Review: Jurassic Park – The Game

A Cinematic cat & mouse story

Telltale games is back with their latest invention: A game that follows up on the Jurassic Park story known from the theaters. This game is almost in the same class as Heavy Rain and the game is trying to sell a story where you choose the difference between life and death. It almost get’s up to the top.

Mr. T: Don't worry, you will see at least one dinosaur througout the game.

As i said, this is a so called cinematic game, where the whole game plays out as a movie. YOU get to choose which way to run, crawl, jump or whatever it is with just a simple click or pressing the keyboard. It works pretty well, but the game is maybe a little bit too easy when you progress through the story. You will find yourself bored at times, because there is nothing you can do except watch the game and wait for the next moment to interact.

Who's there?: What could possible be in the bushes? Got no idea...

My Park: Dr. Gerry Harding, one of the main characters. It's your job to keep him alive, remember that.

The story is “a whole other story”. This can very well be one of the greatest action stories of last year, with interesting characters, great setting and overwhelming situations. You play various characters throughout the game and get to play on the good side and the bad side. The game can really set off an adrenaline rush at times and if you want to, you can get some pretty bad “death scenes” as it is many ways to get killed by some dinos. Without saying to much about the story in case of spoilers, it starts of as a regular day in the park at Isla nebular, where one of your characters, Gerry Harding, have his daughter on “be with your father at work” day. As you might have guessed by now, things start to go wrong, and soon you must be careful where you step. It doesn’t help that a Spanish thief is in on the island as well and is trying to get things done in her way. The game adds more characters to play with as the story progresses and this is maybe the game’s strongest card. Some of the characters will be remembered a long time.

Gamescore

Jurassic Park – The Game (2011)

Graphics:  Some people have made complaints about the graphic, but it’s been Telltale Games style to drive in the cartoon graphic lane. The characters look real without being too much of a beauty model, but they could have gotten more details in the environment . 7/10

Audio: Various performances from the actors, from the top notch to the lamest acting I’ve ever heard. When it’s working it’s working pretty good and ditto otherwise. 7/10

Gameplay: Where Jurassic Park is on it’s best. The story is fun and entertaining and you will always want to know more about what’s going to happen. At the end you will be bored, but this can be fixed if you take a number of breaks during play. A lot of interesting characters in this game, where you’re running from dinosaurs every ten minutes. 8/10

Controls: Here we get to see something new. When playing the game, you will choose different locations and characters just like a DVD movie. Looks great and works great, but it really doesn’t add anything special. Can be a lot of constantly pressing the same buttons over and over again, this pushes the score down. Otherwise the controls work great, i drove through it with mouse and keyboard. 8/10

Overall Score: It’s dangerous ground when trying to make a game out of a movie and very dangerous when it’s done so many years after Jurassic Park was on the big screen. Thankfully the story has been properly done and you don’t feel like this is something they made just so we can play with dinosaurs. The biggest problem is the variation in gameplay and you will soon understand that every situation is played the same way, with crazy button clicking so that no one could eat you. Anyways, the total gaming experience is that this should be tried and if possible for you, played through the ending. 7/10