Jurassic Park: The Game

With "Jurassic Park: The Game", Telltale Games' took their experience with point-and-click adventures (after the 3D Sam & Max games and Tales of Monkey Island), and sent the game's style towards a more cinematic approach. What I mean is, there's lots of cut-scenes and the action is limited to basic actions; with a lack of objects to interact with and plenty of quick-time-events (QTE).

If playing on an Xbox 360 controller, the QTEs involve pressing buttons, holding them, or flicking the analogue sticks in the required direction. In other scenes, you will simply pan the camera and press the on-screen prompt to look at the object, or interact with the character.

You never directly control your character, i.e. make them walk across the room. There's no exploration in the game at all. You are either in a static position, or are involved in an action cut-scene.

This will put many gamers off who will argue it's not so much of a game, or a poor one at that. However, if you view it more like a film, with some interactive elements, then there's plenty to enjoy. Unlike a film though, it does last around 6 hours.

The QTEs have varying input windows so sometimes you can casually press them, whereas others require quick reactions. It seems a bit arbitrary though and some will definitely catch you off guard so you will miss them. Missing certain ones triggers a death sequence, but you can quickly load back before it happened to have another try. You are graded in each section, so missing prompts will lower your score. It's not a game that you would replay though, so the scores are somewhat meaningless.

The game's story is original, although linked to the first film. The island has been evacuated due to a storm, however a few people still remain. There's Veterinarian Gerry Harding, his daughter Jess, Nima and Miles who are stealing dinosaur embryos, and scientist Dr. Laura Sorkin. Additionally, a team of mercenaries, consisting of Oscar, Yoder and "DeCaf" are hired by InGen to go in to rescue them. Since you switch between the characters, it really does feel more like a film rather than having a main character whose fate you decide.

There's constant peril which creates tension. The game is really good at creating suspense and drama which is critical in this game. The story isn't complex because it is mainly about survival, but the relationships between the characters constantly changes as their true motives or feelings are revealed. It doesn't reach the same emotion as Telltale's future game The Walking Dead but you can see that they did build upon the foundations of this game.

There's the occasionally wonky dialog where the volume is inconsistent. Early on in the game there were a few scenes that repeated, but other than that; the game plays fine. The graphics are fine, but the dinosaurs do look far better than the character models. The sound is particularly great for the dinosaurs too which contributes to the tension.

I think your enjoyment with “Jurassic Park: The Game” depends on how you perceive it. If you want to experience a survival story with dinosaurs, then it's worth checking out. If you want an engaging game to test your skills, then you have to look elsewhere.