I'm going to try and make this review, relatively spoiler free. See below for a more comprehensive read.

TLDR:

Pro's:
* It has a nice level of atmosphere, audio and dinosaur sounds are fairly decent
* A nice set of water effects thanks to the UE5 engine
* A nice variety of dinosaurs & enemies
* Dinosaurs are decently animated, Velociraptors seem to be my favourite
* A good selection of weapons
* Some levels look quite nice
* Overall a fairly fun time-waster for a casual gamer, a decent degree of replayability and multiple game-modes.

Con's:
* Gore system is nice but feels a little tacky
* Controls feel clunky, sometimes you get caught on geometry
* Game would stutter occasionally resulting in frustrating deaths during platform puzzles or boss fights
* Seems to be alot of store-bought game assets used in the construction of levels and equipment
* Other levels feel quite empty and too spacious
* Difficulty levels from Easy to Normal don't feel too different from each other. Would recommend playing on Hard mode for a survival experience, easy/medium for an arcarde experience.

The review

Brief:
FossilFuel 2 is a surprisingly decent indie game, I wouldn't say it's great, its fun for sure a nice time waster but there are issues with the game that certainly spoiled the experience.

Story

- The story unfortunately was relatively forgetful. In essence it's the usual plot of man creating dinosaurs with genetics, things go wrong and you go into retrieve the data. There were some funny quips which gave me a giggle but alot of the characters just felt incredibly generic. Even the protoganist is a mute, single-name character whom seems just unremarkable.

Graphics

- At first I was curious if this game was running on the new UE5 engine, with a little digging it does infact run on UE5. This could explain why the game was stuttering somewhat as it's still a relatively new engine and certainly not user-friendly for alot of indie developers. The water effects felt really nice and there were a few moments where I had to do a double take on the textures, some looked photo realistic but others seemed a bit, out of place.

Gameplay

- Gameplay was surprisingly fun but not exactly something to write home about so to speak. Initially I actually felt very vulnerable early on but there seems to be an issue with the difficulty settings. My initial play-through was on Medium and I very quickly lost that feeling of vulnerability and it just boiled down to a generic shooter. You actually can get some very powerful weapons early on which makes some of the encounters almost trival and you'll never be in a short supply of ammo, medical supplies or credits.

I wished that feel of being vulnerable would last longer so if you want a survival or a tactical experience, I'd recommend playing Hard Mode. When you complete the game once however on any difficulty mode, you unlock Primal Mode which I'll mention below in the Replay section.

Mechanics

- There are some interesting mechanics introduced into the game which I certainly enjoyed these being, a credit system for buying supplies, a camera mini-game which gives you points and does actually have a purpose in-game, additional game modes such as a horde mode and a sandbox mode unlocked by collecting Dino Cards in a similar vein to Dino Crisis 2 and their Dino Colosseum. However despite this, most of the mechanics are pretty generic overall comparable to most other survival shooters.

Enemies

- Most of the enemies are quite varied and well animated but there are others just feel off. The Dinosaurs definately seem to have the most work on them but other enemies feel stale and janky. The bosses are almost always a one-hit kill on the player and you can actually get soft-locked if you use too much ammo early on.

Replace Value

- The game has numerous additional modes, initially you have access to a Horde mode with upto 50 levels of increasingly tougher waves. I didn't play much of it myself however it's a nice time waste. When you complete the game once you'll unlock Primal mode.

Primal mode is actually a mode I would suggest actually being unlocked immediately by the dev's. So what is Primal Mode, when unlocked it overhauls the main story, adds additional enemies early on that you would normally fight much later, gives you stronger weapons at the starter but also give you enemies that provide a challenge. I haven't fully played it yet so I'll make an edit of this review once I've given it a second playthrough.

Final Verdict

- Overall Fossilfuel 2 is a fun time-waster, good for casual's who enjoy a nice slow arcade experience with some very basic "survival shooter" aspects. Good degree of replayability with it's horde mode, primal mode and sandbox mode. I would definately give this game a score of 7/10.

I PUT THOSE DINOS BACK IN THE GROUND> THEY SAND NO CHANCE.

Why are there not more dino shooters? or just dino horror games?

Have to go indie for the good stuff.

Edit: love the training room easter egg.

Absolutely terrifying, love the creativity of these small developers! Fantastic job with the audio!

The game clearly has inspiration from the original Half Life and Resident Evil.

It is a little wonky is parts, but I can look past that. Look forward to the rest of the game.

Horde mode looks like it could inspire some Youtube challenges.

The game starts off great with a good atmosphere and cohesive level design. Great care was put into the dinos' designs, and it's fun for a few playthroughs.

HOWEVER, there's a lot of jank in the game, such as fall damage going from "I stubbed my toe" to "Kneecaps Imploding", the enemy AI being able to spot you when it should have no way of knowing where you are, and the game quickly loses it's survival horror feel once the shop system is introduced(selling all the antidotes I don't need = enough grenade launcher rounds to decimate a country).

Major spoilers that include the issues I had with the game during my three playthroughs:
- Health kits become irrelevant on the hardest difficulties, as most enemies can take you out in one or two hits even with armor on, and you always have health regenerarion on.
- Spinosaurus failed to spawn in his boss arena following a reload of the area after I died fighting it (ads got in the way of a grenade), so I wound up just running through his area unbothered.
- Goliath showing up in the dark area, while providing some needed horror to the game, also cheats when roaming the area, being able to always spot me hiding in vents and insta-killing me. I tried turning off the lantern, holding only the camera with and without night vision, but 9/10 times he always spotted me even when not actively chasing me, and devouring me in one hit.
- Goliath again, this time after defeating him in the dark area and then going through the docks to rescue Maximus' team, I get a note saying they're leaving me goodies. I go check, turns out I had already picked up the supposed gifts. Then I go check the dark area again to explore unbothered, and in comes Goliath, who should've been dead by this point, to ruin my day.
- The Giant Beetle is less of a threat compared to his ads, since it's rolling path is always fixed into the same square with no variation. It'd be easy to no-hit the boss if not for the Assassin Bugs sneaking up on you.
- The Megalodon fight has some RNG to it where the shark sometimes will emerge on the other side of the boat, making it sometimes impossible to hit unless you shimmy all the way to railing's edge to get a shot on it.
- Three playthroughs later and not once did I ever get the magnum. Checked every room, opened every lock, no magnum. Did get the Oppenheimer though.
- The crate drops being randomized means that sometimes you might get ammo for a weapon you haven't found yet or are not using anymore.
- The Blights, while a cool late-game addition, quickly wear out their welcome requiring specific weapons to damage them.
- The ending gauntlet where you must find the two valves going the solo path quickly overwhelms you spawning 30 or so soldiers and up to 40 raptors. Would've been cool to spawn the raptors as a 2nd wave after activating the lift close to the red valve. Having both humans and raptors gunning for you quickly turn the section into a cluster#*=&.

It's a fun game, but there's a lot of elements about it that could be vastly improved upon.

This is like a Frankenstein of every horror 90s game and I love it.

This was a fun survival horror. Not really worth $20 considering it only took me 2.5 hours to beat my first run through but it was enjoyable. Only replay value is the fact you can get a couple different end boss fights depending on your choice near the end but otherwise not much (4 different endings of sort from looking over the achievements). I did play on easy mode for this time run so 2-3 hours is about what you'll get out of it doing an easy run and that includes running around making sure you don't miss things. (aside from one item I missed in the beginning I collected everything I could)

The game had a couple good "Oh Sh*t moments where I genuinely got surprised but not too many. The first 1/3 of the game kind of reminds me of Resident Evil 2 and 3 in some aspects and a little hint of dino crisis ps1 (If only that game would make a come back) or dino horror in general.

Throughout the entire run I had a small stretch about halfway where the game frames were pretty laggy and my guns weren't equipping properly causing me a couple deaths but seemed to correct itself.

The collectible cards are miss able and needed to unlock sandbox mode and get an achievement. I missed the very first card (sad day) but at least it wasn't too difficult of a run through.

So yea its worth getting if you want a nice little dino horror game but maybe get it on a sale. This would be a reasonable $10 game. $20 is a stretch unless you don't mind the cost.

Better than I expected it to be. The game plays like an FPS Dino Crisis. You don't need to play Fossilfuel 1 to get into the story.

The devs really nailed it. I never played Fossil Fuel 1, but I saw this game in a Youtube video and had to get it. It plays just like an older resident evil game, only in first person, and it's somehow even cheesier. This game manages to be both genuinely scary to the point of panic pausing the game, while also making me laugh out loud at how dumb it is (in a good way) sometimes. There's a speaker late in the game that you can play, and the song is a rap about "Robo-Rex". It's incredible. You can feel sometimes that it was made by a smaller team, sure, some parts of the game are really difficult when it seems like it should be easy, like some platforming elements, and some parts have a lot of hand holding where it doesn't feel necessary. There're some janky mechanics, too, like using ladders, but NONE of these, and I mean none of these, had any negative impact on how much I enjoyed this game. If anything, things like the platforming being super difficult EXCEPT for the one time it gives you a question mark above where you're clearly supposed to jump... really add to the charm of this game. It's super light hearted, it doesn't take itself seriously at all, but like I said, it's a good action game with both puzzle elements and a whole lot of horror too. 10/10. Nice job, guys.

the front part is okay, i was just happy to play a dino horror game, good atmosphere too. toward the back it got draggy with annoying monsters, couldnt make it to the end sadly. EDIT: double checked and i paid quite a bit for the game, i dont really think it's worth it