Just for Gamer

Jurassic Park Review

Reviewed by Rhandhali

I'm normally a big booster for Telltale Games but it seems to me that they've kind of dropped the ball on this one. Having played through the first episode so far I can say that it doesn't really feel much like an adventure game, or really much of a game at all.

Most of the gameplay is based around sequential button pressing. While being chased by a tyrannosaur, for example, you can only "beat" the scene by hitting up, down, left right or what have you in the order displayed on the screen and in time. I haven't seen anything that I would really call a puzzle so far, and by and large the game feels like a rail shooter. The mechanics break from what we've come to expect from the adventure genre - characters wandering around different scenes, talking to people, finding items to solve puzzles and the like - by having no inventory and no real ability to control where you are in the game. You're pretty much pressing buttons in sequence to move from one scene to the next which is not at all what I expected from a Telltale Games title. In fact, the most common game mechanic is simply mashing the instructed button repeatedly until a bar gets filled up.

If there is any game I could compare this to it's the old laserdisc arcade games like Space Ace or Dragon's Lair. Move joystick, hit button, get next scene. If you miss, you go to a death scene and have to start over. That's pretty much what the game play is like, except there are a few more buttons and more downtime.

You never get a sense of your environment. If you are presented with a scene, it will have highlighted areas that you are supposed to click. Everything is pointed out to you - areas you can investigate have a question mark, things you can move have a little controller icon over them. Dialogue options are usually pretty minimal and have had little if any impact on the game itself. As an example, there are multiple scenes where you get to create your own banter as it were. It's fun to do I guess, but it really doesn't do anything for the game. They would have been better off just making it into a straight cut scene.

Presentation wise I don't have any real complaints. The graphics aren't cutting edge for certain, but they're not terribly dated either. The soundtrack sounds like it was largely lifted from the movie which is exactly what I would expect, indeed hope for. The voice acting is decent, as are the character designs. The game was polished and complete, I didn't notice any major bugs or crashes in the the four or five hours I've spent playing it.

The story starts partway through the movie and follows a handful of stereotypes - the kind gentle father with the troubled teenager, the wisecracking mercenary, the tough woman with a suppressed maternal instinct. It's not going to win any awards, but if you like Jurassic Park (like I do) then the story is at least as enjoyable as either JPIII or the Lost World and certainly not any worse.

There's nothing wrong with how Jurassic Park: The Game is presented, the flaws lie within the uninspired, rail shooter game play. To me Telltale has a reputation for making interesting, challenging adventure games in the vein of Sam & Max Hit the Road, The Dig and so forth. They had puzzles, great freedom of action and rewarded creativity. With Jurassic Park I found the minimal gameplay elements intrusive, I would rather have just watched the whole game as cutscenes instead of spending time pressing the button I'm told to press. The gameplay actively interferes with the story!

Reviewed by cptrinch

This game is by no stretch of the word great. It's clear it was made on a budget as the graphics and animations will point out. However, it's heart is in the right place. If you ever loved Jurassic Park as a kid and want to experience a taste of that magic this a good buy. I went into this game knowing it was budget and an adventure game to boot and while I find the extensive use of quick time events to be a bit excessive the action scenes and story make up for it. Not to mention you get to explore new parts of the park never before seen in the movies. This game is more like an interactive movie with moments of the point and click adventure games of old. Jurassic Park is not a game for everyone and those unfamiliar with the a fore mentioned adventure games of the 1990's will probably not get into it finding it to archaic in game play terms to be satisfied. People familiar with more modern approaches to this genre such as heavy rain will be in their element as it shares the same genre with out the quality of time and a budget to make it truly great. Here's a quick list for easy dissection of this review.

Pro's:
- Great story and voice acting
- A retro style game for re-living those childhood memories
- Explore new parts of the park like the marine life facility
- Dinosaur animations and sound effects are great
- The investigative sections where you explore the environment are a lot of fun

Con's:
- Dialogue can be stereotypical at times
- Animation (Specifically the human characters) and Graphics in general are below today's standards by far
- A lot of quick time events

Overall I give it prop's for simply being done well with what budget they had and it's clear by their efforts that they loved the source material and did their best to make an adventure worthy of the fan's love. Take it for what it is and what could of never been instead of what it isn't.