Jurassic Park: The Game – Barbasol Edition

Jurassic Park: The Game is a Telltale Games production, so you know what you are getting when starting this piece of interactive media. It will be all quick-times events of various difficulty, spliced with stiff cartoon animations and the occasional point & click adventure puzzle of old thrown in for good measure. What it got, and what makes it unique, is the wonderful Jurassic Park license. And what do you know, they actually do a good job of using it, with a minimum of cringe-inducing scenes and flat-out lore contradictions.

Movie continuation
What makes Jurassic Park: The Game an awesome ride through Isla Nublar, is that it’s a direct continuation of the movie Jurassic Park. You won’t be seeing many characters out of the movie, one or two perhaps, and those that you do get to meet will be dino grub, so not much interaction there! However, you do get to play as one, namely; Gerry Harding. It’s the guy that takes care of the triceratops when Ellie and Grant decide to take a short detour into one of the pens during the tour. After that, the movie events happen, and Gerry and his visiting daughter get left on the island by mistake to fend for themselves, in which you get to experience.

Now, it could get a bit odd, seeing as Gerry, and the other characters (that you meet and play as later on) are never mentioned in the movie. As I take (in my headcanon), they were expected to have made it out with the ship heading for the mainland. It works out okay, and overall, the experience feels authentic to the lore from the movie. Yes, I should state this again, this is solely based on the film. The only thing taken from the book that I made a note off, is the greed of Hammond that one of the new characters talks about.

Hammond in the movie is painted as a philanthropist. He is not building the park to make money, he is creating it to share the dinosaurs with the world – at a very low price so that even poor families can go and see them. In the book, however, he is as greedy as they come. One of his first lines in the novel is about how much money he will make with this park. I’m not saying he is painted as a typical corporate guy in a suit now with dollar signs as eyes, but it’s an interesting addition to the movie lore. Perhaps some of the good-natured Hammond is just a facade? Even as a kid, I found his persona hard to believe in the movie. Sure, it adds to the magical nature of the film, similar to Willy Wonka, but it didn’t make sense to me that this park was created out of pure altruism. Maybe that says something about me, though?

More additions
There are many more additions, in the form of characters, and what happened to the Barbasol shaving cream with the hidden embryos. What I appreciated the most was the additional environments you get to see. Being a Jurassic Park affienancedo like myself, this was a real pleasure. Much like the story, this was mostly in line with the lore, too. I truly enjoyed the segment of the underground tunnels that connects the whole park together. It was like taking part in a modern dungeon diving expedition, even if the gameplay consists of quick-time events. 

Beyond people getting stuck on the island, and a rescue team being sent in to get them, the Barbasol shaving cream is still a major plot device. I know everyone wondered about the can; what happened to the canister? Well, now you get to find out. As you can guess, there are a few shady types involved in this story that know about the can and want its contents. There will be a lot of personal infighting, back stabbings and the likes, among the task of making out of the island alive without getting chewed on by a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Overall, I find the story fun and intriguing, and like I said, it fits into the lore of the movie. The characters are also well-written, with everyone having an agenda of their own. Things like personal quirks and such of the characters come into play at different points. It’s pretty damn well-told, and I’m glad to see that such care went into the project while maintaining the integrity of the original.

Button mashing
The gameplay isn’t much more than an interactive movie, as most Telltale fans have come to expect by now. Meaning, the interactive parts of the game consist of quick-time events, which is not the most welcomed way of doing gameplay by the gamer population. I don’t mind it that much, but playing for more than a few more hours at the time can cause fatigue in the hands (I used a 360 controller). One of the biggest issues with the QTEs is when you fail. When you miss that important button press to avoid becoming velociraptor chow, you will often have to rewatch large segments of cutscenes with no way of skipping them. It becomes annoying when you are slow on the trigger like me, but to be fair, these failures are rewarded with death sequences that can be entertaining to watch.

Luckily, these more stressful sections of button mashing are interwoven with moments of calm that lets you talk and investigate the environment at your own leisure. There are also a few enigmas that need to be solved, but they are never hard enough to slow down the pacing of the game. The only puzzle that had me activate my own inner focus mode was the rollercoaster one, where you had to put the cars in the right order. 

All interactions with the different dinosaurs feels much like in line with the movie, so you won’t be doing anything too weird to destroy the illusion of being in the Jurassic Park movie world. Unless you are required to escape the Tyrannosaurus Rex, that is. Not every scene with the T-Rex feels off, but I do think some of these interactions are way too goofy, and tonally bizarre. One example is when Gerry’s daughter lands on the head of T-Rex and somehow makes it out alive through some miracle. Another one is when they manage to outpace the giant lizard by foot. It’s just a little too much for me, making me roll my eyes. It undermines the horror of meeting an oversized lizard that wants to snack on your juicy bits. Especially when there are so many scenes that display the old beast like a clumsy dork and not the terrible carnivore she is/was.

It’s not all bad, but I do think it’s a common mistake with huge animals, and monsters within games and movies, by making them come too close to the protagonists, way too often. Regularly there are far too many close misses, and dodges between the legs of large critters to make survival look plausible. Not to forget the worst sin of them all; the suddenly sneaky giant creature that somehow unnoticed managed to surprise our heroes by creeping up on them. Stealth engaged, I guess!

There is also a journal that is unlocked after the chapters are finished, that goes into detail about what just occurred on the screen. You have to wonder when some of these pages got written down, considering certain chapters have no down-time at all. Yet, it’s a nice little inclusion that explains some of the motivations of the characters in more detail. 

Look & feel
The visual style is not exactly stunning, as it’s fairly bare-bones, but I do think they captured the feel of Jurassic Park through the graphics well enough. And as all Telltale games, the animations are questionable at best. They look very rudimentary or outright lazy (glitchy) at times. Like with many other negatives I found in the game, it does not matter much in the end. It does its job, while keeping the aesthetics of the film, which is the most important part. Music, sound, and voice acting are all top-notch.

As expected, the music is borrowed from the movie, so the game can’t go wrong here. The voice acting has a really high standard, and honestly it makes up for a huge enjoyment of the experience, since they increase the believability of the story to a large degree. Most of them can also deliver a joke when needed, like the characters Yoder and Morales.

Conclusion
Jurassic Park: The Game is one of the better Telltale games I have played, and much of that rests on the franchise license. That’s not to diminish the developers or the writers of the game, but it’s a huge part of my satisfaction when playing. Like many kids growing up in the 90s, Jurassic Park was huge for me, and from that moment when I first saw it at the cinema, I have always been fascinated in the world the movie created.

Sadly, there haven’t been too many games that have taken that idea and expanded upon it. The only other title I can come up with is Trespasser. While it does not further the ideas of the film (films in this case), or books that much, it’s a nice game that adds small tidbits to the lore. Jurassic Park: The Game is of a different beast altogether compared, since it’s a direct continuation, that as said, surprisingly works well. I, of course, highly recommend the game, specifically to people that love the franchise and want more.

It’s faithful to the core material, but don’t go expecting any gameplay here. At most some light point & click stuff. Unfortunately, you can’t buy the game normally anymore, as in over Steam or other digital stores. But I managed to get a key through a friend that bought it on a key-seller site, and that one worked great. However, that’s a few years back now, so I’m unsure if those sites still sell the game for a reasonable price. There are always other ways, *hint hint, wink wink*. Anyway… life finds a way.

Thanks for reading.

/Thomas