Write a comment
Let me start this review by saying that I’m really not the biggest fan of the Jurassic Park franchise. I’ve read the first book back in middle school and seen some of the first Jurassic Park at a young age but that’s about it. Truthfully, the first film kinda freaked me out at that young age and scared me to the point where I won’t even watch the series at all (Silly, I know). I also haven’t really kept up with the gaming side of the franchise, but occasionally one does enter my radar. Which is where Jurassic World Evolution 3 comes in: The third entry in the park building Evolution series. I do want to stress that I’ll be approaching this review as a casual park builder player so I won’t be going too in-depth with what’s on offer. With that being said, this is a fun game but it has some issues that I feel may hurt the enjoyment for many casual gamers.
But before I talk about the issues with the game, let me start with the positives as I do have a lot to mention. For starters and most important, the console version of this game, of which this review is based on, works and plays very well. Unlike other park sims I’ve played on Xbox, I was quickly able to get used to the controls and not have to fiddle with any options right out of the gate. I also never encountered any sudden acceleration when moving and placing items was very easy to do, so I must commend Frontier Developments for nailing this aspect. On an unfortunate note, I do need to address one minor issue that occurred which soured my first impressions: After a day one patch came out, I couldn’t actually play the game as it kept crashing on me when it started and, when I finally got into the game properly, I was only able to progress just past the intro map in the campaign before it crashed again. Thankfully, that issue was patched out the following day and I haven’t experienced any crashes since then, so kudos to them for fixing that problem quickly. Back to the positives, I also really enjoyed how the game’s campaign slowly eased you into park management and also introduced new gameplay mechanics in a logical and meaningful way so as to not overwhelm the player with tons of tutorials and pop-up boxes. The lack of huge pop-up menus is good as I feel they would’ve taken away from seeing the sheer beauty of this game. Yeah, this is one of the better looking park sims I’ve played in a while. Everything, even the human NPCs, are modeled and rendered amazingly well, with just the slightest bit of realism, and I like how you can not only get up close to each dinosaur, but also view them like a visitor via the tours or viewing ports on the enclosures. Where I will say the game does kinda begin to falter a bit is in the sound department. Now, while the dino’s sound great and I do like the little incidental sounds here and there, especially the park noises you can hear, it’s the actual voice cast that is hit or miss for me. Some of the voice actors are decent and do a good job at what they’re given but others, especially Jeff Goldblum, really come off as iffy at best. I know that’s a thing with Jeff and I do think he’s a good actor, I feel he could’ve just held back his style of acting just a bit here. Actually, if I could go off for a wee bit on a small tangent regarding the dinosaurs themselves: What is up with some of the dinosaur names? Like Gallimimus and Velociraptor are fine, but then you got names like Yutyrannus, Attenborosaurus, and Archaeornithomimus. I get scientists are the ones naming them but you’d think they’d at least come up with a more creative name than those names, right? At least the raptors don’t have feathers on them (Sorry, I’m a full Scaley-Dino lover).
It’s when we get to the actual playing of the game itself where I begin to feel mixed on the title. To start, for being a park builder, there really isn’t much in the way of customization you can do. Outside of choosing what a store sells, what realistic color a dinosaur can be, and various decorations, there really isn’t much here, though I like how you can choose what style the buildings you place can have (be it classic Jurassic Park or modern Jurassic World). You can’t even adjust individual prices on anything, so no charging visitors $15 just to use the bathroom. Another thing I didn’t really much enjoy was just how picky both the guests and dinosaurs can be and I do mean picky. With guests, if you don’t have stores selling just the right item or offering the right food or, in the eyes of the guests, good stuff to do inside the stores, then they’ll be unhappy and spend less or not even go there. Sometimes, it makes sense what they want but, other times, I was raising an eyebrow at what they preferred giving the environment for the scenario. Like, why would you want something hot in a hot environment? I did notice that the pathfinding for the human NPCs, while good at times, tends to be on the stupid side. For example, I had a map where I had a decent path laid out near an enclosure and set it up with a store on one side, a medical facility in the middle, and a hotel on the other side with a restaurant selling burgers. I thought “Hey, this is a decent build!” but, apparently not! Half way through, I get a pop-up saying guests are complaining about lack of space to move around, which I thought was odd as there was plenty of space. That is, until I saw what was going on: All the guests were crowded around the first store and ignoring the rest of the area. Even when I added an extra pathway, they still crowded around that store, like it was selling the latest Pokemon cards and everyone was trying to get a pack before the scalpers grabbed them. I even checked the area fully and didn’t find anything blocking their path, which can happen if you forget to move one small rock as some items can camouflage with the pathways. While I do like how there’s an option to show what paths can cause conflicts, I have to question it as some paths that I feel are well made are considered problematic while others are OK.
As for the dinosaurs? They aren’t quite as picky as the humans but they are still kind of needy, which really sucks if you got two different breeds inside an area as their needs may conflict with each other and you’ll end up with an area that looks more like the inside of Collyer Brothers house than DisneyWorld. Though I’ll give it this, there is a chart that tells you how everyone is feeling when you’re adjusting or placing items and it is easy to read and understand to where you don’t need a master’s degree to figure it out. At the same time, despite how picky they are, keeping the dinosaurs satisfied is surprisingly easy to do, despite their enclosures making one's feng shui alarm go off more often than not. Also, it’s best to make sure they are well fed, so make sure the herbivores have plenty of greens and carnivores have plenty of meat either via a feeder or live prey and make sure both are well stocked or else they can die of starvation.
Another sour note of the game I want to mention are the Dino Attacks. Once in a while, dinosaurs may either roam in and request take out in the form of your guests and workers or, if you aren’t paying attention, the electrified fences may fail and a dinosaur or two may escape. While, yes, you can let your sadistic side out and let the people get nommed; remember, you are trying to run a legitimate theme park and letting your guests live out their voracious fantasies is not good for your bottom line. So, in order to combat these attacks and prevent your park from being the inspiration for YouTubers who discuss theme park accidents, you first need to build an Emergency Bunker for everyone to evacuate to and a Response Facility to handle the dinosaurs. Once the dinos are free or have wandered into your park, you can send these guys out and they’ll tranq the dinos, putting them into a peaceful sleep, allowing you to send a crew out and add the dinos to your park. These guys are also able to tranquilize sick dinos for the medical staff to examine them and, in a cool bit of gameplay, you can actually take control of the Response team, as well as other team members, and do the dirty work yourself. I do have to say that the controls here weren’t the best and felt just slightly loose but not enough to feel bad. That being said, despite being a cool addition and a decent tension adder, this never really felt like a major problem. As long as you’re keeping an eye on the generators, making sure the dinos are well-fed, and you have security cameras set up, dino attacks become just a minor hindrance then anything substantial. That’s not to say it’s a bad addition, I just would’ve loved to have seen it fleshed out just a bit more. Like, imagine a mode where you play the Response Team and your job is to hunt down and tranq all the escaped dinos in a first person horror game or, heck, imagine being able to play AS the dinos and wreak havoc yourself! I did make an interesting observation and this is honestly a bit funny. While I was playing the game and was controlling the Response Team, I took a close look at their Tranq Rifles and noticed it had an underbelly M203 Grenade Launcher attached. I don’t know why that got my attention but I’m just having this image of one of the members shouting ‘Say “Hello” to my little friend!’ and firing a grenade from the tranq as a last resort. That aside, though you have to admit that would be funny, the only other real sour note I want to mention is the campaign itself. To be honest, it’s just OK at best and mediocre at worst. To put it bluntly, It’s really just a glorified longform tutorial to get you used to the mechanics of the game, with some minor story bits here and there, and nothing really substantial. Not that I was expecting a game where you manage a theme park to have storytelling to rival Mass Effect, mind you, but it would’ve been nice to have just a decent story. Though, come to think of it? That actually would be kind of a cool game idea. I will also admit the dinosaur-activist faction in the game, who will try to sabotage your parks, is a cool idea as I can totally see something like them existing in real life if dinos were somehow resurrected. Still, while I’ve no doubt fans of the Jurassic World series would enjoy the campaign but, for others, it’s good for the first few levels then you’re probably better off playing the sandbox mode for the rest of the game.
Despite those sour points and not really liking some of the gameplay choices, there are still some things in this game I really enjoyed. I like how you don’t just have the dinosaurs outright and, instead, literally reconstruct them via researching their DNA from fossils. Yes, while there are some dinosaurs out in the wild you can obtain from events that happen in game, most of them are acquired from reconstruction of DNA. However, you don’t do the reconstructing yourself nor do you do the excavating for the DNA samples, despite that honestly being a cool idea. No, here, that’s relegated to the scientists you hire and each one offers a few stat bonuses as well as a small bonus trait to better aid your park and efforts. And, yes, because you’re reconstructing dinos from DNA, that means you can create the infamous Hybrid dinos from the Jurassic World films, including the Indominus Rex, though you don’t get to make the Human-Dino hybrids from the scrapped Jurassic Park IV, which would’ve been awesome. I know not everyone is into the whole hybrid idea from the films, but it is still a neat idea and, again, something I can honestly see happening in real life. Just a small heads up when you’re at the egg stage; be sure you choose the right sex before hatching them or, you’ll end up like me, and accidentally end up with two female dinos and have to spend cash and research a new egg so you can have a male. Who knows, maybe the male dino liked having two females, I don’t know how dinosaur relationships work. Something else I really enjoyed and this is something I do wish more park sims would offer is that you can actually visit the park like a guest and view the dinos from either the various enclosures you build or participate in the vehicle tours either with the jeeps or those round spheres from Jurassic World…which, I’m going to sound a bit sadistic here, but I wish this game had a minigame where the dinos participate in a soccer (or Football if you’re European) match and can kick one of those spheres around with the humans inside or participate in a cooking show as a Julia Child-style Dinosaur where you crack the spheres open like eggs. Can you tell this game is making me long for a proper dino game where you play as a dino going after humans? I don’t mean that as a bad thing but more like “Hey, this game is giving me longings for other dino-type games!” type feeling.
But, if I may go off on a brief tangent, I do have a major problem with this game and I do feel some may share my same feelings about it. For all the stuff I like about this game and for how much I do enjoy it, I’m not a personal fan of how in-depth it is. Hear me out, I don’t mind when games go in-depth. In fact, I’m always impressed when any game does it, like the recent Delta Force with its weapons customization. With park sims, I understand that you do need a level of depthness in order to make it feel like a sim and less like what you’d find on mobile marketplaces, but I feel there needs to be a balance between park simulator and video game. The original Roller Coaster Tycoon, for example, I feel pulls this off perfectly as, while you do have to balance a budget and plan accordingly, you can still treat it as just a fun video game. But, as of lately, I feel these types of games are putting more effort into being lifelike and less into the fun aspect and I feel Evolution 3 teeters between the two, with more weight on the lifelike side. I’m not saying it shouldn’t have any sort of depth but, rather, I would’ve liked to have seen either a better balance between the two or just have a sandbox mode free of everything. Yeah, you can customize the sandbox mode’s options to be free of some things but, to me, it feels like putting a plate of fries and onion rings next to a mediocre burger. Sure, the fries and rings are nice and all and the burger is decent, but you kinda would’ve liked something tastier and with less burns. Don’t take this to mean I want simple simulators, I don’t. I get why simulators have to be in-depth and I have played many in-depth sims like American Truck Simulator and, bit of an oddball, DayZ. I’m just asking that there’d be a nice balance between an actual Simulator and a Fun Video Game. Then again, I know there are those out there who prefer a more in-depth style of simulation and if you’re a fan of that, more power to you!
Tangent aside, Jurassic World Evolution 3 is definitely one of the better park builders on consoles and, probably, one of the better pieces of media to come out barring the Jurassic World name. As someone who doesn’t really care for the Jurassic Park series on a whole and is more a Dinotopia fan, I really enjoyed this game and had fun designing and building my own dino-tastic theme park. Even as a casual park sim fan, this was still a fun title. While some of the issues I mentioned do hold this back from being one of the top park sims, it wasn’t enough to really ruin the game in the long run. If anything, I’m just happy we console gamers finally got a decent park builder on consoles that plays well out of the box!
