Activision somehow makes a less than four hour game repetitive.
It feels like just last year I was covering another middle of the road first person dinosaur shooter. Oh that’s right, I was:
For better or worse, Jurassic: The Hunted goes absolutely nuts within the first few minutes of the game as if to tell the player almost immediately, “this is the story and you better deal with it or get the hell out of here now.”
I can get behind that. Probably your best play as a storyboard writer when your pre-production meetings managed to eke out a couple of key terms like, “Dinosaur” “Bermuda Triangle” and “Guns”.
There are a couple things to really like about this First Person budget shooter. But it also exposes itself awfully fast, to the point where it feels less like a game and more of a proof of concept for a control scheme that would be the main controls to Call of Duty on the next generation of consoles. (Mainly R3 as melee which I’m pretty sure is not featured in any of the previous COD releases for the PlayStation 2).
You play as former Navy Seal Craig Dylan, who created a private security firm with his ex military bestie, “Rock”. You two are hired by scientist, Sabrina Sayrus to investigate her father’s disappearance near the Bermuda Triangle in 1983. Shockingly, the Airplane you are on hits turbulence and all three of you, (Sabrina, Rock and Craig) are separately sucked into different time vortexs. All landing on an unnamed island in different locations laces at different times.
I feel as though introducing an element of time travel into the plot was a missed opportunity. While I liked the idea of time play, at one point you see the fully decomposed skeleton of your pilot and realize his body has been on this island far longer than you have, I wish they would have incorporated it into the gameplay somehow. Later on you rendezvous with your partner Rock who is looking about thirty years older. He goes on to tell you he’s been on the island for decades and he thought you were long gone. It would have been a creative and clever way to show Rock’s side of the story and maybe clear an obstacle in the past for Craig later on in the future. Obviously far too late now but ultimately a plot device that was sorely missed.
The controls handled well – the guns felt pretty good. The pace is good. What isn’t good is the incredible repetition of enemies and how every level was basically designed the same.
Aside from aesthetically identical, every level also features the exact same two species of dinosaurs and level design. The first half of the level always being a run n’ gun through myriads of Dinos and the latter half of the chapter either being a Fixed/Mounted Gun snooze fest where you just fire at everything that moves for twenty minutes straight or a Protect-The-Base type mini game that plays exactly like COD Zombies but a shittier, less fun version.
Ultimately it’s a first person dinosaur game without hardly any variety of dinosaurs or settings. The voice acting is awful and the story is pretty dumb but it handles nicely and looks okay at times.
Oh and it also doesn’t even feature, the best dinosaur?
OVERALL: 70%
Leave a Reply