Jurassic Park The Game: Review thread - post your impressions here!

[Vinlwj]

I am quite disappointed with the frame rate lagging problem on ps3 version, and i am very sad that Telltale did not do any things to fix it so far... i felt been cheated by Telltale.

[MrSeyker]

Originally Posted by jpark_08

The writing and characterization is lackluster, the story adventure linear, puzzles non-existant, and the QTE gameplay is distracting and unresponsive. Fans knew what to expect, the problem is that Telltale didn't deliver.

THe writing and characterization is the game's strongest point, imo.

And plenty of fans think Telltale delivered.

[jpark_08]

Originally Posted by MrSeyker

THe writing and characterization is the game's strongest point, imo.

And plenty of fans think Telltale delivered.

While I agree the writing is the games strongest point, it's still not particularly well done and far below the standards Telltale have set in the past. I could go into deep detail, but I believe the point has already been made several times.

It's clear Telltale sunk alot of love into this game, and I'm glad some fans enjoyed it, but they are definitely in the minority. For most, the cutesy film references aren't enough to carry the experience.

[Snugglecakes]

I agree that the characters and story are actually the best parts. It's not easy getting that right so it's even more of a shame that it's ruined by the most tedious gameplay experience I can remember.

You have to wonder though... they made this quite good looking world and everything, you could do so much with it. Were Telltale tied to a tree by the Jurassic Park rights owners? It's possible. I can't imagine Telltale willingly making something that "plays" like this. You could create such an awesome action/adventure game with this world. It's a real waste.

[Sadonicus]

Finally I got to play this game. It probably doesnt matter anymore, but heres my impression:

I was very pleased with the writing, story was compelling and the characters believable and it really was Jurassic Park. There were very intense and well made moments and the parts I thought would be too silly (like the bone shaker) werent that bad in the moment of playing, even though I still would have liked it a bit different afterwards.

The graphics were decent, of course they could have been better (and maybe should have been) but I guess its simply not possible within the given budget and stuff.

There were sound and graphic glitches, some of them really annoying and able to destroy the moment when the player cannot look past them (repeating dialogue in the otherwise very beautiful second scene on the lookout, rough music transitions, unhearable speaking voice etc) , but nothing serious like crashes or something.

The gameplay is like everyone says. Not really entertaining and sometimes even distracting and anti-immersive. I remember the scene where you have to sneak up to the T-Rex, I wanted to look at what happens on screen, how cool it looks to have the Rex in the background and yourself sneaking up, or the other scenes where the dinosaur gets closer and closer. But I was forced to look at the prompts to see what and when to push, wich I'm not interested in at all. It forces me to focus on things I'm not interested in and pulls me out of the moment. Something easier and more intuitive like having to move the right stick slowly left and right would be much more appropriate. But generally I think this whole QTE concept does that (pulling you out of the immersion) when you have too much and unlogic prompts, less and more forgiving would be better.

Otherwise I would have liked more moments of awe and wonder and more use of the main music theme of the movie. But in the end I definetly enjoyed the game and as a JP-Fan I'm very pleased. You just have to tackle it with the right mindset. This game is at least better than the two movie sequels together.

[ufaheemu]

jurassic park game is very good game but its cost is toomuch for me(indian) could you give consession for India
thanks

Originally Posted by waroftheworlds01

The release date for the game is finally here and I'm sure everyone will be dieing to voice their opinions on the game as well as post reviews from other websites. Instead of having thousands of post with different reviews, I figured it would be easier to have one thread dedicated to Jurassic Park reviews.

I haven't been able to play it yet but I will be posting seperate reviews for each episode here as I finish them.

So if anyone wants to share their opinon after finally getting to play the game, or want to share links to reviews of the game from other website here's a great thread to do it.

And, of course, try to use those Spoiler tabs when needed!!!

[Binhex]

I will start this off that I discovered Telltale games with the "Monkey Island" title and loved it. I then moved on to the latest "Sam & Max" and then "Back to the Future" and enjoyed them both. I love that style of adventure game I did not think existed anymore.

I cannot say how disappointed I am so far with Jurassic Park. The story itself is just fine and well done in parts. But I just did not feel like I was playing a game very often. Pushing directional arrows to me is a little on the boring side. I was hoping for more of the "Monkey Island", "Sam & Max" gameplay and perhaps I just did not read closely enough regarding this games description.

I'm I believe half way through the game and it's a struggle to push myself to make it to the end.

[Pak-Man]

It's working for me. During the Dilophosaurus attack, I just nearly woke up the house screaming. You have to kind of lose yourself in it, but if you let it take you, it'a an intense experience.

[Falanca]

I'm not against the people who found something to like in this game. Let them enjoy their Simon Sez with dinosaurs. Saying that is actually pretty optimistic since Simon Sez can be a fun game when your 8-year-old cousin is stuck with you for one night and you gotta find ways to entertain him.

But I'm pretty sad to let go of my hopes relied on a game company which proved itself to be distinct and not afraid to battle against the restraining forces of today's gaming market; telling people WHAT TO LIKE and WHAT NOT TO LIKE, by simply making games that are technically inferior and plot-wise unceremonial; proving such games can STILL be creative and entertaining. But then they had to do this; leaning on the shoulder of classics, feeding people what they were fed years ago by wrapping it in the worst type of fabric paper to be found. First by Back to the Future, now this. I'm sorry Telltale, as I'm no longer a fan who's willing to buy more from you, support you and hopelessly try to get you known in a dire, bland place such as Turkey, so that perhaps I can show people here there are games that offer so much more than what they simply want to see from them.

I see where you all come from with the argument of "I'm not a gamer anyway, I like it because it's nostalgia". If that's how Telltale's going to be, a low time business whose purpose of existence conflicts in itself -by making games for non-gamer folks who are aware of what they're playing is not a game-, then I have nothing to see from you. Telltale once had the charm, power and creativity enough to turn non-gamers into actual gamers. They had their own stories and their own tactics to lure in curious, clueless people, and they did not need to rub cultural references on your faces in order to do so.

Actually, this one is to all you folks; being a gamer is not a talent, nor it is something that requires effort to achieve. It's a form of entertainment and it has its much more sophisticated, intense side that you don't actually have to delve into in order to call yourselves a gamer. It's the same with cinema, you don't have to watch as many movies as you can to enjoy one. But I digress, we all have our guilty pleasures and every now and then we all need to see something that is FAMILIAR as opposed to new and fresh. I'm only bitching because I wouldn't like seeing that liking Telltale has become a "guilt".

Oh well. My opinion on the GAME, on the other hand, is it's forgetable, incompetent, bland, far from charming, unsatisfactory and a chore to play.

[Hassat Hunter]

Another disappointed player. But I already noticed TTG sliding down, otherwise I would have been more active here, purchasing here instead of sales on Steam.

The story is good. But it needs a decent packaging. I liked Fahrenheit (besides the ending), so it's not like I dislike the QTE-style. But the execution is just so sloppy.

Main menu when escaping selecting camera's? Got me swearing every time. Having that at all (camera's) instead of free movement. How hard it is to select something clickable with your mouse, you first have to center it, combo's that are impossible to get since they appear slower than you can click them? That's just bad. Also the prompts could appear anywhere on the screen. Would be better if they have a fixed spot (and bigger) so you don't just fail/die because you didn't notice the prompt till too late. And the bugs.

Not to mention the sound. Many mentioned it for Sam & Max, MI and BTTF and aside from one BTTF episode I never noticed, but here it was popping, buzzing, sudden increases or decreases in sound that occassionally made conversation a pain to follow.

[Lukedfrt]

Enjoyed the game but the PS3 version needs fixing. Massive amounts of slow down.
Will TTG fix it?

[SelaciousBCrumb]

First off, stop calling this a game! It's a storybook for toddlers pressing random buttons. It's horrible.

[batboyshark9]

I understand you have your own opinions. I thought the game was great and I dont know what you guys are talking about when you say the PS3 version has slowdowns, I have the PS3 version and I NEVER had had any problems . maybe its just my game

[Lukedfrt]

Originally Posted by batboyshark9

I understand you have your own opinions. I thought the game was great and I dont know what you guys are talking about when you say the PS3 version has slowdowns, I have the PS3 version and I NEVER had had any problems . maybe its just my game

The game isn't great, i enjoy it but just look at the reviews.
And you are VERY lucky if you have no framerate issues on PS3.

[SheepWillPrevail]

Okay, I finally got to finishing episode 1 on my iPad. Even though I own the complete series on PC the difference in eye candy does not justify the difference in easy of playing. Well, here are my two cents.

I think the voice acting and cinematography are very good. If you look at this game as an interactive movie it is enjoyable. The jeep ride of the Harding duo picked up the pace and I very much liked the scenes from there on forward. Another good thing are the shaders and textures, especially for the dinosaurs. All the set pieces and environments are excellent. I like the fact that there is a scene after the credits.

So, everything is fine, right? Well, I do have some criticism. The iOS version has several performance issues. The textures can be quite low resolution (the jeep) which is a shame, but fortunately most of the texture budget is put into the characters. What does annoy me are the hiccups (2 second freeze) and the frame rate dips into single digit territory (the intro with credits). This happens even when there are no other programs active. It may not be a honest comparison but Unreal Engine (Epic Citadel) manages to pump out a very high quality image smooth as silk with any application load so we know it is not the hardware.

I think most of the game play issues have been discussed to death so I'll give that one a pass. But will I buy episode 2 and onward? Probably not. A couple of reasons;

- No updates yet for episode 1. I expected performance updates since I can't be the only one (on a fixed hardware platform).
- It is a very competent interactive experience but has almost zero replay value. At this price point (5.49 euro per episode) I expect 'something more' although I know it a reasonable price. Something like 2.99 seems more fair from an 'consumer shopping in the app store' perspective.
- The audio quality seems lower than the PC version. This applies to the speech, the music is excellent.
- <pure nerd mode>There is no excuse for having no projected textures in the engine on the iPad</>

I love adventure, iPads, Jurassic Park (the first book is awesome) and TellTale. But it is kind of hard to love this product. Too late, too shallow and too pricey is what comes to mind. Yet I don't regret the experience, it was a fun experiment.

[Armakuni]

I enjoyed it, not as a game but as a (somewhat) interactive experience... I love watching a good movie, and I admit I've always liked QTE stuff, all the way back to when I first played Dragons Lair (still love that game).

Though I perfectly well understand why so many people here dislike it... I'm a huge fan of adventure games myself, and if I'd even half expected this game to be that, I'd be disappointed too.

Though I should say that my main gripe with past Telltale games have been the often ridiculously easy puzzles, I've often found myself thinking they might as well not even be there when they're that easy... so in that way, I don't mind the lack of puzzles in JP that much, knowing that they'd probably be dead easy anyway.

So yeah... I did enjoy this game, actually I enjoyed it very much! I found it an awesome ride from start to finish, I only wish it was longer... other than the bugs (that seem to be fixed by now? I tried it a bit when it was new and had plenty of bugs but this time when I sat down to play it properly, I didn't encounter any), I think Telltale did an amazing job with JP!

[deadman67797]

I finally got it on Xbox just last week and I quite liked it, but it had a few problems. I felt that the quick-time events were ok, but unneccessary with the lookaround and click on stuff gameplay.. If it was a point and click game, then quick-time for the action scenes, then it would be more better in that style.

The graphics were sometimes unpolished, but the majority of them were the best I saw from Telltale. Well done there.

The story made more sense if you watched the first movie. A nice companion to the amazing film.

The atmosphere, just, awesome!

The controls are simple, but I noticed a delay on analogue moves.

The music is ok, but it repeats throughout the game. This was a gripe I had in BTTF.

The voice acting is pretty good. Nothing to report here.

In all, the game is a stepdown in gameplay, but the game is a great companion to the first movie. Give it a try.

[Samy42]

that game was awesome ... not a real "game" but i loved it !

[mfrenchjr]

Using the pc game and even though I PURCHASED it, it will not allow me to unlock any scenes past jungle hack in episode 1 on the top line (which I have already beaten).

[NedrylandJP]

I bought the pre-order the disk for the UK launch and it arrived on-time yesterday, I've literally now finished the whole game.

I'm a MASSIVE die-hard fan of Jurassic Park and the storyline is just fantastic. I always wanted to know what happened to that shaving cream can and TellTale worked out an excellent story.

I LOVED the Troodon's. A fantastic addition to the series and brought a real creepy factor, especially in episode one and the Dilophosaur paddock scene.

The only thing I didn't like was the split second timing on the controls as sometimes it would change from saying press ^ to press > which would mean you end up extinct but that is my only issue.

Fantastic game and to sum it up thee best Jurassic Park game ever made.