Jurassic Park 2, the chaos continues, for SNES

Rating: 6.0/10; Above Average

Worth playing for fans of 2D shooters, as long as you can put up with time limits.

Jurassic park 2 is a 2D shooter platformer where you fight both dinosaurs and men. The game starts at a menu where you can choose a level to play in any order, though unfortunately there is no option to save; the entire game must be beaten in a single playthrough. After beating each level, you are thrown into a bonus “emergency” level, which has a time limit. Why oh why did the developers think time limits were a good idea? Despite heavy save state scumming, I barely managed to beat the time limits.

The level design does not help with the time limits. Despite being in 2D, the levels feature area transitions, which can be in the background (most often) or at the edges. These make the levels somewhat complicated, because they include dead ends and branching pathways that lead to the same place. The latter can make it easy to get turned around and lost, and is especially bad in the timed levels. A map could have helped this, but there is no map whatsoever.

The actual combat and platforming are fairly well done. You are given 2 sets of weapons; lethal and non-lethal. Lethal is meant to be used against humans, non-lethal against dinosaurs (though you can use either against raptors). The reason for this is humans are immune to non-lethal weapons while you are supposed to protect the dinosaurs because you work for the park. There is a counter for how many non-raptor dinos you kill, and if it goes too low game over. This counter carries over between levels as well. There are a total of 7 weapons though there are a few questionable design choices regarding them. The most basic weapons have infinite ammo, which is completely unneeded. The rifle (the basic lethal) and machine gun are too similar to each other. The basic non-lethal, which is supposed to be a cattle prod or something, instead shoots like a plasma rifle. It shoots bolts of energy to the same range as any other weapon, and is capable of charging up for a bigger shot. This is too much science fiction in my opinion, and it should instead function more like a short range taser (like in the first game). Lastly, you are unable to collect and use enemy weapons. Would have been cool to use those flamethrowers, grenades and lethal rockets. The weapons get the job done, but could have had much greater diversity and tactical depth.

Enemies are not very intelligent; you can usually avoid damage by jumping or ducking. There is also a ”dodge” button which seems to make you move into the background, though it did not work against raptors and I did not bother to try it on anything else. Projectiles travel slow enough to avoid. Most of the challenge comes from enemies being placed at different elevations or behind cover such that you cannot directly shoot them; shooting at an angle is more difficult than it should be, especially if you try to jump and shoot at an angle at the same time. Enemies also annoyingly respawn, sometimes even when you just move out of the current screen. It is also odd how you can find raptors, herbivores and humans all in the same level with no apparent logic to their placement. Though I do not recall any situations where enemies that might be hostile to each other were on the same screen, it still seems overly gamey to have herbivores wandering around deep inside volcanoes and buildings with humans and raptors before and after.

Platforming is fairly easy as you can jump quite high and control the direction while in mid air. Most platforming is about avoiding enemy attacks, though there are plenty of other hazards to avoid, as well as going up and down platforms and ladders, and getting across pits. The platforming highlights flaws in level design though. You often have to jump over the concrete bases and damaged parts of the electrical fences, but these fences are rather short. I am pretty sure the pens in Jurassic Park are not as small as this game implies. Even more silly, the buildings are large sprawling complexes which are impossible to traverse without jumping from one ladder to another and roping across chasms. This ruins the suspension of disbelief and makes these “buildings” entirely unbelievable.

This is a decent game with a few serious shortcomings that drag it down; the most important of which is the inability to save and quit. A simple in game map would have helped immensely and mitigated the annoyance of time limits.

Pro

• Can change key bindings
• 2 player
• Tactical considerations for lethal vs non-lethal, and which weapon to use within those categories
• Good variety of enemies with different behaviours giving greater challenge
• First T Rex level was cool as it mimicked the movie
• Optional difficulty levels with bonus levels for higher
• Final helicopter battle (hard only) was good
• Falling into a pit or lava warps you to the last solid ground with a bit of damage instead of game over

Con

• No saving
• Half of the levels have time limits
• No map, combined with non-linear levels
• Weapons could use more variety
• Plasma gun cattle prod makes no sense
• Cannot use enemy weapons
• Infinite ammo for basic weapons
• Ammo pickups only provide ammo for the currently equipped weapon
• Second T Rex battle is poorly designed with a time limit and emphasis on shooting quickly and accurately with little risk of dying
• Poor level design for buildings and outdoor fence areas
• Some non-sensical enemy placement