I'm not one of those people who is burned out on the Telltale Games formula. While Back to the Future and Monkey Island aren't exactly the freshest ideas, I still had a great time going through some awfully familiar motions. Perhaps that's why I'm so disappointed by the company's newest episodic series. Jurassic Park: The Game certainly tries to give fans something new and different, but roundly fails at nearly every T. Rex-sized step. If Jurassic Park is the future of point and click adventure games, then this is officially the beginning of the ice age.
You can't blame Telltale for thinking this would be a homerun of an idea. The idea of mixing traditional adventure game elements in with the dinosaur-filled world of Jurassic Park is perfectly sound. Better yet, having the action running concurrently with the movie/book sounds like a great idea, as it allows the storytellers to use familiar sets, situations and even characters. But good ideas and intentions can only get you so far, especially when the rest of the design feels as disjointed as Jurassic Park: The Game.
Like most other Telltale releases, this dino-themed adventure is told over several different episodes. We are introduced to Gerry, one of the straight-laced veterinarians on the island. He's aided by his 14 year old daughter, Jessica, who is the dangerous combination of curious and mischievous. With a storm coming and dinosaurs on the loose, all he wants to do is get his precocious daughter on the next boat off the island.
On the other side of the island is Nima, a machete-wielding badass who shares more than a passing resemblance to Michelle Rodriguez (Resident Evil, Lost). Her plan is smuggle a batch of dinosaur embryos back to the mainland and make a healthy profit. Then there's Billy, one of the mercenaries sent in to rescue Gerry, Jessica and an old hippie doctor who shows up about half way through the game. Billy is accompanied by a large, tattooed killer that looks like he just got back from his tenth tour of Vietnam.
At first these characters are only concerned about survival. Nima has been infected by a mysterious dinosaur, Billy is a man down and the father/daughter team is being tormented by a spiteful T. Rex. But when the dinosaurs are gone the real fangs come out. It turns out that not every one of these characters should be trusted. We're constantly put into situations where the "bad guys" make selfish decisions that hurt the rest of the survivors. The game's twists and turns will keep you guessing all the way to the final episode.
As a story, Jurassic Park: The Game kind of works. I didn't always believe motives and actions of the characters (especially late in the game), but it fits right in with the narrative of the three Jurassic Park movies. Where the game falls apart is when you have to control both sides of a particular scene. There were several instances where I was forced to play against my own best interest to keep the story going, something that took me completely out of the experience.
Weird character interaction aside, the real problem with Jurassic Park: The Game are the brand new gameplay mechanics. This is not a traditional point and click adventure, so fans looking for a dinosaur filled Sam & Max will be sorely disappointed. Instead this game has more in common with Heavy Rain and Dragon's Lair. The result is decidedly mixed.
Players never have full control over any of the survivors, something that I found off-putting from the very start. Instead the game is split into a few different mini-games, none of which are especially challenging or fun. Action scenes generally devolve into nothing more than a series of quick time events. The game tells you to push up, you push up. It wants you to hammer the "A" button, so you hammer the "A" button. The game is looking for a quarter circle turn on the right analog stick ... well, you get the point. At least half of the game is spent hitting the right buttons at the right time, all while dinosaurs chomp at your feet.
Visually speaking, these sequences are incredibly exciting and fun to watch. It's also fun to see them play out in different ways. Generally a missed button press won't result in an immediate death, instead it will force you to play out an alternate scenario or have no actual affect. That's good news, as I found some of the button icons to be too small and flash past too quickly. Eventually hard quick time events turn into something of a memory game, as the button cues never change.
When you're not playing an updated version of Dragon's Lair, you'll be using the controller to investigate your surroundings. Unfortunately, that sounds way more exciting than it actually is. In most cases all you do is move the camera around and look for items to interact with. You don't move the character; you simply push the button assigned to the item and watch the short cinema. But pulling the left trigger (I played using a wired Xbox 360 controller, your layout may change) you can move to a different location.
Even though the control is limiting, Telltale does manage to work a couple of puzzles into the environments. Usually this involves doing things in a specific order. You may have to have Jessica throw a rock, then Gerry move a lever, followed by Nima opening a door. That's the sort of puzzle you can expect from Jurassic Park: The Game. This is extremely disappointing for anybody who sharpened their teeth on Sam & Max or even Back to the Future.
It would be easy to simply compare this to Heavy Rain and be done with it, but that wouldn't be fair to Sony's controversial PlayStation 3 thriller. Heavy Rain was a game about consequences. The game played out differently depending on how you played it, a novel approach that could result a number of different outcomes. It wasn't just a linear path; players could accidentally kill one of the main characters and irrevocably change the storyline. Jurassic Park makes no attempt at consequences. Outside one boneheaded choice at the end of the fourth episode, there is absolutely no consequence to your actions. This means that the game will play out exactly the same way no matter what you do.
It didn't take long before I started to resent my lack of involvement. Instead of feeling like I was part of the action, I was relegated to being an observer that occasionally pushes an arbitrary button. The whole thing seemed so pointless that I had a hard time motivating myself to go from one episode to the next. The game's incredibly average graphics and sound didn't help matters much.
Between Terra Nova and this new Telltale game, I'm starting to worry that dinosaur fiction is a relic of the past. Jurassic Park is the perfect jumping off point for any adventure game, and yet the developers squander a huge opportunity. With mediocre gameplay and a story that overstays its welcome, Jurassic Park: The Game is one ride that shouldn't have been built.
