PC Gamer

pacing of teaching moments too. A

colleague and I encountered several

sections which teach you some

elements hours after working them

out for ourselves. Contracts also

appear with requests you’ve fulfilled

many times previously but you’ll only

earn the points and cash if you do

them now, rather than the game

using them to sculpt your

relationships as you play.

Oh, and I’ve frequently

encountered sections where I was

just waiting for money to accrue for a

particular building or dinosaur. I

suspect the intention is that you

spend those moments driving

around, maybe taking photos for little

cash boosts, but that

wore thin quickly and I

found myself dealing

with emails or playing a

mobile game in the

background.

At this point I can’t

help imagining what a

mod community could

do with the game,

particularly in terms of visual variety

or missions. ButJurassic World

Evolutionis not launching with mod

support. To be honest, as it’s a

licensed project rather than one

based on Frontier’s own intellectual

property, I can’t imagine that

situation changing.

There’s enough here for you to

lose some evenings to it, and the

dinos look gorgeous. But I’m not

finding the layers which keep you

coming back after the early

experience becomes familiar.

71

Frontier’s dino park sim is

initially stunning but

lacksthedepthand

variety to support

mammoth playtimes.

VERDICT

I can’t help

imagining what

amod

community

could do

BREEDING PROGRAMME

Just a handful of the traits you can manipulate

HYPEREFFICIENT

BLOOD

King crab DNA

improves attack,

lifespan and

resilience.

IMMUNE

RESPONSE

Shark DNA boosts

lifespan and

resilience via disease

resistance.

CARDIO

STRENGTH

Vampire bat DNA

improves heart and

lung muscle for a

longer lifespan.

ALPINE PATTERN

This cosmetic

modifier gives

certain dinosaurs a

grey-green skin

pattern.

Jurassic World Evolution

REVIEW

scheduled time – there’s no attention
to detail.
This mission lowers my standing
with Security and Science. However,
there’s a Security mission which asks
you to do the exact same thing but
this time it increases your Security
rating and lowers your standing with
Entertainment and Science.

CRUEL INTENTION
Additionally, I was in the theme park
management mindset of trying to
curate a park which people would
enjoy and where my animals were
safe. It felt really jarring to breed
animals which would disrupt that, or
put themselves or visitors in danger
without a good reason stemming
from the dinos or visitors themselves.
These situations also created
busywork. For example, the
aggressive Velociraptor got out so I
had to send out the tranquiliser team
to take down the dino, get a ranger
team to repair the fence, then send in
the relocation helicopter to pick the
Velociraptor up and plop it back in
the repaired pen.
I wanted to be able to assign
ranger teams to types of work, like
restocking herbivore feeders. I
couldn’t, so I either needed to drive
around myself and do them one by
one, or assign a team to individual
tasks, then add more when those
slots were empty. The result is a lot
of irritating clicking.
Driving around is interesting the
first few times – you get into a jeep
and pootle round the park. You can
fulfil these tasks by clicking if they
pop up nearby (although it’s just a
click rather than performing an
interesting action). You can also take
photos of your dinosaurs à la
Pokémon Snap or administer
medication using the rifle.
I thought I would spend a lot of
time in this mode, down on the
ground, but after the initial ‘holy
heck!’ beauty of the dinos wears off,
the behaviours and environments
aren’t interesting enough to watch
them for long.
This lack of depth runs through
the game experience. The buildings
look very samey – I found it hard to
pick out the expedition centre as
opposed to the fossil or research
centres at a glance. There are also no
variants on each building type so
far, so each of the parks is only
really differentiated by
layout. There are some
dino cosmetics and you

can change the look of the jeeps but

managing the park demands too

much of a zoomed out view for those

to be striking.

I’ve just unlocked a heap more

dinosaurs because I can now access

more dig sites for fossils, but I’m

struggling to find a reason to

continue playing. The dinos look

beautiful, but watching them doesn’t

reveal any emergent lizard stories.

Taking a broader view, my parks are

ticking over fine so there’s not really

much else to do except send rangers

to restock feeders and fulfil contracts

in order to unlock more options.

I was trying to find a way to

embody a person at the park, maybe

follow them as they

wandered or step

inside the viewing

gallery or the monorail

as them. You can’t do

that, either (although

you can unlock the

ability to ride the

gyrospheres). The

people wander around

but you can’t click on them to figure

out what they’re enjoying, or what

they’ve seen. They’re just the same

few character models milling about

to create the sense of crowds.

WATCHING AND WAITING

It’s also weird to realise there are

no children in the park. I get

that maybe that’s a censorship

choice or a personal choice

if you’re also showing

people get eaten or attacked

when dinosaurs do escape.

However, kids’ fascination with

dinosaurs is something the

franchise uses – particularly the

iconic first instalment – so this

childless theme park seems

bizarre.

There are issues with the