Jurassic Park: The Game – Review
Platform | Release Date
PC | November 15, 2011Developed by Telltale Games
Published by Telltale Games
The Pitch:
Security systems have failed and the creatures of the park roam free. Now, a rogue corporation will stop at nothing to acquire the dinosaur embryos stolen and lost by Dennis Nedry. Experience a brand new adventure set during the events of the first Jurassic Park movie and see new areas and dinosaurs in this landmark adventure 65 million years in the making!
Despite being full of plot holes, I’ve maintained that Heavy Rain was an important step for the ‘classic’ adventure genre. Quantic Dream built upon their foundation of Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy and crafted a game with the purpose of telling a branching story. Instead of utilizing the old photo-hunt or item combination mechanics of yesteryear, they made simple, everyday motions part of the gameplay. Failing wouldn’t mean you lost, it just meant something wasn’t done well (or at all). In other cases, failure to perform the proper actions would result in the death of a character. Again, you didn’t “lose” the game, the story would progress as if that’s what was intended to happen.
Sure, quick time events have become overused since God of War was released, but with their “no game over” implementation in Heavy Rain, they became an interesting mechanic and helped shape the overall story. But what would happen if you just wanted to tell a singular story, removing the possibility of multiple outcomes? With specific beats, you can still have the didn’t-do-so-good outcome, but ultimately a deviation from the set path will result in a “try again” unless it was scripted. As a result, you’ll end up with the same characters at the same point in the story. This is what you get with Jurassic Park: The Game.
I can understand why Telltale has decided to change up their formula. It’s clear that there’s a fairly significant amount of fatigue with the point-and-click adventure, and unless they wanted to see numbers trail off, something had to be updated. New seasons of Sam & Max and Monkey Island just aren’t going to cut it. When you base your entire line on nostalgia, eventually those rose glasses will clear leaving people to realize that dated mechanics fell by the wayside for a reason.
It’s also fairly telling that despite writing the book on how to properly release episodic content, Telltale has decided to force users into a multiple episode purchasing model. To get into Jurassic Park: The Game, you’ll have to drop three sawbacks and honestly, that’s a big leap of faith for a game that looks like an original Xbox title… but Jurassic Park, right? Eh.
The story starts off well enough, being based on the missing Barbasol can that Nedry dropped when he had his guts ripped apart by a dilophosaurus. In fact, the entire first episode is fairly well done and contains plenty of call-backs to the original film. It’s when Telltale sticks to this nostalgia that they’re the most successful. When left to their own devices, they just produce a weak story set in an unseen part of dino island.
This is particularly noticeable with the characters. You’re never really sure how to feel about Oscar and Billy, who are introduced in episode two. Are they good hearted dude-bros here to save the day, or just a couple of angry mercs? During episode three, there’s a scene that’s supposed to come off as being very monumental, but due to the missteps with their character development, just comes across as unintentionally hilarious. When Oscar says that he has to “go into stealth mode”, I just about lost my shit.
Nima, one of Nedry’s smuggler friends, is basically the game’s Michelle Rodriguez. She sucks, she’s a terrible actor, and I never cared if she lived or died. The only characters that you get attached to are Gerry Harding (he’s in the first movie) and his daughter, and even he has his moments of complete idiocy.
What little tension exists is most certainly thrown aside when you have to work some of the game’s puzzles. Dinosaurs on your tail? Let’s just stop and do this swap puzzle first. The rest of the world may as well not exist when you’re trying to figure out how to properly align a set of roller coaster cars or figure out which battery you’ll need to power your helicopter. Did you know there was an actual amusement park on the island where the dinosaur park was? “Spared no expense.” It’s not outside the realm of possibility, but I’d hope that the rich clientele who were supposed to visit JP in the first place would spend their time admiring the brutal prehistoric majesty instead of riding the Bone Shaker.
The truth of the matter is that despite admirable intentions of changing their tired formula, Telltale just misses the mark with Jurassic Park. While the story stuff does sometimes work when you’re not rolling your eyes at cheesy dialog, Telltale’s new mechanics fight against these successes as much as the old ones ever did. This game feels like an experiment, and considering we’ve seen basically nothing from what The Walking Dead game will be, they very well may be waiting to see the reception on JP:TG and make proper alterations.
All was not lost though. One thing Jurassic Park: The Game did was make me go out and buy the Jurassic Park Blu-ray collection then promptly watched the hell out of the first movie. That’s a great movie you guys, and you’re better off spending the $30 on that.
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I was interested in this game until I realized Telltale was doing it.
Great review. I like JP a lot when I was a kid. Not sure if I’d like it enough to buy the Bluray, but I appreciate the recommendation. I’m certainly not spending the money on this pile of . . . stuff
Amazon had the JP Trilogy on Blu-ray for $30 for about a week straight prior to, and after Black Friday. That’s when I bought it. It’s up to $50 now though so you’d kind of need to like the other two movies too. For $30, it was worth it even just for the first movie.