JURASSIC WORLD EVOLUTION
Park strife
RELEASED OUT NOW! Reviewed on PC
Also on Ps4, Xbox One Publisher Frontier
Jeff Goldblum appears in the top-right of the screen and mutters some twaddle about chaos. Chaos? There’s no chaos here. Our park is running like clockwork: visitor numbers are up, there are six dinosaurs on display, there’s a fast-food joint and clothes shop boosting our rating to almost two stars out of five, and… oh dear, what’s that thumping sound? Ten minutes later we see our profits plunge and our guests drop like flies. Turns out life did find a way…
Jurassic World Evolution takes all the thrills of middle management and adds the real possibility of your exhibits getting loose and killing people. And they will get free: the game makes sure of it, despite all your planning and fence-building. What did you think was going to happen?
Your parks – five of them – are scattered across the “Five Deaths” archipelago from Michael Crichton’s novels. Your prehistoric pets have two ratings: health, which is self-explanatory, and comfort, which depends on how well their environmental, social, and gastronomic needs are being met. A drop in the comfort rating leads to thoughts of escape, a fencing breach and a rampage. Jurassic World Evolution could be a sequel to developer Frontier’s 2016 Planet Coaster – the type of sequel that has slightly fewer features, though it tries to hide this behind dinosaurs and famous faces. Frontier has taken a proven structure and stretched a bestselling covering over it, genetically modifying its own game. Handing a great developer a great licence should work, and it does most of the time; there’s just a feeling that it’s holding back, making you feel like the training wheels are on for much too long.
Hopping into one of the tourist hamster balls and going for a ride among the brachiosaurs is hugely satisfying, as is the thought of how much work you’ve put in to get to that point, but for a game full of big ideas and bigger creatures, it thinks awfully small.
As well as Jeff Goldblum, Bryce Dallas Howard (Claire Dearing) and BD Wong (Dr Henry Wu) reprise their movie roles.