tupandactylus is correctly proportioned.
  • Dilophosaurus is correctly sized and lacks a neck frill.
  • The theropods have non-pronated hands.
  • One of the available skins for the raptors is fully and accurately feathered, while the Oviraptor is completely feathered and has no unfeathered variant.
  • Carnotaurus has stubby forelimbs with no visible claws and is correctly portrayed as a Lightning Bruiser with a difficult time turning at top speed.
  • Brachiosaurus has its nostrils on its snout rather than on the top of its head, and it has the proper foot configuration of a real sauropod (single claw on the front foot, three on the back).
  • Triceratops has armored skin and belly scales similar to a crocodile's, and two of its front toes lack claws and are kept off the ground◊.
  • The mosasaurs in the Waterlogged map have tail flukes.
• Sickly Green Glow: The Cryolophosaurus acid spit creates neon green pools on the ground which do damage-over-time to any humans that step in them. The colour makes them easy to avoid, so it's better to place them at strategic chokepoints or in the middle of a group of humans.
• Slow Doors: On the Contingency map, humans can activate a contingency protocol that will send out an electrical shockwave that kills everything in the atrium in about one minute. To avoid this, there is a safe zone along the rim, but metal shutters will slowly close to lock everyone in. If you try and enter the door while the gate is closing and it's too low to enter, you'll gradually be crushed to death.
• The Smurfette Principle: The Scientist is the only explicitly female character in the game.
• Sprint Meter: Both the dinosaurs and mercenaries have a stamina bar that is gradually depleted when they move quickly, but refills quickly when back to walking; some of the dinosaurs' attacks also use up stamina, such as the Cryolophosaurus/Dilophosaurus spit attack and the Oviraptor/Novaraptor pounce. However, the Cryolophosaurus and Dilophosaurus have the ability to quickly refill their stamina by roaring, and the Ceratosaurus has the ability to steal stamina from humans it's attacking.
• Standard FPS Guns: Most of the humans' arsenals consist of very typical weapon types and base their play styles around them.
  • The Commando gets a selection of powerful rapid-fire assault rifles as his primary weapons, one of which has a built-in grenade launcher. He gets two different pistols for his secondary weapon, the standard-issue MK pistol and a slower, but more powerful Deagle.
  • The Scientist is the resident sniper, with a selection of three different Sniper Rifles as her primary weapon. Her secondary weapon is the standard MK pistol, a tranquilizer gun, or a compound bow. She can also place down two types of mines, a sensor mine that "marks" dinosaurs and a gas mine that drains stamina.
  • The Trapper dual wields two Colt pistols or two mini Uzis as his primary weapon. His secondary weapons are gimmicky weapons that stun or ensnare dinosaurs, a net gun and a stun gun, and a knife used in conjunction with the net gun to insta-kill small dinosaurs. He can also place down explosive mines, electric mines, and bear traps.
  • The Pathfinder specializes in Short Range Shotguns which are very powerful at close range, but terrible in terms of accuracy and damage further out. His secondary weapon is (again) the MK pistol or a strong machete for melee attacks. He is able to throw down flares which blind dinosaurs that get too close.
  • The Pyromaniac uses almost entirely explosive and incendiary weapons, with the option of a flamethrower-chainsaw or battle shotgun-grenade launcher combo for his primary weapon, and either a flare gun or the Mk pistol for his secondary. He's offered three different types of explosives for his item, grenades, Molotov cocktails, or sticks of dynamite.
• Static Stun Gun: The Trapper can replace his Net Gun with a stun gun that blinds dinosaurs and can paralyze smaller dinosaurs in place for a few moments.
• Status Buff: The Tyrants have roars that grants a temporary boost in strength to any other dinosaurs close by. The Tyrannosaurus grants increased attack strength, the Spinosaurus gives greater durability, while the Acrocanthosaurus activates a Healing Factor.
• Super Drowning Skills: A few of the maps are bordered by water, but it's instant death if your character falls in (although this is mostly because the water is far down, so if you land in it, it's impossible to get back up).
• Super Spit: The Dilophosaurus has this ability, like it did in Jurassic Park, as does the very similar Cryolophosaurus, added in a later update. The Dilophosaurus' spit causes blindness and drains stamina, while the Cryolophosaurus sprays pools of acid on the ground which do contact damage. They both have the ability to shoot a short-range buckshot "spray" or lob a globule a great distance, and the spit has the ability to disable traps.
• Swallowed Whole: The Tyrants' main form of attack is simply grabbing humans with their mouth and eating them. This is an instant One-Hit Kill move and also replenishes some of their health. Although the Acrocanthosaurus, the smallest Tyrant, has to crush the human in its jaws before it can swallow them.
• Swiss-Army Weapon: Most of the humans have weapons able to perform more than one attack.
  • The Commando has an assault rifle with a built-in grenade launcher.
  • The Scientist has a sniper rifle that can fire both normal bullets, and tranquilizers to slow and disorient dinosaurs.
  • The Pyromaniac has a flamethrower that has a chainsaw attached to the bottom, and an alternate weapon that is half grenade launcher and half shotgun.
• Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: The classes were initially designed with this in mind, so that every dinosaur (and pterosaur) had a human class designed to take them down (and vice versa). However, this feature has been toned down. The various advantages some classes have over others are still present, but the game no longer adheres closely to the rock-paper-scissors system.
• Tail Slap: Both the Ceratosaurus and Tyrannosaurus have a powerful tail swipe attack that can strike and knock away opponents behind them.
• Take That!: Remember in Jurassic Park III how a Spinosaurus fought and killed a Tyrannosaurus rex? Not so lucky this time round... The method of fighting is also more Take That!: The Spinosaurus tried biting off the Tyrannosaurus rex's neck, like it did in the movie... The T. rex pretty much shrugs it off. Then the T. rex proceeds to use the same method the Spinosaurus used in the movie, bite in the neck... to kill the Spinosaurus.
• Taking the Bullet: Tyrant class dinosaurs have the ability to "brace", crouching down to take 80% reduced damage at the cost of stamina (you can't attack while bracing, however). The developer log notes that this is useful for Tyrant players to Draw Aggro so that their smaller dinosaurs teammates can attack the humans while they're focusing on the Tyrant.
• Taking You with Me: It's possible for the Pyromaniac or Commando to kill a small dinosaur attacking them by throwing a grenade at their feet to blow up themselves and the dinosaur (or even multiple dinosaurs).
• Target Spotter: Both the Pteranodon and Tupandactylus have this ability, making any nearby humans visible as outlines through walls to all other dinosaur players for several seconds. The Scientist's sensor mines and tracking arrows also have a similar purpose for the human team, outlining any dinosaur that walks over them or is hit by them, respectively.
• Technicolor Toxin: Both the Dilophosaurus and Cryolophosaurus are capable of spitting some sort of highly visible toxic fluid; the Dilophosaurus spits a noxious purple venom, while the Cryolophosaurus spews neon green acid.
• Terrifying Tyrannosaur: Far and away the most powerful playable dinosaur in the initial game was the Tyrannosaurus, which has both a One-Hit Kill bite and can kill humans simply by walking over them, has over 3000 health points (most other dinosaurs only have a few hundred HP), and a roar so mighty that it actually inspires nearby dinosaurs to fight harder (making their attacks stronger for several seconds). Later updates added the Spinosaurus and Acrocanthosaurus as alternatives, but gave the archetype the class name "Tyrant".
• Throw Down the Bomblet: One of the Pyromaniac's secondary items are hand grenades, and another is sticks of dynamite. They're tremendously strong, but you can only hold a few of them at a time and they have a fuse timer.
• Timed Mission: The Capture the Egg and Get to the Chopper gamemodes require the humans to, well, capture a set number of eggs and get to the rescue helicopter in a set time limit or they fail. In Get to the Chopper, humans capturing checkpoints will push the time limit back by a few minutes.
• Too Fast to Stop: This is the one major weakness of the Carnotaurus. It's strong, durable, and runs very fast, but it needs some distance to slow from its sprint and, similar to what is theorized of the real animal, can't make sharp turns.
• To Serve Man: Most of the dinosaurs are able to recover a small amount of health by biting the humans, particularly the Tyrant class dinosaurs, which are able to swallow humans in one bite, instantly killing them and recovering a large chunk of their health.
• Toxic Dinosaur: The "Spitter" class consists of medium-sized dinosaurs with decent attack, speed, and durability stats, and is the only class with a ranged attack, which is a corrosive spit. Dilophosaurus and Cryolophosaurus fill this class, with Dilophosaurus also possessing a venomous bite. In-lore, the dinosaurs were given venomous properties due to genetic mutations. The base game has Cryolophosaurus spitting poison, although this is changed in Primal Carnage: Extinction, where they instead spit acid. They still retain the "venomous bite" attack.
• Trampled Underfoot: Tyrant class dinosaurs are so big that they can instantly kill humans just by walking over them.
• Tranquillizer Dart: The Scientist is able to fire tranqs from her sniper rifle; dinosaurs shot by tranqs will be unable to run or roar, and it can kill smaller dinosaurs, averting the usual One Dose Fits All.
• Trap Master: The Trapper, obviously. His main gimmick is a net gun which stops large dinosaurs from biting and will instantly down small dinosaurs, letting him One-Hit Kill them with his knife. He can also lay down electric mines, landmines, and bear traps which will stun and inflict damage on any dinosaur that walks over them.
• Trick Arrow: One of the Scientist's secondary weapons is a compound bow with two modifiable arrow types; explosive arrows which also do burning damage, and tracking arrows which highlight dinosaurs for other team members.
• Turned Against Their Masters: The dinosaurs were created by scientists working for the enigmatic Phoenix International, but escaped, overran the facilities, and slaughtered every last human on sight. Now the company is sending in a rag-tag band of elite mercenaries to deal with the now-feral dinosaurs, but they're not going to give up their new home without a fight...
• Unstable Equilibrium: The human team doing well relies on the cohesion of the players; if they don't stick together, it is much easier for the dinosaur team to slaughter them, owing to dinosaurs having a plethora of One-Hit Kill attacks, much more health, and great advantage of Hit-and-Run Tactics that gives them a massive advantage against lone humans. Very often, the human team's fate in a death-match is determined at the beginning of a round during the first real skirmish; if the human team is bulldozed right away, it's very hard to recover.
• Use Your Head: The Carnotaurus, Ceratosaurus, and Pachycephalosaurus have the passive ability to damage the humans simply by running into them at high speeds to send them flying with their armoured skulls.
• Violation of Common Sense: Because there's no friendly fire, it's actually beneficial for players to stand in the middle of a Pyromaniac's Molotov cocktail fire pool, because it will force dinosaurs to walk in and burn themselves in order to get to you. Similarly, it's actually helpful for a Pyromaniac to blast his flamethrower at a teammate who is being attacked by dinosaurs.
• Volcanic Veins: All of the dinosaurs and some of the humans have at least one alternate skin which gives them these, complete with glowing effects (like all skins, it's purely cosmetic).
• Weather-Control Machine: One of the Free Roam maps is inside a glass containment dome divided into four different habitats with varying weather conditions: a rainy jungle, a desert oasis, a snowy valley, and a temperate forest. The rainy jungle and snowy valley have sprinklers above them simulating precipitation. This might imply the island has so many varying climate types through less than natural means...
• Whateversaurus: The token dromaeosaur is a made-up genetically engineered genus called the Novaraptor. This handwaves its inaccuracies (and adherence to the typical Jurassic Park design) because it was never meant to be a "real" dinosaur. That said, there are explicitly two species, the typical featherless version and a more accurate feathered variant.
• X-Ray Sparks: This happens to any dinosaur hit by an electric mine or the Scientist's cattle prod. Interestingly, if the dinosaur dies while being electrocuted, the corpse stays like that.
• You Will Not Evade Me: The Ceratosaurus' stamina leech ability transfers the stamina (which is required for running and jumping) of its targets to it, making it more difficult for them to get away from its onslaught.
• Zerg Rush:
  • Similar to their behaviour in Jurassic Park, the Compsognathus in the Survival Mode occur as a boss wave where huge numbers of them rush the players from all directions. Fortunately, the numbers are offset by their weakness; a player can just jump on them to One-Hit Kill a Compsognathus.
  • The most effective strategy for the dinosaur team is to group up together into one semi-cohesive unit and basically stampede the humans all at once. The dinosaur types present in the stampede are largely irrelevant (although at least one Tyrant present helps), because the sheer chaos resulting is almost guaranteed to overrun the human team within seconds.
    • The loading screen for the Novaraptor states that this is the most effective killing strategy. Three or four Novaraptor (and/or Oviraptor) attacking at once can easily decimate a group of humans simply by running in and attacking everyone randomly (each Novaraptor normally does 45 damage per hit, meaning a human will die in 4 hits or less).

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