Jurassic World: Evolution.
2018’s Jurassic World: Evolution is the successor to the amazing game that was Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis, unfortunately it had an incredibly rocky start. Having less features than its predecessor it came as quite a disappointment to myself and many of the JW:E community. This isn’t to say that it didn’t have it’s positives, hence being on my top ten games of the decade. They also very much improved the game over time, with the developers slowly adding much needed features with every update.
This game severely improved upon the base campaign of the original, it definitely felt as if you were achieving something rather than just “building a park” full of dinosaurs. You are guided in your journey to rebuild “Jurassic World,” which is what the sequels are renamed too, by four main NPCs. Three of these NPCs are actually returning cast members from the films themselves, Claire Dearing played by Bryce Dallas Howard, Dr Henry Wu played by DB Wong and finally the very famous character of Ian Malcolm played by the ever so charismatic Jeff Goldblum.
Having these characters from the films actually come in and reprise their rolls for this game was very immersive and was such a delight as a long time fan of the franchise. This alone for me was enough to make it into my top 10, let alone above Far Cry, this is because whilst the original did have the actors from the films they only had set phrases to say. In Jurassic World: Evolution however they actually guide you on your way to operating these park(s). This is something I will go into later. Also Jeff Goldblum.
I remember the original game being very unforgiving when it wanted to be, screwing you over with features like tornadoes and dinosaurs spreading diseases like wildfire. However, this game definitely screws you over aswell in different ways; tornadoes and diseases are still around to kill your dinosaurs or destroy your park but they are far more forgiving now. The tornadoes don’t even kill your dinosaurs any more. This, whilst appreciated, took away the severity of the tornadoes allowing me to just get on with it rather than panicking about the destruction, as in the game it is much cheaper to rebuild enclosures than to recreate dinosaurs.
This isn’t to say the game doesn’t have ways to screw you over like the original. A top the main NPCs there are three factions, Security, Science and Entertainment. These factions have Head Officers that ask you to do mini sidequests such as photographing creatures fighting, or installing visitor shelters. The factions have a reputation system which is granted from doing their quests, if a faction has too little reputation in comparison to another, they may choose to sabotage your park. This is how the game screws you, by allowing them to make your dinosaurs fall ill, open the enclosure gates or even completely shut off the parks power supply. This, whilst annoying as a first time player, actually became quite a challenging and enjoyable feature as it always kept you doing something.
The game had some huge quality of life changes, allowing certain carnivores to live along side each other, as well as some herbivores and carnivores, which previously I do not recall being a feature. Perhaps the most amazing feature of the game being in charge of not just one park, but multiple across all the islands in the chain. In order to master all these parks you have to over come different challenges and difficulties each different island possess. One Island is incredibly small and you have to over come the space dilemma by enclosing different species together to save space. Whilst another island has lots of weather problems meaning you need to always be on the look out for broken fences, making sure your creatures do not escape. I loved the island feature because when one park was finished and there were no more missions you had another one to start on, increasing the play time of the game rather than it just being a one island sandbox.
As time went on the developers began adding new and better features such as the terrain tool, something that should have been there from the start. This allows you to change the ground to be sand or rock rather than just plain grass. They also added a feature to place singular rocks and trees for more detail when creature enclosures, this allow you to create certain “biomes” for your dinosaurs rather than every enclosure looking the same. Whilst these features should have been there from the start, they were not in the original and therefore were a welcome addition.
The developers also began releasing DLCs which had their own campaigns and islands for more interesting and unique content. This included extra dinosaurs, which was my personal want from the expansions, and some nice immersion features such as a new herbivore feeder that allowed you to feed different plants to the dinosaurs that preferred them increasing their park “rating.” Alongside the expansion DLCs they also released small “dinosaur pack” DLCs which included three or more dinosaurs for only a small price. This, to me, was an incredible way to keep the game alive and still fund the developers to make more content.
Finally, my favourite and most important part about the game, the dinosaurs themselves. Each dinosaur was animated and designed so well, they all had unique details such as the skin overlapping on the T-Rex’s neck or even their own unique killing animations when they fought one another. The dinosaurs all had multiple skins from a large pool to choose from, each change their colors in different ways. It was incredible to see all the dinosaurs with the unique behaviours and sounds all interacting with one another. It brought me many hours of joy to simply build enclosures and watch them simply live out their lives, in the post-game sandbox island it became more about the dinosaurs for me than maintaining a park. The visitors were minute in importance in comparison to building enclosures and watch the dinosaurs.
To sum up, this game was easily a top ten for me as it had been over a decade since Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis. When the game was announced I was giddy and so excited to play it, as it was one of the original games I played on the PS2. Seeing a proper sequel come to life on my PC was like reliving a huge portion of my childhood. Whilst it definitely had a rocky start, it was made up by the constant updates and changes to keep the game alive and interesting. I surely hope we get another game just like this in the next few years on the next generation of consoles, allowing them to make a bigger and better game in the long run. Whilst Park Simulator games are not my favourite genre, I still enjoyed the game on my first couple of playthroughs. The replay-ability is not something wrong with the game in itself but rather my own personal preference of genre as I would feel as if I am repeating myself each and every playthrough.
Harry.
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