Jurassic Park: The Game Review
- Posted November 22nd, 2011 at 02:59 EDT by Robert Zwetsloot
- 3 Comments
Review Score
- PSU Review Score
- 8.0
- Avg. user review score:
- 0.0
Summary
A cinematic adventure game that successfully marries a Jurassic Park story in both name and style to enjoyable mechanics. Life found a way.
We like
- Engaging characters and story
- Clear passion for the franchise
- Something for hardcore gamers and hardcore fans alike
We dislike
- Fairly bad slowdown and hitching throughout
- A few noticeable low res textures on high def displays
- The build up to the big bad is anti-climactic
See PSU's review on Metacritic & GameRankings
(continued from previous page) ...is great at building tensions during these sequences, with strict timing needed to creep around that keeps you on edge, and interrupted sequences that lull you into a false sense of security. All important things you would see in the movie franchise.
While there is a rather major issue with slowdown and hanging in the game, it never affects the gameplay at a crucial moment. You’ll always be able to press X when asked, even if the following cutscene takes a few seconds to start and cuts off the subtitles.
The story and the settings are really quite good, taking you from familiar areas in the movie to brand new areas all over the Park as the plot progresses. Along with the dialogue in the game, you slowly unlock pages in one of the characters’ journal. All of this not only aids in fleshing out the games back-story, but also the entire Jurassic Park mythos. Answering questions posed in all three movies nobody thought to answer, and even discussing the scientific inaccuracies such as Velociraptors that are 3 times larger than the fossil record shows. Fans will get a kick out of all this extra content.
Less hardcore fans have plenty of game to play as well; each chapter of game is ranked with a medal based on your performance on the QTEs. Along with replaying these sequences to see perfect run throughs and get gold medals, there are also the numerous deaths by dinosaur to see. There’s even some great trophies tied around advanced exploration and specific conversation options, a welcome relief from the lazy ‘Play this game a million times!’ that seem to plague a lot of today’s games.
It’s definitely not perfect. With a bit of a slow start, and a build up over the first three episodes that never really pays off in the fourth, the story pacing can be a little off kilter at times. As a whole though, it’s a very enjoyable experience that doesn’t require an intimate knowledge of the franchise, but rewards those that do.
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Comments
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zombieking36
- 11:10pm EST - November 21st, 2011
- 1
Whoa, thats way better a score than what IGN gave. It seems I am going to have to wait for more reviews.
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1solidsnake |
solid1snake67- 10:16am EST - November 22nd, 2011
- 2
i'm guessing sam neil isn't voice acting in this game? no point to get it then if he isn't in it, to me games based off of movies are made cheaply just to get money that goes towards another movie or a game. not sure if jurassic park extinction is going to become a movie either like i've read or seen some stuff on the internet.
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Thez
- 12:10pm EST - November 22nd, 2011
- 3
@1solidsnake Dr Grant isn't in the game, so there is no Sam Neil voice over work required. As mentioned in the review, all new characters. If this game was to support a movie then you would be right about it's reason for creation - however this isn't a quick cash in. The movie is 18 years old now remember. And you know, all games are made with the view of making money. Even then, this game in particular was delayed so they could spend more time, and money, in development.
Jurassic Park 4 is eventually coming in 2013 last anyone said about it, Extinction was a fan thing that may never amount to anything.
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