Jurassic Park: The Game Review

Jurassic Park as a franchise is almost as untameable as the monstrous dinosaurs that inhabit its extensive fiction. It really is a wonder how any success was found with any of the three movies, the countless videogames, books, or any other form of media Jurassic Park sunk its teeth into. When Spielberg captured lightning in a bottle with the first film everyone and their mothers tried to recapture that same magic in any and all forms they could but all were meet with failure. Even the sequel directed by Spielberg himself was critically and commercially reviled, and since then Jurassic Park has failed to receive the proper treatment it deserves. With Jurassic Park: The Game, Telltale -developer of traditional point-and-click adventure games- decided to take a crack at telling a compelling and classic Jurassic Park story. Telltale has always had a penchant for strong storytelling but could they pull of the inherently action filled Jurassic Park franchise.

Unfortunately they stumble, hard and fast, making them the latest victim to the dinosaurs insatiable appetite. The game starts off as a simple adventure game, it just so happens to be set on Isla Nublar within the timeline of the first Jurassic Park film. It isn't long until it quickly devolves into a series of tedious, frustrating, and punishing quick-time-events; the button prompts come fast and obscured as Telltale attempts to mimic similar mechanics from far superior games like Heavy Rain. Trading fast button presses for legitimate action sequences, making the entire game a roughly 5 hour process of trail-and-error. Interactive buttons are nearly impossible to see with dark environments and poorly placed prompts being among the many problems, prompts are also erratically different in their timing. It should be pretty obvious you spend a large majority of your time in this game fleeing from dinosaurs which makes all the flaws I just mentioned incredibly frustrating when the sense of urgency is at its height, it feels as if the game is actively working against you and its infuriating.

It's not all bad, the games characters are well developed and realistically portrayed given the circumstances. The voice-acting lended to each of the frequently newly introduced characters are all top-notch as are the lines they speak. The writing and the story are where this game exceed, picking up with the fate of the Barbasol can Dennis Nedry had filled with dinosaur embryos and dropped when attacked by one of the islands more flamboyant dinos. The story follows a fast-paced and often dramatic race to the coast with numerous unforeseen twists that legitimately had me shocked; fantastic new dinosaurs are consistently introduced including a cunningly poisonous little bugger that is at the center of some of the games most thrilling moments.

Jurassic Park is great, except the part where you have to play it. If this had been the plot of a new entry in the Jurassic Park film series it would have been mind-blowing instead its a shoddily if still lovingly made videogame.
Telltale clearly loves the Jurassic Park franchise with plenty of winks and nods to the original film, even rewarding those who know exactly how many time to flip the primer switch. Telltale was just not ready to delve into such an action oriented game with little to no experience, instead opting to take the easy way out creating what amounts to a 5 hour quick-time-event.

(3 out of 5)