Jurassic Park

By: The J Man

Jurassic Park made such a marketing splash when it was released, that a version of the game appeared on every console that was out at the time. Even the little Tiger handheld games had one. Most of these focused on some sort of scrolling action hooey. Only one, excluding the PC's flawed Trespasser, actually put you on the island in a true adventure, and tasked you with escaping.

You just happen to be looking at that game.

Jurassic Park CD represents a great example of smart designing. A la Road Avenger, they chose animation above FMV. A la Iron Helix, they chose to make a great adventure over trying to stuff a CD with video. Everything in the game takes advantage of the medium, but plays to making a top-notch, PC-esque experience. Truly, golf claps all around for you fellas. You've crafted an adventure based on a bloated IP that's actually worth playing through.

JP-CD begins with your helicopter unluckily crashing on the northern coast of the island; a typical "stranded" gimmick that you will see again in future JP games. The game takes place after the events in the book, but rarely references it. You'll see overturned cars and broken T-Rex fences, but you won't meet characters from the story or find many, if any, signs of their passing. Mostly the game just focuses on the core ideas - the island is abandoned, the park's systems are down, and the dinos are running free.

Exploration and escape is your main job here, not repairing the park. However, you are required to find and secure seven species of dino eggs before the company will send a rescue chopper. This is nothing more than a contrivance to get you into seven dino nests, but it isn't unwelcome. It gives you a goal, and keeps you moving around the park. As you progress, you'll always be looking for new keycards to expand your security clearance. There are also a generous dose of puzzles to defeat. Almost all of these are of the mechanical variety - leaky pipes, locked grate, bolted fence - and only require the requisite tools to defeat them. You'll find them scattered around throughout the park. Whenever dinosaurs get involved, you'll either zap them with various tranquilizing guns, or use objects to exploit some dino-weakness of theirs. These are always covered on kiosks scattered around, which play a short information video from paleontologist Robert Bakker, and contain the necessary clue within.

I'm not really jazzing this description up, so it sounds a little boring. I assure you though, the game is not. It's somewhat intellectual, taking more reference from the novel than the film, and quite entertaining. It is not, however, the thrill-a-minute action game from the other consoles. Dinos don't chase you. You don't outrun them in a jeep while shooting tranq darts from the back. Most of the time, you're just strolling through the park, looking for equipment, and watching dinosaurs. I like it. There are definitely moments where you're cornered and only have a few seconds to react, and the spitting Dilophosauruses frequently show up to give you something to shoot at, but the game is globally focused more on adventure. I find this a refreshing way to play though Jurassic Park, and more faithful to the book. Make no mistake though, there is a time limit before something happens, and dino eggs must be rushed back to the nursery after retrieval, but these are no life-or-death time constraints.

Now, it's the mid-90s, and you've got an adventure game. How's it gonna play? YOU GUESSED IT! JP uses the Myst style to move you around the park. You can only move between fixed points, but each point is a 360-degree panoramic screen of the area. It looks nice, and frees some of the fixed-screen restrictions of Myst. At least now you can look nearly everywhere you want to look. Also, there's much more activity and animation in each area than in Myst, from dinos milling about, to machines spinning, to spitters popping up to... spit at you. A lot of complaints about Myst were that it was too boring, because nothing "happened." Not the case here.

The command center keeps you on track, through constant video calls from the mainland.

Graphically, JP looks nice. Backgrounds are well drawn, and animation mixes in nicely. Every object is clear and understandable. If you've seen the movie, you'll recognize some familiar elements, like the look of the vehicles and the visitor's center, but everything else seems to be taken from the novels. The movie was great, but I like the fact that novel seems to be the inspiration for this game. It gives the designers more material to draw from, and ensures you won't be simply playing through the same areas you've already seen in the film. Sounds are great, CD audio, obviously, and perfectly atmospheric. Dinosaurs sound like they did in the film, and the jungle sounds, like the jungle. What little voice acting there is in the game is done reasonably well, and Bakker's video is clear, thankfully short, and generally useful.

Jurassic Park CD isn't a bad choice for any adventure gamer. If you really love adventure games, you know well that you can never have enough (they're not quite as replayable as other genres), and this one will fill your needs nicely.

-reviewed 9/6/02 - game copyright 1993 Sega

A true Jurassic Park adventure that's worth playing through.

Point & click with a console controller, some pixelated images here and there, not much to come back to once you've finished.

	8
	8
	n/a
	7
	86%

MobyGames - Jurassic Park
Gameplay video on YouTube