Jurassic Gameplay?
I’ve played pretty much every Lego game to date and I was interested to see what TT Games would do with the Jurassic Park license, I have to say I’m impressed that they brought all 4 films including the newly released Jurassic World into the game, as well as creating hub worlds for both Isla Nublar and Isla Sorna.
Each story is recaptured in true Lego fashion, with their typical sense of humour shining throughout by giving not only the characters personalities, but the dinosaurs as well. All in all, translating the stories through Lego works better than I expected. The levels themselves are the traditional fair with Free Play to go back to for missing minikits, the game also comes with bonus levels on each island but these are incredibly brief, lasting a minute or so and feel more like an after thought.
The hub levels are chocked full of gold bricks, red bricks, workers in peril and sick dinosaurs to heal. The scale of the islands aren’t all that large, you can also fast travel to specific areas once you activate the information stands in the areas, which also tell you how many of each item is available to get. I did come across a number of glitches while trying to get some of the gold bricks and minikits throughout the game, in one instance during Free Play my characters both froze to the spot after a cutscene and I had to exit the level and restart around 3 times before I was able to proceed to the last minikit I needed.
A lot of stages have running sequences as you would expect, some of these are handled well…while others, not so much. The problem is that they are presented from cinematic points of view, which look good, but sadly it doesn’t handle all that well and getting specific minikits takes several replays as a result. In terms of a Lego game, it does little to change the formula and actually plays it very safe. I got 100% in roughly 10+12 hours, so it’s not the biggest or even toughest of the Lego titles, I’d say it was probably one of the easiest by far.
Dinosaurs controls are a mixed bag, the T-Rex, Velociraptor handle well while flying and swimming dinosaurs do not, but the hardest to manoeuvre is the Brontosaurus which takes forever to move and turn around. If there is one thing I’m surprised about, it’s that this Lego game has a few “jumpy” moments where Velociraptors can leap out of bushes or in the dark and while I enjoy a good scare, I’m not 100% if younger gamers will.
In terms of performance, it runs fairly smoothly. There were however, a few occasions where the framerate dropped to an almost unplayable rate, I’m not entirely sure why it happened and it hasn’t happened again since, but it’s worth noting that it could happen. The characters are faithfully produced in Lego fashion well, although some of the secondary characters do look very similar and you’ll find yourself accidentally selecting the wrong person to do the task you need.
The music is ripped faithfully from the films, as are the voices. New lines are obviously recorded for comedic effect and done very well, I thought it’d be quite difficult to give Jurassic Park a sense of humour, but TT Games have done it once again.
The Verdict
Lego Jurassic World plays it very safe, it can be glitchy at times and is over all too quickly. However, it does recreate the 4 films brilliantly, although I have yet to see the 4th to compare. But if the game is anything to go by, it does sounds like it could be the best since the original. I wish they had mixed up the formula a bit, as it’s starting to get a bit well…for a lack of a better word, Jurassic.