Jurassic Park (1993)

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?