Jurassic Park (SCD) Review

Date purchased: Apr. 10, 2012
Price paid: $9.99
Dates played: Apr. 3-8, 2018
Playtime: 16h 22m
Date reviewed: Apr. 9, 2018
Date posted: Feb. 8, 2023
Rating: 6/10

This is a point and click adventure game, so it's not like the SNES or Genesis versions. The goal of the game is to find at least one dinosaur egg for each of seven dino species and get it back to the incubator in the park's visitor center fast enough so it doesn't get so cold the dino inside dies. I don't know how long that takes since I never had one die on me. There's also a 12 hour time limit to do so. So, you can't just wander around and take your good old natured time doing this since moving from one area to another uses up 10 minutes. This creates an issue because you end up needing to know exactly what to do. If you're stuck for what to do and decide to come back to it later, you'll run out of time if you do this more than once, maybe twice.

Another downfall is the battle system. In each area, except for in the visitor center, you rotate around 360 degrees. The problem is that you rotate rather slowly, so if something is attacking off-screen, you likely can't get around in time to get a shot off. This is a serious issue against the velociraptors, which kill you with two hits and are very fast -- if you don't know exactly where they start from so you can instantly start rotating to get a shot off, you're pretty much dead. There's also the issue of needing to be stationary to access the inventory, as well as when you start charging up the Stunner (which is required in order to stun the raptors). You do have a more powerful tranquilizer, but you have a limited amount of ammo (granted, there is probably more than enough to be found to where you can be a little liberal with your use of it). None of your weapons are lethal, so you only are able to knock the dinos unconscious for a relatively short period of time.

A definite plus is that if you can interact with something, the X cursor turns green. But you won't know it until you acquire the item that allows you to interact with it.

If not for the battle system, this would have been a pretty good game to me. I would recommend skipping this one.

For anyone looking to try it out, my advice is that if anything is animated, it almost definitely can be interacted with.