This is kind of a two part review for Jurassic World Evolution & Return to Jurassic Park. Pretty straightforward game & DLC to review if I'm honest, it's excellent.

In terms of what it is that makes it so good, I think I'll leave the player to discover that by themselves. It really is something special and clearly a labour of love from the people behind it, the fan service is paramount here and really helps to invest the player in the 'Jurassic' experience. But here's a few of my personal favourites anyway:

Granted, I started playing this game on Playstation when it first hit shelves and have put far more hours into it on that than I did on Steam but to be completely fair and honest there is little to no difference between the two versions, albeit with improved framerates and resolution which is a-given with PC gaming anyway. I came back to this game after the Return to Jurassic Park DLC dropped, another great addition to the world adding in new designs and functions from the 1993 movie including the original appearances of the dinosaurs (with the far superior looking Rex, I did hate the Jurassic World look for her lol). I played the new campaign that it includes to completion and beyond, it really was worth the money at the time and still is now, especially if you're a die-hard fan of the original Spielberg series like myself.

I think the only major problem or annoyance that I personally had with this title was just the constant, and I mean constant moral slap across the wrist you have to repeatedly suffer through from Dr. Ian Malcolm regarding your decisions to introduce new species to the island network (which Evolution has a tremendous amount of, it's quite impressive). It can really start to grate on your nerves after about the 40th time, you start to feel as if you're a bad person and that you're doing something wrong, that you're going to be judged for it later on. Which, obviously in the 1993 film his role was to attempt to convince John Hammond that what he was doing was morally wrong and I suppose if it was really you in John's position you start to feel perhaps how he did eventually toward his vision for the park and obviously after Nedry's betrayal in Jurassic Park leading to the deaths of countless people and the release of the dinosaurs trust between the staff is in very short supply. Yet, I can't help but feel that the idea behind the game is to give you the freedom to make those mistakes or attain those achievements freely, but in some way, as I mentioned, it feels like you're constantly being punished for.. just having fun I guess. This is way more apparent in Return to Jurassic Park where he plays a much bigger role in the alternative 'What-if' campaign scenario where the original movie cast return to voice their characters in a last ditch effort to save what is left of Jurassic Park and return it to it's former glory, almost every single piece of spoken dialogue is interrupted with 'Yes, but..' or 'Aren't you forgetting..?' it eventually came to a point where I was thinking to myself. 'No, we're moving on' because constantly bringing up the past is destroying the atmosphere, even while the rest of the cast such as Dr. Alan Grant & Ellie Sattler even John Hammond himself are very much onboard and genuinely trying to make a difference to save the dinosaurs and protect the public at the same time he still does very little to help in feeling like you're making any real progress.

Regardless, it's a minor gripe in a game that's simply a-wash with great content and visuals. The economic structure of income and expense can actually be fairly difficult to manage especially during times of emergency or visitor deaths but not impossible as there are many different sources of income, the idea behind sending expeditions to dig sites and discovering new viable DNA to create new species is good fun, behind able to modify their code at a genetic level to create new skin patterns and better stats for surviving or fighting adds a lot of depth to the core mechanics of the game itself. I find one of the best aspects of the Jurassic World campaign is that everybody is backing you, including fan-favourites like Chris Pratt's Owen Grady or Bryce Dallas Howard's Claire Dearing constantly pushing you into new realms of research, much like the mono-cur in the movie "Bigger, louder, more teeth." Making you feel like it really is best for business as the patrons of the park demand to see more and more variation of species, eventually forcing you into darker more inhumane realms such as creating the Indominus Rex from the original Jurassic World or even the amazing Indoraptor from the sequel Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (Which they released a free species DLC pack in celebration of it's release adding in dinos from the movie). You're less of a humanitarian and become more of a self-proclaimed god especially if you play the Secrets of Dr. Wu DLC where you can start to create impossible species of your own design, strange hybrids and creatures that physically couldn't ever exist.

All in all there is a so much creative freedom here to discover, something that I haven't come across since my time playing Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis back in the early 2000's. I wholeheartedly recommend this to not only fans of the license but anybody that's interested in dinosaurs or even just park management simulations, I think there's something for everybody here and on sale or not it's worth every bit of time and money you put into it.


I'm fully aware that there's a sequel due out later in 2021 and rest assured I'll give a full review after I've completed it :)