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JURASSIC PARK: THE GAME (PS3)
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Publisher: Telltale Games.
Developer: Telltale Games. Released: December 2011 (Europe). Genre: Point 'n' Click. Other versions: X360; PC. Posted 24th November 2022. By Shane Battams © 2022 |
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You’d think adapting Jurassic Park into a video game would be easy, yet the license has seemed doomed to forgettable fare, bar a couple of notable exceptions. After a slew of lower-profile adaptations, Telltale struck a deal with Universal to adapt both Back to the Future and Steven Spielberg’s dinosaur monster-mash into episodic adventures. As the last game before the juggernaut Walking Dead debuted, it’s clear to see what direction the genre was headed. However, through a combination of bland storytelling, technical woes and underwhelming gameplay, Jurassic Park: The Game ultimately lacks bite.
Taking place around the same period as the 1993 movie, Jurassic Park revolves around a mission to sneak embryos out of the park, something that’s covered briefly in the film. After a chain of events that sees the embryos in the hands of a mercenary, we follow Gerry Harding and his daughter, Jess, as a tropical storm causes the power to cease, letting dinosaurs run amok. Spread across four episodes, the story sees the father/daughter duo entangled in this smuggling plot, while InGen Mercenaries are also sent in to retrieve the survivors, resulting in further complications, character development and a few twists. Ultimately, the narrative is desperately lacking in character, with a few moments of excitement often muddied by meandering pacing, uninteresting personalities in archetypal roles and bereft of the charm which made the movies so popular.
There's plenty of action, but unusually for Telltale, it's the story that lets the side down
Divvied across a quartet of episodes, the gameplay feels consistent across the board. Each episode has you investigating scenes, solving puzzles and partaking in a myriad of action sequences, utilising heavy amounts of QTEs. The problem is that none of these parts feel deep enough to sustain excitement. Exploration is rigid and simplistic, as you can’t even navigate your character around the environment – merely click on icons to interact. Puzzles are as basic as they come, with straightforward solutions and very few that feel involving. The abundance of QTEs range from simplistic to painfully fast, with mistakes building towards death and forced restarting of these set pieces. Admittedly, there are some moments that get the heart racing, such as outrunning a T-Rex, or swimming around deadly sea dinosaurs. Unfortunately, these begin to grate not long after the first episode concludes.
FOCAL POINT: DEATH BY DINO
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One benefit the frequent use of QTEs does bring is a weird, yet oddly satisfying, slew of deaths to experience. Like a classic Sierra adventure, the myriad of ways you can perish actually entices failure, as characters are trampled on, eaten and mauled by the wildlife inhabiting the park. Although avoiding duch fates rewards medals and (in most cases) trophies, there’s a perverse satisfaction to seeing Telltale go to the trouble of animating such a large number of deaths across the four episodes. It adds a bit of replay value to an otherwise fairly short game, which barely hits the 10 hour mark before reaching its conclusion.
Real praise can be given to Jurassic Park: The Game’s presentation which, dull narrative aside, does capture a similar cadence to the films. The visuals are clean, yet slightly exaggerated, making characters and dinosaur models stand out against a mostly rudimentary environment. The animation is decent enough, conveying emotions and actions well. The sound also deserves praise, with solid voice-work that’s sadly wasted on a dull script and dialogue which feels disconnected from context. The music is great too, with some smaller tracks feeling similar to the John Williams bombast we’ve come to expect from this franchise. The only downside is a few technical woes, including frame rate dips, stuttering between scenes and even a few crashes on the third episode.
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Jurassic Park: The Game is an underwhelming take on Spielberg’s iconic film, which fails to add much to the experience. Though it manages to get the aesthetic of the film right, along with some sadistic deaths that lend it a 90s adventure game charm, it’s not enough to overcome trite gameplay, technical failings and a lacklustre narrative core. It’s hard to invest in characters when they so clearly fall into predictable tropes, and everything else that should hold the game together is weak, at best. Unless you’re a Telltale die-hard who needs to explore everything this developer had to offer, or a Jurassic Park nut who must experience every way to re-enter the pre-historic death trap, this one is perhaps better left in the past.
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VERDICT
"Though Jurassic Park manages to get the aesthetic of the film right, it’s not enough to overcome trite gameplay, technical failings and a lacklustre narrative core." OVERALL: 5/10 |