Accompanying one of the most successful movie of all time in Jurassic World, Lego in association with Travelers Tales games and Warner bro’s games released its own full collection of all 4 of the Jurassic adventures into one colossal game. The only thing that was colossal about this game however was how much of a let down it was.
I know that Lego’s target audience is mostly kids under the age of 10 but I was curious to see if the game would still be entertaining for people who are older. With Jurassic Park 3 having come out in 2001 I doubt the majority of the kids playing this game will have even watched the first three movies so I thought maybe they are making their game more for the people who have. Well after having played the game I can say that this was not the case.
For starters much of the game’s story was changed from how it was in the movie to fit some of the gameplay elements a little better. This was most obvious in the part of the game where you actually play through Jurassic World. That seemed pretty odd to me since it is probably going to be the part of the game that most of the people who actually play the game will know best since it is the newest segment and as I said some of the players might not have even seen the first three films. For most games I don’t think that this would matter all that much but if you are playing the game for nostalgic purposes this can take away from the game a little bit.
The graphics in the game were actually really nice to look at. I found myself really enjoying the backgrounds of the levels and cut scenes. While the characters didn’t look all that impressive they looked how they should since it is a lego game after all. One thing that seemed very off to me was the sound of the voice over at certain parts where they took the sound from the original movies and put it in with new voice over for the less important characters. It just didn’t sound very good hearing new well done voice over and old voices with some weird editing done to them. The dinosaurs on the other hand sounded much better especially the raptors which sounded exactly like they do in the movies which I really appreciated.
The gameplay was pretty odd to me not being an avid player of Lego games I didn’t know exactly what to do at the start of the game. Which isn’t really a big problem to me because I appreciate games that don’t walk you through them and that expect you to figure it out yourself as an added challenge. I don’t think that this was what Lego had intended though and I think the game would have benefited from a five second tutorial on the function of having to destroy things and rebuild them into other items to progress in the game.
Sometimes this function was just tedious and annoying like having to build under like a branch or something so that your character can climb under it. There was more room under the branch before I added to it, so my characters was essentially giving themself less room to get through. It was just annoying. I also thought that having to use certain characters abilities to move on was a little pointless. Especially when the characters have abilities that just don’t make any sense like a fifteen something year old doing engineering that other engineers can’t do and for some reason all the women in the game can jump higher than any man who was just weird.
Overall the game wasn’t completely not worth playing. I really enjoy reliving the old movies. It was really fun getting to play as Dr. Grant and all the other characters. It brought back a bunch of memories of watching the original trilogy when I was a kid and that was really cool. Playing the new movie wasn’t bad either it just didn’t have the same impact as playing something that you grew up with.
I do think that if you haven’t seen the original movies you should watch them before playing the game otherwise I would say that you should probably pass on this game, because really the only thing that makes this game any good is the nostalgia you get from playing through one of your favorite childhood movies and without that the game is just bland. If the Jurassic park movies had never existed and this game came out I don’t think anyone would give it a higher rating than a 4, but as we all know they do exist and because of that I would put this game at a 6 out of 10