Jurassic World Evolution

Simulator games are a breed of their own and there are a tonne of different types of them. Economic Simulators are best known from titles such as SimCity or any of the Tycoon games such as Roller Coaster Tycoon or Zoo Tycoon. Jurassic World Evolution hopes to bring something new to the table: Dinosaurs. Developed and published by Frontier Developments Jurassic World Evolution is based on the 2015 film Jurassic World and has had a free update with content from the film’s sequel: Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. The game was released on the 12^th of June 2018 for PC, Xbox One and PS4.

tl;dr – rating: 8/10

Positives:

+ Easy to learn

+ In-depth management sim

+ Huge choice of dinosaurs

+ Can focus in on specific tasks or manage from above

+ Brilliant level of detail for each dinosaur – including animations

+ Easy to sink hours into

+ Freedom to build your own Jurassic Park any way you want

Negatives:

— Dig sites take a while and are fairly repetitive, no minigame or anything

— Incubation failures can be frustrating

— No aquatic or airborne creatures

— Only features dinosaurs from Jurassic and Cretaceous periods

So firstly I’ll just say that there are a few DLC packs for the game at this current time of writing. I bought the deluxe edition in a sale so this review is based on me playing with additional content pre-installed; the deluxe edition included five dinosaurs. At the end of the review I will do a separate section talking about all of the DLC content as a whole and what it added to my experience.

So that aside, Jurassic World Evolutions tasks the player to create a series of successful theme parks on each of the five islands of the Muertes Archipelago, or as they are often called: The Five Deaths. Each island has unique traits that bring new challenges, the first island acts as a tutorial island and walks you through the building of a park. There are five main gameplay aspects that remain fundamentally the same throughout the game and the game itself does a fairly good job of teaching it to you on the first island.

Job number one is to get some Dino DNA, so that you can actually put some Jurassic (or Cretaceous) in your park. You do this through sending expedition teams off to dig sites so they can bring back some fossils for you to extract DNA from. I’ve found that most of the time you will get fossils from dinosaurs that you have a lower percentage for, I’ve also found that some sites can become depleted over time meaning you eventually have to visit every site to complete all the genomes to 100%. The only downside to this is that it does seem random and getting the genome to 100% can take a while, I’ve had a few times where I’ve just sat on the screen waiting to see if I got the fossil I wanted or not. There is also nothing to do except wait, a minigame of some sorts (Like Disney’s Spectrobes) would of been fun.

Once you have your fossils your next job is to extract DNA from them. This will increase that dinosaur’s genome, as soon as it hits at least 50% you can then start incubating it and releasing it into your park! Do note however that the higher the genome the more likely the dinosaur is to survive the incubation process.

Now that you have dinosaurs to release, where do you put them? The game has a fairly easy system of building enclosures for your scaly inhabitants; the fences come in different sizes from small mesh fences (very cheap, I normally plan my enclosures with this first) to giant electrified concrete walls (which are good for some of the more people-hungry dinosaurs). When you’re building an enclosure one tip to think about is visibility. It’s all good and well having a sprawling enclosure where your dinosaurs can roam and frolic freely but if visitors to your park can’t see them then you’ll have unhappy guests and unhappy profits. I find it’s a good idea to use the Dinosaur Visibility view (in the management view tool) to see where your guests can see up to and I often put in the viewing platforms and areas first before my walls.

The final step is to release your dinosaurs into your enclosure, but wait! There are a few things you can do beforehand to make your dinosaurs real showstoppers. Research. Research is the last major system the game introduces and is the main way your parks will improve. You can research things such as building upgrades which include effects like making you dig teams bring back more valuable finds or making a power station less likely to have a power outage. You can also do genetic research here and this can help make your dinosaurs bigger and better, once a dinosaur’s genome is high enough you can use your genetic research to modify its DNA making it live longer than normal or giving it increased resistance to disease for example. Modifying the genome like this will normally give your dinosaurs a better rating (meaning more people will want to see it) but the downside is that the dinosaur will be less likely to survive the incubation process, it’s a typically risk vs. reward.

The risk vs. reward is a system designed to make the higher rating dinosaurs rarer and more valuable but can be very frustrating at times, a lot of the time I find myself making dinosaurs with negative survival chances and I have to use a lot of the building upgrades to bring the percentage back into the positive. This means a lot of the time my incubation will fail, I’ll receive a partial refund and I’ll have to try again. With the DLC’s included however there are new research options increasing the success rate for the building even further, but without the DLC it’s never a sure fire thing.

Once you’ve released your dinosaur into its paddock you’ll then need to provide it with a source of food and water. Dinosaurs eat from feeders that you can place in the enclosure; there are a few different types such as bush feeders, tree feeders and meat feeders. There is even a live bait feeder that releases goats into the enclosure (a reference to the first film). A water source is even easier to create and there is a tool in the landscaping options to create pools of water for the thirsty dinos to drink from.

So you’ve fed and watered your dinosaur but it’s still unhappy? Many dinosaurs have other requirements such as the amount of grass or trees in its habitat or maybe it’s lonely and needs another of its species to socialise with. There are many different things that can affect a dinosaurs happiness from overcrowding to just plain old bad weather, it is in your best interest to keep them happy however as happy dinosaurs make happy guests. That and if they are content with their surroundings they are less likely to break out of their enclosure and go on a rampage. I myself had a pair of stegosaurus dinosaurs, one died of old age and meant that the other felt lonely, I didn’t notice this in time and the dinosaur promptly broke a section of fence and decided to get some batting practise using my guests… there were a few lawsuits that day to say the least.

If the unthinkable does happen, it’s not the end of the world. It’s surprising how many guests are willing to forgive and forget when a Spinosaurus just ate their friend in front of them. However it will damage your funds if you’re getting hit by lawsuit after lawsuit because your raptors have gone all ‘Great Escape’ on you. If a dinosaur does break out you’ll need to send your park rangers to fix the fence as well as getting your asset containment unit (ACU) which is basically a helicopter that has a bloke with a tranquilliser gun in it, to tranq the dinosaur and transport it back to its enclosure.

So if you thought organising dig sites, extracting DNA, performing research and managing your dinosaur’s comforts was enough to keep a theme park tycoon busy then think again. The main focus for each island is the missions you’ll receive. Each island has a reward for getting it to a three star and five star park standard, you do this by making sure your guest’s needs are satisfied and by making sure there is a good variety of dinosaurs in your park. This can be seen as each islands main objective but you have three other characters who will be vying for your attention like a kid in a sweet shop. Science, Entertainment and Security. These are the three sectors that will have various contracts for you to complete, complete enough with one of them and you’ll receive additional rewards such as new dinosaurs or building upgrades. However, there is a catch, they all hate each other. Every time you do a contract with one of them, the other two will be a little bit unhappy about it, favouritism I know. When one of them feels they have been ignored too much they might even start sabotaging your park such as shutting down all your power stations (which can be disastrous if you’ve got electrified fences) or introducing diseases to your dinosaurs. The good news is that for each contract you complete it raises their reputation higher than it will lower it for completing a different contract. Meaning as long as you spread your contracts evenly you should be able to keep them all happy and playing nice whilst simultaneously reaping the rewards for helping them all.

A nice feature is the ability to focus on the minute details. Both the ranger jeeps and the ACU helicopter can be driven by the player, with the jeep being used to take pictures for the park. You can also zoom in on individual dinosaurs and turn off the information allowing you to view them as they walk about their enclosures. This is great since each and every dinosaur seems to have its own personality and all of the animations are brilliant from the armoured Ankylosaurus nibbling on greenery to the hulking Tyrannosaurus Rex chomping an unlucky guest, all of the animation work has been done in great detail and it really shines through to make your park feel alive.

As with any economic simulator game there is a whole bunch of other micro-management systems. Some are easier than others to sort out, such as making sure your guests have enough food, drink, shopping and fun facilities to satisfy their wants and desires. You also need to provide enough emergency shelters so your guests can be safe in case of a dinosaur breakout or a storm as well as managing your power production and usage, since any excess power still needs to be paid for. Each island will normally have some sort of ordeal for you to deal with too. The second island for example gets hit with storms fairly often; this means it’s a good idea to have plenty of storm defence so your buildings and fences stay in tip-top shape. Each island is also typically harder than the last; the fourth island in particular is difficult to achieve five stars on due to its very small size and its tendency to be hit by tornadoes…

One thing I wondered whilst playing this was where all the marine reptiles and Pterosaurs were… It seems odd to me that a game so heavily inspired by the films released with nothing involving these two big parts of the dinosaur world. Still the developers seem heavily involved with the community and we’ve already received surprise updates and DLC.

Now I understand management games aren’t for everyone, there are many places where they can feel boring and tedious but Jurassic World Evolution seems to resonate with my childhood heart. Many of the dinosaurs in the game are known to me and there is great variety. I would have loved to see some of the other prehistoric creatures like the giant dragonflies and aquatic predators of yore but what’s included is already great. My daughter loves her dinosaurs too and this game is one we both enjoy especially when I focus on some of the louder roaring carnivores. Jurassic World Evolution has all the charm and charisma of the films and any fan of management games, or dinosaurs, should pick this up in a heartbeat.

BcT Review Rating: 8/10

Reviewed on PS4

 

BONUS ROUND! Downloadable Content!

Release dates:

Deluxe Dinosaur pack released 12^th of June 2018, the same day as the base game.

Secrets of Doctor Wu released 20^th of November 2018.

Cretaceous Dinosaur pack released 13^th of December 2018.

I just wanted to talk about the paid for DLC’s here as well as the free updates Frontier Development have done. There are three separate DLC’s and I have them all, each adds something to the game but one more so than the rest. The deluxe and Cretaceous packs simply add a few more dinosaurs to the game which is great as it gives more dinosaurs to play around with (though I will say they are added in through various missions not just given to the player for nothing) with the deluxe adding five additional dinos and the Cretaceous adding three.

The Secrets of Doctor Wu is more akin to what most would expect for a DLC. This DLC adds in two more sites for parks on two of the islands as well as two new building types: Advanced Storm Defence and High Capacity Feeders. It also adds two new dinosaurs: Troodon and Olorotitan, as well as three Hybrid Dinosaurs. These Hybrids are the stars of the show for the DLC and all of the missions it adds revolve around them. As a nice addition to round the DLC off it adds a tonne of genetic research that lets you tweak a dinosaurs comfort requirements such as making a herd dinosaur solitary or reducing the amount of territory a large carnivore needs.

FREE: Finally there was a free title update that added in many of the dinosaurs seen in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. This adds in five dinosaurs as well as one new Hybrid: the Indoraptor. This is not a paid for DLC however and is a free title update meaning these new dinosaurs are available to be unlocked by everyone. It is often mistake as DLC though it does add the additional dinosaurs like some of the packs so I just wanted to mention it here.