Commendable movie tie-in a great deal of fun
All too often, blockbuster movies will have a half-baked video game release alongside, presumably for no other reason other than to drum up further interest in the brand.
Aliens: Colonial Marines, 007 Legends and Wreck-It-Ralph (the game) are among some of the worst tie-ins in recent memory, but the list of offenders is exhaustive. It is always a pleasant surprise, then, when developers go the extra mile to provide a game based on a new movie release that doesn’t simply feel like a tacked-on boardroom decision purely for marketing purposes.
One such game is the latest effort from Frontier Developments is Jurassic World Evolution. Evolution is a park management game much in the same vein as Rollercoaster Tycoon or Theme Park World.
Although Evolution is not as deep as your typical management game, it provides content and variety in a number of ways that differentiate it from your run-of-the-mill Tycoon clone.
Evolution begins with a seamlessly integrated tutorial that explains the many mechanics of the game at an extremely relaxed pace. Evolution explains that you are the new guy who is tasked with managing and curating a series of island parks, building and revamping the facilities, creating enclosures and ultimately filling these enclosures with a large variety of deadly dinosaurs.
The amount of tasks you must complete would almost be headache-inducing if the results weren’t so consistently rewarding. You must provide the guests to your park a safe and controlled environment, supplying them with endless places to spend their money so that you have enough cash income to research and incubate new breeds of dinosaurs.
Perhaps the most fun part of the game is the dinosaurs themselves. Each breed of dino has different characteristics that define their happiness and likeliness to break out of their enclosures and make quick snacks of your park’s guests.
While the dinosaurs are certainly the most fun facet of Jurassic World Evolution, their presence can be seriously headache-inducing as it seems that they can cause trouble or break out of their enclosures a little too often.
While not as deep as other park management simulators, Jurassic World Evolution is a commendable movie tie-in game and a great deal of fun. While it is not without its faults, this game is a definite recommendation for any and all fans of the movie franchise.