Review - Jurassic Park: The Game

Review - Jurassic Park: The Game

Pros: Captures the feel and mood of the original movie.

Cons: Repetitive gameplay and forgettable storyline.

Final Judgement: Worth the download for fans of the movie who want to relive the experience in an interactive environment.

http://www.telltalegames.com/jurassicpark

Available for: Xbox Live, PS3 Store, PC (Steam), iPad

If I had been writing the Redcoat Review back in early 2010 and not just ranting about various titles to my associates over fermented vegetable drinks, I probably would have named a little ditty by Quantic Dreams as one of the best games of the year. The game was called Heavy Rain and it followed the exploits of four different protagonists as they tried to catch a serial killer and save a young boy. The game was full of intriguing characters, branching plot lines, gripping narrative and gratuitous female nudity. It focused on the narrative storytelling and played like an interactive movie. For example, players interact with characters and the environment through controller movements and button sequences displayed on screen instead of the traditional game controls. Heavy Rain was masterful in execution and I enjoyed every second of its play through. Whenever I jump on my soap box and argue that video games are a legitimate art form that can stand up to award winning books and movies I always speak of Heavy Rain in hushed reverent tones and then hold it aloft so that its radiance can shine down on the masses. If you have never tried this game, go pick it up, you'll thank me.

This man is hardcore, he dosen't look it, but trust me... he is. For the love of god, go play Heavy Rain.

I’m not writing a review of Heavy Rain however, nor am I writing a blog about a sequel to Heavy Rain, This week is a review of a game based around Jurassic Park and all its rippling water and cutting edge CG dinosaurs circa 93. Ah… I remember the first time I saw Jurassic Park the movie. Those were the halcyon days my friends.  I loved everything about that flick, from the T-rex’s enjoyment of freeze tag to the inexplicably complex GUI that the parks computers employed. I also loved the top down/fps video game for the SNES that came out the same year. I fondly recall one warm summer weekend where I set up two TV's in my bedroom so I could watch the movie while I played the game. To me this was the greatest thing ever, it was like being the guy that discovered that Peanut Butter and Jelly together tasted fucking amazing, top of the world... halcyon days..

Ok... So we've come a long way since 93' I know, but this game is still fun.

Any who, the point I'm trying to get across to you is that I loved Heavy Rain and I also loved Jurassic Park. So when I downloaded Jurassic Park: The Game (yes that was the best name they could come up with - Jurassic Park: The Game) off of Steam and found that it was a blending of these two particular joys of mine; it was peanut butter jelly time all the fuck over again. My expectations were high, mayhaps unfairly high, and I found myself slightly disappointed. Jurassic Park: The Game is nowhere near Heavy Rain's calibre.  The plot of Heavy Rain was far more complex and superior to that of Jurassic Park. However, the Jurassic Park game did capture the feel of the original movie and when the credits rolled I wasn't upset by what the game provided me. It was definitely a far better sequel to Jurassic Park then The Lost World or Jurassic Park 3 ever was. Not that it’s hard to top those movies, I mean you could probably just loop keyboard cat for an hour and a half and it would be a better sequel then the lost world.

Now much like Heavy Rain’s plot line , you play as six different protagonists, three of which are main characters and another three that play a supporting role. However, unlike Heavy Rain where the characters are looking at different sides of the same question, and it is only near the end of the game that you see how they are all truly connected, in Jurassic Park the protagonists get thrown together fairly early on and then are forced to work together to escape the dino-ridden island. The three main characters are:

·         Gerry Harding: Jurassic Park's chief veterinarian / absentee father consumed by work stereotype.

·         Jess Harding: Gerry's 15 year old daughter / Lex rip-off / misguided teenager with daddy issues stereotype.

·         Nima Cruz: An Industrial Spy / displaced resident of Ilsa Nublar / little guy trodden on by a large corporation stereotype.

The supporting characters are:

·         Billy Yoder: Soldier of Fortune #1 / wisecracking solider stereotype

·         Oscar Morales: Soldier of Fortune #2 / cold blooded serious solider stereotype

·         Lara Sorkin: The Doctor that originally cloned the dinosaurs / dino rights activist / genius horrified at the application of their discovery stereotype.

The game is split into four episodes with the first one taking place parallel to the movie and the last three taking place within a day or two after the movie.The first episode of the game picks up right around the point in the movie that Dennis Nedry (The guy played by that actor who’s best known as Neuman from Sienfield) steals the Dinosaur embryos from Jurassic Park and shuts down the park's security systems to cover his escape. As we know from the movie, Nedry hides the embryos in a Barbasol can that is a portable cryogenic freezer.  During hisattempt to escape the island his car crashes and he is eaten by a Dilophosaurus. A Dilophosaurus which I can only imagine then developed hyper tension and cholesterol related health problems, as Nedry wasn't exactly a svelte man.

I suppose you could call him human kobe beef

Cruz is sent in to locate Nedry after he fails to show up at his appointed rendezvous.  Upon locating Nedry's ample corpse Cruz searches out the barbasol can.  When she finds the can she is attacked by a venomous dinosaur with sinister glowing eyes and staggers off into the jungle slowly succumbing to the venom. As she emerges from the jungle and on to one of the parks maintenance roads Harding, who is trying to drive his visiting daughter to the dock so she can leave the island, nearly hits Cruz. Harding collects Cruz and upon seeing her condition turns his vehicle around and heads towards the visitors center of the park to treat her. While en route to the visitor’s center it slowly dawns on Harding that the park is in serious trouble and that the wheels have really come off. Before long Harding is face to face with an escaped T-Rex and  the group is forced to work together to survive Jurassic Park and try to escape the island of Ilsa Nublar.

Harding and his Daughter, Lex... I mean Jess

The first episode was great; a large part of the episode is devoted to Nina and her investigation of Nedry's crash scene. As you move about the area you piece together the last few minutes of Nedry's life. The game also completely and faithfully recreated the movie set from the scene where Nedry's demise takes place as well as the visitor’s center.  The rest of the first episode also follows a parallel story line to that of the movie. It felt like I was seeing another side of the movie I enjoyed so much as a kid. However, that is where my enjoyment ended. 

YEAH! Its the tree! With the Jeep! And you can even find that stick Nedry throws!

In the second episode Sorkin, Yoder and Morales are introduced.  The two mercenaries are hired by inGen to rescue the remaining survivors, and from there on out the story of the game really falls on its face.

Episode two as I said introduces the two aforementioned mercenaries hired by inGen to rescue the remaining survivors, and from there on out the story of the game really falls on its face. While Nina, Jess and Gerry are fairly stereotypical characters they are at least enjoyable to watch and play, mostly because the characters do have some development, you learn about their motivations and reasons for doing what they do. Billy and Oscar however are downright cheesy. It’s like they just grabbed two default characters out of the stereotype handbook and rammed them into the plot. For example at one point in episode three Oscar decided that it would be jolly good fun to stalk a velociraptor, and then, using only a knife, goes toe to toe with one because he’s awesome and has every person he’s ever killed tattooed on his arm as a skull. Alternatively Billy gets chased by the T-Rex and instead of doing what a normal person would do which is… probably scream… he cracks wise while fleeing for his god damned life, because he’s the comic relief but still hardcore. It’s like Michael Bay was hired as a consultant for character creation.

I mean look at him... I bet when you heard the name Oscar Morales, you probably pictured exactly that.

There were many points throughout the remaining episodes that your merry band of survivors basically escaped from Jurassic Park only to get re-stranded on the island. At these points it felt like the writers shoehorned in a reason to continue the story. This created a decidedly ho-hum plot line in the remaining episodes and essentially just played the "escape from the dinosaur" scenario over and over. If it wasn't for the occasional character interactions between Gerry and Nina where you see some glimmers of character development and the soundtrack, which is taken directly from the movie, I might have not been able to finish the game. This is not say that the plot doesn’t take a bit of a rebound near the end of the final episode and start to get good again, but for the most part episodes two, three and four were all but disappointing.

"WHY DOES THIS KEEP HAPPENING??"

The plot isn't really helped either by repetitive gameplay which quickly transitions from novel to tedious.  Again, in Heavy Rain, the traditional control method was eschewed for a system which had players follow on screen ques to perform actions in game. This worked because it was well implemented.  There were many different types of actions and the gameplay was paced appropriately so that players still felt drawn into the game and challenged. Jurassic Park: The Game also went for this style of game play but falls short of Heavy Rain's implementation. There are only a handful of different actions that players need to perform and the game really isn't that challenging, all you need to do is have rudimentary motor skills and any player can stumble their way through a scene successfully. They may not get a "gold" rating for the scene, but the ratings don't affect the plot or story in anyway so there is no incentive to want to replay scenes to obtain that flawless result.

You could try to dodge the spit... or you can just take it like a champ and continue on... your choice, either way no big deal.

Jurassic Park: The Game is a hammy waltz through the world created by the movie. The characters are flat and the plot isn't exactly ground breaking. However fans will enjoy the game for what it is - an extension of the movie. With a cost of about $35 Canadian I'm willing to overlook many of its flaws given its value price point. It’s like the straight to DVD movies that invariably follow Disney's blockbusters, sure they aren't great, but you watch them because it’s more of what attracted you to the movie in the first place. Yes gameplay isn't too challenging, but some days you don't want to climb Kilimanjaro, sometimes you just want to go for a stroll in the park. A stereotypical, repetitive, park.