Jurassic Park (1993)

Beat NES version. Another game with the same title as a SNES game but being completely different games. Compared to the SNES game, this one cut the indoors first person shooter parts and open world for linear stages, and was overall better designed. Each stage was a limited area with infinitely respawning dinos, indoor areas, ammo to collect, ? Boxes that had healing, a life or explosion, and the requirement to collect or destroy eggs to progress. It was reasonably fun exploring and shooting stuff but the repetitive formula soon got old, especially with later stages featuring a lot of back tracking. Aiming was a little off with the guy unexpectedly shooting diagonally sometimes, which messed me up enough to occasionally take damage. Deliberately shooting diagonal was difficult to pull off so I made sure to stick to the cardinal directions. Another problem with aiming was the bullets came out of the character's left side (where the bazooka or whatever was held), which made the little compys impossible to hit if they were up against the wrong wall. This was most noticeable in the narrow corridors of the ship stage where I had to use red bolas ammo to kill them. Otherwise I mostly used the basic orange shot since enemies dropped the amount of shots that it took to kill them. The green shot was twice as strong as orange and fun to use because it 1 shot the compys and 2 shot the raptors and spitters. The powerful silver shot 1 hit killed everything and I only used it a few times. By the end of the game I had between 50 to 90 of each ammo type and used entirely red ammo to beat the final boss. That shot had a low rate of fire though so I wonder if silver would have been better.

I would have preferred if the enemies did not respawn nor drop ammo, and if the dumb booby trapped boxes were not present. It also would have made more sense not to always have to get every egg to progress. I did not like the triceratops stampedes but it was interesting to have a 2nd character in tow who damaged the player's hp when he got hit. The t rex battles were similar in that if it ate either kid you fully lost a life. The kids were finicky to control during the t rex battles though and I was glad I could save state scum! Other than that there was a pointless river stage and actual platforming inside the ship, where there were electricity bolts to avoid and damage floors to jump over. Too bad the jump was entirely useless for every other stage. Would have been nice to jump over compys, take shortcuts over furniture, and even have optional areas. Overall a decent little shooter that could have used better stage design and more variety.

6.0/10

Jurassic Park, for SNES

Rating: 4.5/10; Below Average

The first person segments might be worth experiencing, but I do not recommend the game as a whole.

Jurassic Park is a shooter, which is top down 2D in the outdoors, and first person 3D indoors. You play as Dr. Grant from the movie as you use a small variety of weapons to kill dinosaurs (because if you remember from the movie, Dr. Grant is a bad ass ex Special Forces turned palaeontologist who moonlights as a hired gun. Either that or he played a lot of Doom).

So the game has you wander around collecting eggs for an unknown reason, and collecting ID cards of characters from the movie to allow access to new areas. I do not understand why people who are supposed to be visitors to the park (such as Grant himself) have access cards to specific areas, while the cards of the park staff do not allow that access. Apart from that, there are a few key objectives to complete before ending the game.

To accomplish all of this, you must successfully navigate the confusing overworld and even more confusing buildings without any kind of map, which includes backtracking to every area at least once; possibly more if you miss something. Getting around the overworld is not too bad, but you will definitely want to make (or find online) maps for indoors.

Combat on the overworld is somewhat difficult because of the limited view range, and infinitely respawning raptors that jump out at close range. Indoor combat is much easier because you can out range the enemies and they usually just stand around when you are too far away making for an easy shot. Though I do not see why the raptors and spitters are hanging out together inside. Sometimes they are even in the same room. Wouldn’t they kill each other? I did like the overworld and indoor environmental graphics, which I feel is the best part of the game and top notch for the SNES.

This could have been a decent game with the addition of an in game map and option to continue after quitting. As it stands, it is too tedious to play without save states and an online guide + maps.

Pro

• Non-raptor enemies in the overworld do not respawn, but sometimes they are warped between areas
• Nightvision in some indoor areas
• Good atmosphere indoors, with good art design (furniture, windows etc)

Con

• Cannot continue a save after quitting. Game must be beaten in one play session
• No in game maps. Indoor areas are especially confusing
• No ammo counter
• Ammo and health infinitely respawn
• Poor weapon balance. No reason at all to use the weaker weapons given ammo respawn
• Ammo and health is automatically picked up indoors, potentially replacing your current weapon. There are several places where weak ammo is placed in such a way that you cannot go around it, forcing you to go back and pick up your good ammo.
• No objective journal or inventory view normally. You have to visit static objects in the environment to see these
• Annoying messages from the movie cast which pop up repeatedly and block most of the screen. They require pressing otherwise unused buttons to remove and repeat the same information over and over
• Too much backtracking
• Most indoor areas have a computer with the same interface, but only certain ones can do certain things and you are not told which
• Too much item collecting
• Minimal story
• Cannot kill T rex or triceratops (even with rockets)
• Not all dinos from the movie make an appearance
• Game world does not seem to faithfully reconstruct the movie world
• Many things make no sense: why are there rocket launchers everywhere? Why are the dinos not killing each other? Why is Dr. Grant good at shooting? Why do we need so many key cards, especially from visitors?