I recall the time they found those fossilized mosquitoes and before long, they were cloning DNA. Now I'm being chased by some irate velociraptors, well believe me, this has been one lousy day. Jurassic Park is frightening in the dark, and in many ways, more frightening on the Sega Genesis. Released in 1993 by Sega and developed by BlueSky Software, Jurassic Park is a video game adaptation of the Stephen Spielberg film of the same name based on the novel also of the same name. 1993 was the year of Jurassic Park as the film's dazzling mix of practical and computer generated effects brought the dinosaurs to the big screen in ways never seen before at that time.
Raking in over a billion in the global box office, it was obvious that video game adaptations were going to happen. Interestingly, Jurassic Park has a great multitude of games, each being somewhat different from the other. While Nintendo's outings were handled by Ocean, Sega secured the publishing rights to the franchise for their own series of games. Doug Tennapel of Earthworm Jim fame and his animation team made sure to study how dinosaurs worked, even going so far as to have Robert Bakker, a paleontologist, give them the info they needed to be as perfect as possible. While the movie was clearly the main inspiration for the game's design, the original novel was a bigger influence, as more elements from the book made their way into the game.
Jurassic Park is a one player game. It is broken into two games, one where you play as Dr. Alan Grant and the other where you play as a velociraptor. Regardless, the game doesn't really have much story progression that sticks close to the movie. In Grant's story, it starts around the point where Nedry turns the power out on the park and the T-Rex attacks Grant's tour vehicle. Despite that, the only character from the film or book to appear in the game is Grant. No Ian Malcolm, no Ellie Sattler, no Lex, no Tim, no Billy, no cloneasaurus, nobody. And you also don't get any iconic scenes from the film either, save for the final showdown in the visitor center with the raptors, which doesn't even feature the T-Rex. Essentially the plot of the game boils down to Grant having to find his way to the visitor center to get to the helicopter to escape Jurassic Park.
You control Grant with the D-pad, can toggle between weapons with A, use weapons with B, and jump with C. Grant gets an arsenal of tranquilizers, smoke bombs, missiles and more as you search throughout each of Grant's seven levels of play. Starting from the jungle area of Isla Nublar, you make your way into the end of the level using your weapons to defeat the compys, the dilophosaurs, pterodactyls and more. But you'll soon find that the game's difficulty comes less from the dinosaurs as it comes from the platforming. Levels can get cramped, making jumps tricky to land in places. Grant also moves stiffly and can easily overshoot spots. And, for some reason, if you fall from a high height, it's an instant death. And the kicker is the game has no checkpoints, so it's back to the beginning of the level if you fail, and you will fail. Three lives is all you get before game over. Luckily, if you go to the password section, your password will be displayed and you can continue on, so the mission isn't completely hopeless.
Level 2 is a power station, that isn't too hard, but you will have one area where you'll have to climb an electric fence and avoid the moving electricity. Grant can also be finicky when pressing up to climb and often needs to be in the pixel perfect right area. After that is a river ride on a boat that Grant needs to constantly find fuel for. You'll get a first encounter with the T-Rex, which can be stunned with a grenade for a brief period. You have to be pixel perfect when dropping down certain falls in the maze-like area, because it can be easy to crash your boat if you aren't again pixel perfect. The pump station is where hell begins as there's a lot of claustrophobic areas you have to jump across, and poor timing in these cramped areas often lead to instant death. After that is a canyon with more precision jumps, a volcano level, then finally the visitors center, which is actually a fun last level, with more of the dino fighting action that you wanted and far less cramped crawling. After knocking down two dinosaur skeletons on some raptors, you win Grant's game.
The raptor is a far quicker experience, broken into five levels. As the raptor, there isn't too much depth to the story. You just chase after Grant until you defeat him at the visitors center. The raptor does have some decent moves like a high jump, a jump kick, and even a biting attack for those annoying compys. He also recovers his health by eating meat strewn throughout levels. The downside to the raptor is that his jumps can often be flaky and it can be easy to miss jumps due to the awful pixel perfection. This is evident once again in the pump station as there are platforms you won't even be able to see in places and can easily die due to poor falling. There can also be areas where the human enemies can blast the raptor with their tasers, causing it to fall and die more easily. Regardless, it's a far shorter campaign, and even with the painful platforming, it was more enjoyable than Grant's.
The game looks nice graphically, smaller sprites for most of the enemies, but they're still well detailed. Highlight of course being the T-Rex, which you also see in the Sega logo screen when you boot the game up. The lush jungle areas look vivid, while the internal areas are a bit drab and ugly. On the music side, the sound is very good, giving off a great sense of the need for survival in a wild environment. Favorite tune of the game easily goes to the visitors center which really feels like the game ramping up to its conclusion.
In the end, Jurassic Park is a very frustrating game. It doesn't get any chance to give you an experience on par with the movie, nor does it play well with a lot of just rough control moments that lead to cheap deaths. Regardless, it sold well due to the license, so if that was Sega's intent, then mission accomplished. One year later, Sega would follow up with Jurassic Park: Rampage Edition, and down the line I'll cover that one as well, but to what I played, despite a heavier focus on action, it's more of the same. It's not the worst movie game ever, nor is it the worst Jurassic Park game ever, but in the end, it's an easy skip.
No comments:
Post a Comment