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Jurassic Park: The Game

If your mind is reeling with the possibilities of what a Jurassic Park game could entail — vicious dinosaur attacks! brutal bids for survival! Jeff Goldblum voiceovers!  — be prepared to be disappointed. Jurassic Park: The Game is actually a glorified Dragon’s Lair remake which boils everything down to a bunch of disconnected sequences in which you simply tap the buttons that appear onscreen.
   
What’s worse is that, while all that stuff you’d want from a Jurassic Park game is here, it’s all buried under a layer of complete non-interactivity which robs everything of any impact. How is tension supposed to be created in a raptor attack if your only method of fighting back is a giant arrow flashing on the screen telling you what direction needs to be tapped repeatedly? Troubling things further is the fact that there’s almost no elasticity to the endless parade of button-smashing scenes.  Too slow to tap a button? Die and do it all over again. There are no multiple outcomes or alternate paths, just trial-and-error through the same routines until you get them exactly right.
   
This lazy mechanic is made all the more frustrating by the fact that there was clearly effort and genuine love for the Jurassic Park franchise put into other aspects of the game. The story’s a bit on the hokey side, but it manages to successfully integrate itself into the franchise’s mythology, letting you switch between multiple characters as they all hunt for the shaving cream can full of dinosaur DNA last seen being dropped in the mud by Newman in the first movie. No great shakes — but at least it’s telling a story slightly less embarrassing than whatever Jurassic Park 3 was.
   
In fact, it’s the story that makes the game begrudingly playable, along with a few nice moments in which the button-mashing is put on hold and a clever puzzle or small character moment replaces it. If the developers could’ve weaved that story subtlety and slightly more ambitious design throughout the rest of the game, it could’ve been something special — but there’s always another push-left-now pop-up ready to remind you that what you’re playing is suffering from a serious lack of imagination. A Jurassic Park game should not have more flashing arrows than dinosaurs.
   
All of the wonder, spectacle and fun that made the first movie one of the best blockbusters of the past two decades is absent here — and it’s hard to think of anything more disappointing in a Jurassic Park game than that. Steven Spielberg would be disappointed.

Bits & Bytes
   
You can’t have too many Batman games, so it’s a nice surprise that summer 2012 will see the release of Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes, the latest in the long line of fiendishly addictive Lego games. The new  game will see the Dark Knight team up with other DC characters such as Superman, Wonder Woman and the Green Lantern.
 
   
Mel Stefaniuk is a writer who can tell the difference between Mario and Sonic.