I played the first Jurassic World game and while I didn’t platinum that due to the annoying database trophy, I did enjoy it and I’m a big fan of operation genesis on the PS2. So it makes sense that I picked up this game to play and expected to enjoy it, and that I did.
First things first, let’s talk about the campaign in this game. It’s very short, 5 missions that can be done in less than 3 hours and they’re not incredible by any stretch of the imagination. It’s a rinse and repeat of the same, catch this dinosaur, put it in an enclosure, make it happy. This isn’t anything special but it’s more used like a tutorial and gets you used to the new scientist system as well as keeping your eye out for wild dinos in the challenges and knowing what to do with them.
Then we move on the real meaty balls of the game. The chaos theory mode is very, very good and very, very fun. This mode lets you play through the films and make it ‘work’ this time. It kicks off with Jurassic park, slapping you onto Isla Nublar and letting you recreate the park that started it all. This seems to follow the film as close as reasonable but instead when the shit hits the fan, you fix it before that lawyer guy gets eaten with his pants down. Why he decided to hide from a T-Rex and then rip his pants off I’ll never know.
I absolutely loved this part of the game, seeing the little Easter eggs like what happened to the Spinosaur from JP3 and the planned Jurassic park San Diego is great. The missions are a fair length, some are only an hour, Jurassic World took me about 8 (possible due to being terrible). All in all this section was around 18 hours for me so it’s a fair part of the game.
Sandbox mode is better too. You can have ‘square maps’ which are huge so you can make proper Jurassic World sized parks and fill it with all these new dinosaurs. The Mosasaur is as great as in the film with the iconic shark grab out the water, and all the new sea dino’s are good although I do think we need a few more with more options to decorate the lagoons. Flying dinos are great too though, there aren’t too many of them. You can however decorate their aviaries and their habitation requirements are better than the lagoon creatures, which from what I can tell just require water.
Now, this is where the game kicks into high gear. The challenges. I’m currently on the last challenge and these take some time. Around 7 hours per challenge and with 5 this is about 35 hours of game time. That being said I am trying to do them on Jurassic difficulty for that sweet sweet platinum. These are fun though, while being very challenging with its absurd staffing cost and a storm every 2 seconds.
I’m very impressed with this game. Much better than the first one. Not sure what they could really do for the next game in terms of campaigns, I think hybrid splicing is going to be essential as that’s the only thing id say this game really lacks. Things like more dinos and decorations are a natural addition to a sequel.
I’d give this game 9/10 Pure Tasty Gaming. It’s banging and with some hybrids, more sea and sky boys with a similar chaos theory system the next game will be an easy 10.
Reviewed by MoonHead
Released November 9th 2021, Sony Playstation 5.
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