Review of Jurassic Park (Interactive Game)

Introduction

I loved dinosaurs as a kid. It was like an alien world separated by time, not space, where strange creatures walked an unrecognisable landscape. Reptiles the size of buildings, fantastic creatures evoked by magical sounding names, it was a world that existed for hundreds of millions of years. I couldn`t tell you who played for which Division 1 team, but I could tell you the difference between an Apatosaurus and a Brachiosaurus. Practically the first big words I learned were `Archaeologist` and `Palaeontologist` and I wanted to be one until I realised it meant having a Somerset accent, knobbly knees, a fascination with small pieces of flint, and being harangued by Baldrick on a weekly basis. But let`s face it; who didn`t like dinosaurs as a child? My mate Kevin from primary school, that`s who. He liked buses. He loved buses. He used to go out and spot them, and he eventually got a job as a manager of a bus depot. The last I heard, he was engaged to a Routemaster. Which brings me back to dinosaurs, as they use Routemasters in books as a scale to show how big sauropods could get.

By the time Jurassic Park came out, it was too late. As a ten year old, I would have given my back teeth to experience that movie, but by the time it was made, revolutionary CGI and all, I had developed a cynical veneer that let me see it for the lacklustre and bloated Jaws remake that it was. I guess what I`m trying to say is that this disc also reaches me far too late to excite my interest, although I must admit the idea of a DVD game revolving around dinosaurs perked me up a tad. The thing is that I loathe these games. For me the DVD player is a medium to passively watch entertainment. It`s ill suited to any serious interaction, and the moment you get into multiple-choice quizzes, you have to wait an eternity while your player clunks, whirrs and grinds its way through its limited software. Then you end up playing the game in your much faster and smoother DVD-ROM, realising you could have just spent your money on a PC game instead.

The game, Jurassic Park: Explorer is available in single disc edition, and if you spend a little more, you can get a box with a model dinosaur and other goodies in as well.

It`s a game for 1-4 players or teams, with three difficulty levels to choose from for each player. The object of the game is to collect dinosaurs for your theme park, five in the shorter game and seven in the longer. There are seven subgames to choose from, and players take turns to choose a game from the map screen. Comprehensive rules are provided either before or during the game depending on your selection.

The seven subgames are:

Fossils - Use the arrow buttons on your remote to find pieces of fossil in a 4X3 grid.

Chasm - Press your Enter button to jump a gorge, good timing is essential.

Screening Room - Watch a clip from one of the JP movies, and then answer a multiple choice question.

Museum - You`re quizzed on your dino knowledge, and you have to get 1,2 or 3 questions right depending on what level difficulty you selected.

Plains - It`s foggy out there, and you can barely see the dinosaurs as they lumber through the mists. The player that can recognise a dinosaur quickest wins.

Jungle - Guide your jeep through a maze to get the DNA sample back to the lab.

Laboratory - The order`s come in, you have to create a dinosaur for the park. Mix and match, head, torso and legs to get the right dinosaur.

Complete a subgame successfully and you`ll be awarded a dinosaur, along with some trivia about that species.

Video

You get an unproblematic 4:3 transfer. CGI abounds, with dinosaurs brought to life in computer game quality. The movie clips are played on a CGI recreation of the screening room from the first film (remember Mr DNA?), and tilted and reformatted to look quite realistic in that space.

Audio

A DD 2.0 track is standard, and the narrator is quite verbose, explaining the rules of the game comprehensively, and providing plenty of dinosaur trivia into the bargain.

Features

Nothing to speak of here, unless you get the deluxe box version, with the model and the goodies. I just got a review disc minus packaging and even label art.

Conclusion

I looked at a host of retail websites for information about this release, and one thing was sorely missing, age recommendation. If you are thinking that a dinosaur quiz heavily influenced by the Jurassic Park movies will be ideal post-prandial entertainment on Christmas Day, instead of listening to Her Majesty, then around 75% of the family will be disappointed. There comes a point in a life, when thoughts of work, relationships, finances, bills and next year`s holiday outweigh whether T-Rex was a hunter or a scavenger. The end of the world isn`t an asteroid impact in the Yucatan peninsula, but a quarter percent interest rate rise hitting the mortgage.

But, if you are around ten years old, and still in that `Ooh Dinosaurs!` phase that I waxed nostalgic about in my intro, then this game is for you. And Universal have done themselves proud in the look of the thing. It`s professionally coded, comprehensive and entertaining. It`s certainly much more than a couple of trivia questions with a flashy front end. But you can`t get too far away from the quiz format, and there are limitations, which means that some subgames will lose their gloss extremely quickly. I played Chasm once and hated it immediately. Waiting for the right moment to press a button isn`t what I would call a game. The Fossil hunt is just as tedious. The jungle maze is just a comprehension quiz where all you have to do is make two correct choices. If I don`t see any of these games again it will be too soon.

Plains is a little more impressive, but I have my doubts about it, as it is liable to cause more arguments than Christmas Day requires. It`s a game that relies on trust and honesty. The player has 10 seconds to shout out the dinosaur he/she sees, then everyone can join in for 5 seconds, and the first one to guess it correctly gets the point. There`s no provision for two or more people shouting out the answer at the same time, and it all boils down to how trustworthy the person with the remote is.

There is some longevity in Laboratory. If you remember those card books where you could flip pages to create all sorts of chimera, it`s that sort of thing, but there is some dinosaur trivia mixed up in the picture nonsense, so there is something to learn. Museum offers a lot of tough quiz questions on dinosaurs, questions that laymen will find impossible to answer, and even lapsed dinosaur fanatics like myself would have difficulty with. Finally Screening Room sparks nostalgia of Screen Test, with Jurassic Park movie clips being used to test your comprehension (remember Dilophosaurus is not a real dinosaur, they made it up for the movie).

The Jurassic Park game is slick and professional, and certainly looks the part. These things can be disappointing, and I`m not a fan of Interactive DVDs personally, but there is certainly enough of a tie-in with the movies for this to feel like a Jurassic Park product, rather than a quick money-spinner. It`s definitely for the younger demographic however, and of the seven subgames, my guess is that only three will provide any long-term fascination. I`d wait for the sales.