Jurassic World Evolution 3 PS5 Review. I love dinosaurs. They fascinated me as a kid, and one of the very few things in my life that hasn’t changed in my 38 years is just how much dinosaurs fascinate me. So, practically anything that includes dinosaurs ends up in front of me at some point or another. That also includes games I generally stay away from: park sims. Still, Jurassic World Evolution 3 has dinosaurs in it, so I have to at least try it.
What I love about situations like this is that I end up playing games I normally wouldn’t. Like sim games, I avoided all games with tank controls until Dino Crisis came along. Just like Dino Crisis, I found plenty of things to love about Jurassic World Evolution 3, even if it wasn’t a perfect experience.
Jurassic World Evolution 3 Review (PS5) – The World Is Your Park
Around the World
With the world populated with both dinosaurs and people, there is a growing effort to coexist with dinosaurs. In order to do that, you put in resources to create parks all around the world. The ultimate goal is to make sure that dinosaurs remain where they settled themselves while also keeping them from wreaking havoc in human areas. To do so, you hire scientists to manage your research and then use tourist income to fund the parks you create.
The nitty gritty of Jurassic World Evolution 3 asks you to repair and construct these parks. You choose your head scientists, where you install new structures, and even the lay of the land. You get full control of the habitats as well. For instance, if dinosaurs need more ground fiber, then you can just select the plant type and apply some wherever you need it. Needing to apply this logic to different types of terrain in different parks makes each location provide its own set of challenges
There is a bit of a set-it-and-forget-it to how Jurassic World Evolution 3 works. In most cases, you just need to make sure that you have repair and medical teams assigned to different power grids so that they service the entire area that each grid connects to. As a person who sucks at micromanaging sim games, the automation of systems helps keeps things running smoothly and provides me a better experience despite my lack of familiarity with sim games.
Take It Into Your Own Hands
This also benefits the console versions of this game. The game lays out your options along the left side of the screen, and you must scroll through the list to reach the option you want. There is no free mouse movement with joysticks or anything. Thankfully, there are a couple of quick-link options, like selecting the closest medics or repair crew, but everything else needs access through that option list. If you get lost in options, you can also hold the Touch Pad and pause time (or even speed up time, if you’re so inclined) so you can process the situation and respond in your own time. These functions help me, as a very basic layperson, to play games like this.
This might not be appealing to fans of this genre that want full control over everything. So, it’s worth mentioning that you can take control of absolutely everything should you wish to do so. This is literal in a couple of ways. Naturally, you can interact with any unit or structure and tell it what to do. You also get the option of manually driving repair and medic vehicles to do their tasks by-hand. If dinosaurs need to be tranquilized, you can hop in a chopper, fly out to the dinosaurs, and then free-aim to knock them out.
The same goes for repairing fences. Hop in a jeep and then move to the destination and interact with the dilapidated locale to repair it. It’s quite a cool addition, but I ended up leaving those types of functions to the programming to handle. Thankfully, these manual systems work the way they should. There’s even a need to compensate for gravity when tranquilizing dinosaurs. You can’t just shoot at them in a straight line.
The other major addition in this release is dinosaur breeding. Being able to breed dinosaurs yourself is just so damn cool. Plus, you get to see juvenile versions of each dinosaur. In addition, you get the chance to not only choose the parents but also choose major traits for the offspring, thanks to genetic engineering. For instance, if your habitat needs more males, then you can breed more males.
The Essence of Chaos
Alongside the game’s campaign, Jurassic World Evolution 3 also features literal challenge modes for those looking for extra challenges and options. There’s also a free sim mode, which allows you to do whatever you want however you want to do it. These two game modes are likely the ones where vets of these games will likely spend most of the time playing.
From what I understand after watching funny gaming videos from Jane Douglas on Outside Xtra, sim games don’t generally come with a lot of realistic consequences. In a similar vein, neither does Jurassic World Evolution 3. If you breed dangerous dinosaur hybrids, you don’t face any complications with keeping them contained, which is much unlike what happened in the movies of the same franchise.
If dinosaurs get out and start eating the tourists, you only feel the temporary financial hit of fewer tourists spending money at your parks. There is never any sort of litigation that comes from people dying under your care, and tourists just keep coming as long as you have appealing creatures on display. You kind of just get to do what you want as long as you have the money to support it. Now that I think about it, that actually does sound realistic.
Go For A Walk In The Park
Jurassic World Evolution 3 has the workings of a solid game, complete with options for newcomers and genre fans alike. The hardcore fans may not find enough here to satiate their sim appetites, but the appeal of dinosaurs is hard to resist. Even if this is a game, there aren’t many consequences to your actions; the big hurdle is learning to navigate the game’s many menus while using a controller. Thankfully, you can pause the game and make choices, but even though it’s a welcome option, this still feels more like a hotfix rather than a design choice. $60 is an attractive asking price, but it might be too much to ask for those on the fence, even if there are dinosaurs on the other side of said fence.
Review code kindly provided by publisher.