Loading ...Jurassic Park: The Game Review
Returning to the island probably wasn't the best idea...
Taking place during the movie, but never crossing over with the main characters, Jurassic Park: The Game follows the story of the can of dinosaur embryos Dennis Nedry tried to smuggle off the island. There are eight characters involved with the storyline but being completely honest, they're on an island where dinosaurs are running amuck, so expect some deaths to occur, including yours. That's right - in a telltale games rarity, it is now possible for your character to die in the game. It's one of the better parts of the game actually. Watching characters getting eaten by all the different dinosaurs helps deal with the painful lack of gameplay.
That is not to say that you don't do anything. When the player is involved it's generally little more than a bunch of button mashing and watching for Heavy Rain inspired directional buttons, all to make your character slowly turn their head. The limited level of actual interactivity involved here is tragic. There are certain points in the game where you can walk away from the computer and come back several minutes later and it is as though you've never left; the game will gone on without the player. Sure, they've thrown a handful of QTE type buttons that need to be pushed here and there but unless the gold medallion pops up in the upper right hand corner of your screen the worst that will happen is that your character will stumble a bit and look a tad stupid, but it doesn't make a difference in the end. For the scenes where it does matter, the gold medal will change down to silver, bronze and eventually no medal at all depending on how many times you die or screw up the button sequences. Each episode is divided into scenarios so once you've played through you can go back and redo sections if you want to improve your medal standing. Controls consist either of the keyboard (arrows keys or WASD) or a gamepad.
As of this writing, we did not have a gamepad readily available, and as a result tested JPTG with keyboard controls. The end result was an experience that could only be described as "clunky". During the more exciting scenes you need to push a sequence of buttons. For the keyboard a white, little circle would show up with an arrow in it and for ever additional circle around it you'd have another button to push but there was no guarantee that it would be the same direction. Based on the beginning of the game where it asked if you were using a keyboard or a controller The player will end up missing much of the on-screen action when fumbling over the keyboard in attempt to press a certain combination of buttons. Other times, even if you do know the sequence because occasionally you repeat actions, it just makes everything really stiff and mechanical compared to the smooth actions of the cutscenes.
The design of the park and the dinosaurs looks great and for everything that the player doesn't effect the movement is smooth and about as life-like as we can imagine dinosaurs being. Unfortunately, as mentioned earlier, there are moments in the game where adding in player participation makes it look really mechanical and it's disappointing that after holding on to the game for a few more months that they didn't figure out a better system. Audio wise the voice acting is great and the soundtrack is great but despite adjusting the levels of the voices and the music/sounds there were still some scenes where the subtitles had to be turned on so that I could hear what was being said because the voices were constantly being overpowered.
In the end Jurassic Park: The Game didn't live up to our expectations. It might be a small step forward for Telltale as they expand the kinds of games they make and open up to consequences for player actions (no matter how minimal) and add in the ability to die but it feels more like an interactive movie then an actual game. Telltale clearly has a talented team of people working on these games, especially the writers developing the plots, but they might of tried to hard to move beyond their point-and-click style too quickly on this one. The suspenseful, action packed experience you'd expect to have with Jurassic Park just wasn't there. If you're looking for a good story then you should still check it out, but if you're looking to relive the excitement you remember from the movies you might want to just watch the movies.
| Jurassic Park: The Game | |
|---|---|
| Gameplay |   |
| While there is a decent plot here, it just moves too slow. There are lengthy parts where you just sit and watch and have absolutely nothing to do with that's happening. Sadly, it comes off feeling more like an interactive movie than a full-fledged game. | |
| Sound | |
| Voice acting is uniformly well done, as are the other sound effects. The score is decent enough, but a little on the loud side at times. | |
| Graphics | |
| Beautifully designed creatures and landscapes are by far the best part of the game. | |
| Controls | |
| Borrowing largely from Heavy Rain's control scheme was a risky choice. Unfortunately for Telltale, it was also a poorly executed one. Button mashing is far too frequent. | |
| Overall | |
| Jurassic Park: The Game fails to recapture the magic that made the films great. The game favors a cinematic experience over an immersive one, with a serious lack of interactivity as the cost. | |
0%
Click to share thisClick to share this