Chances are you have a favorite film going experience from when you were a kid. One where you can remember where you sat, what snacks you ate, and who accompanied you, in addition to the many details of the actual film. Maybe it’s Star Wars or your favorite Disney movie. For me, it was the first Jurassic Park. I remember sitting in the back of my parents’ van, with the back doors open at our local drive in theater, engrossed in one of my favorite movies of all time just like it was yesterday. In the 20+ years that have followed, I’ve seen the film at least a few hundred times always dreaming about what I would do differently if I could make my own park. That said, I was ecstatic to play Jurassic World Evolution, which offers a digital method to cross this dream off the bucket list.

The game starts off quickly, giving you a small island with a few assets already in place to get you started. You’ll be tasked with running a new park, which will span a total of five islands once completed. Your park will include rides, new attractions, breeding dinosaurs, and merchandising booths; the list goes on and on and quite honestly, is a bit overwhelming. The game breaks down the bulk of the work into three categories: science, security and entertainment, and each have their own pros and cons as far as throwing your limited resources into, but work hand in hand. I made the mistake of putting all of my eggs into the science basket, which resulted in my cash flow (which is needed for essentially anything) suffering. Much like in real life, I suck at managing money, and sadly my wife was not there to take care of the finances. While you earn money based on the performance of the park every minute, failing to find a balance can quickly turn your park into utter chaos.

In my experience with sim games, the console versions are typically clunky when it comes to the controls. This game makes building fairly easy to grasp, with the exception of running electricity to your many buildings. While some will function without, you will need to set up a complex power system, as well as working roads, prior to making any major building decisions. The game does a decent job of providing the information you need to be successful in most areas, but setting up the electrical systems is more complex than it needs to be and required me to actually Google it, which shouldn’t be the case.

While building the physical items in the game world is fairly easy, the actual processes to do pretty much anything are rather cumbersome, as you have to complete a number of small actions to gain any results. An example would be creating a new breed of dinosaur: first off, you’ll need to send a team somewhere around the world to find and harvest fossils, who will return them to your park, where you can then analyze them. The results will depend on the quality of the fossil, but once completed, you can start breeding the new creatures, which may or may not be successful, based off of the quality of the DNA you’ve located. While my explanation of the process may sound easy, it’s quite a project to manage this, as well as the other systems the game has in place.

Not only will you have to properly budget your money, but you will have to monitor the park for mechanical failures, escaped dinosaurs, and the overall health of the creatures. While the game provides handy red icons at the top of the screen to let you know when something isn’t right, it’s often difficult to locate exactly what the issue is at any given time, especially when multiple issues occur at one time. The problems start coming up early in the game and will often become more of an annoyance than anything. Sure, it’s thrilling the first time one of the large carnivorous dinosaurs gets loose and starts eating the park goers, but it gets old when the same creatures get out of the pen you just repaired minutes before for the fifth time. While you can dispatch security teams or rangers to complete the tasks needed fairly easily and quickly, everything costs money, which is always on short supply. Every time I thought I was going in the right direction financially, I’d have another sick or dead dinosaur to deal with. I kid you not; this game is the virtual equivalent of unpaid student loans.

There are plenty of ways to earn extra cash, but they often require you to spend just as much, if not more than what you earn to achieve the set goal. I often found myself simply looking around my creation waiting on time to pass so I could earn just a little bit more money to complete my current task. While you can explore the park via vehicular means, which we’ll get to a in a bit, there’s not much else to do during these waiting periods in game outside of renaming your structures or dinosaurs, which thankfully is free and can be done on the fly. Want to call your T-Rex Mr. Bitey Face? Go for it. I didn’t really use this option much, aside from renaming my breeding facility Chad’s Dino Shag Shack, but it’s nice to see the option being present.

Luckily, you’ll have some familiar faces to help you out on your journey to becoming a prehistoric park mogul, as a number of noteworthy actors reprise their roles from the movies as guides offering insight or witty comments on your successes (or in my case failures). While most of the actors bring the same energy and depth to their voice over work, the title is missing Chris Pratt, with a less than outstanding stand in who clearly is trying to duplicate Pratt’s slightly hillbilly-ish inflection, but breaks immersion every single time he speaks. Outside of this issue, the presentation is acceptable but rarely awe inspiring. While the dinosaurs and environment look great, some visual glitches and inconsistencies are regular – clipping when large packs of dinos are huddled around a feeding area is the norm. Additionally, large groups of the same park goers can be found throughout. The standout visuals come when the occasional tropical storm hits. While it never reaches the level of detail found in titles such as Forza Horizon, it looks damn good, despite the damage it’ll cause to your creations.

My biggest issue with Jurassic World Evolution is the actual lack of gameplay, as the bulk of the game is resource management. While you can embark via vehicles to drive around and explore the park, as well as take photos, there isn’t much else to do once you’ve completed your park, aside from continuing to resolve the issues as they pop up. I personally would have enjoyed the option to jump into friends’ or other player’s parks as a dinosaur to cause some random bouts of chaos, which the lack of is definitely a missed opportunity which I hope will be incorporated as DLC, as the title does have a season pass option. That said, I would strongly suggest waiting for the full package to be released at a later date unless you’re preferred genre is resource management simulators.

7 out of 10

Pros

• Console Controls Work Well
• Dinosaurs Look Great
• Many Returning Actors Providing Voice Overs
• Weather Effects Look Amazing

Cons

• Lack of Post Game Content
• Electrical Systems are a Chore
• Some Visual Glitches
• Lacking Chris Pratt

Jurassic World Evolution was developed  and published by Frontier Developments. It was released on PC,  PS4 and X1 on June 12th, 2018 for $59.99. The game was provided to us for review on X1. For more on Jurassic World Evolution , visit its official site.

 

Here at GBG we use a rating method that you are more than likely familiar with – a scale of 1 to 10. For clarification, we intend on using the entire scale: 1-4 is something you should probably avoid paying for; 5-7 is something that is worth playing, but probably not at full price; 8-10 is a great title that you can feel confident about buying. If you have any questions or comments about how we rate a game, please let us know.

 

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