Jurassic World Evolution

Came out on PC today. Later this month on consoles.

Anyone playing?

It's out digitally on console. I got it for Ps4. It's probably not the deepest game ever made but I'm enjoying it so far. Haven't left the first island yet though.

Edit--Posted from my phone but I have a little more time to give more of my thoughts. I'm a sucker for Jurassic Park and builders so this could be more up my alley then some people. Here are my quick thoughts from spending about 2 and half hours with it.

The sound is on point, very reminiscent of the movies, music is good with the classic theme being played. Voice acting is also surprisingly solid and seems to be alot of the cast from the movies or atleast very good sound alikes.

Graphics are good you can zoom pretty close in on stuff and the details are there, foliage and dinosaurs look great. The weather effects are really solid to, I'm hoping for larger storms later on but the few light rains I've experienced really feel like tropical storms. Animations on the other hand leave a little to be desired they don't cycle through many, and when a person is eaten by a carnivore it looks exactly the same each time. There does seen to be some phys-x or something as a charging dino does send people flying across the ground.

Gameplay is deep enough for me but I can see some thinking it's shallow. There aren't a ton of options for really digging into the micro managing of the park and it doesn't go so deep as to let you see what a customer is thinking. You can tweak a few things though and there are pretty deep stat menus. Each dinosaur species seems to have ideal conditions you want to set up in their pen, and restless ones will try to escape. You are able to tweak the dna for them and i like the idea of digging up fossils to perfect the genome on a species and then filling out the blank sequences with different animal variety for different perks. Again it does not go crazy in depth or anything just a few tweaks and things to research. You can drive or fly around your park performing tasks like emunizing or tranqing dinosaurs, taking Pokemon snap type shots, or filling food dispensers it all plays pretty well but could get boring fast (you can also automate this stuff).

Playing on controller feels natural and is laid out really well. Also runs well on my ps4 launch system. Game looks like it takes up about 11 gigs.

Again it may not be foe everyone or hardcore builder fans, it's a bit simplistic, it's also missing a sandbox mode so you only have the 5 islands in the campaign. I'm hoping more stuff gets added, I know they are releasing content along with the movie for free but I'm not sure if that's it.

That's my ramble and half put together thoughts for anyone that's interested. Sorry for the format or grammar I posted from my phone.

I played a good bit last night. One really weird thing I noticed. I don;t think the got the rights to images from the original movies. In the encyclopedia they mention a lot of characters, but do not show images of them. Like the image for Tim is a fence and the image for Genaro is the outside of a bathroom stall.

as far as gameplay, it's a park builder, with dinosaurs. I'm not for down the research trees or anything but i'm enjoying it. I already had to restart a level because I did not sufficiently secure my raptor pen and they ate way too many tourists. Its fun.

I believe once you open up Isla Nublar, that acts as a sandbox mode.

I love the voice for Chris Pratt's character.

i've added this to my cart a couple times and haven't pulled the trigger. i think i may see how it shakes out first and what they plan on doing with it.

So the carnivores on my first island kept breaking out and attacking guests last night. After reading the description for them I realized that my enclosure may not have enough grass land or forests in it, and it was a little small. So I decided to restart the island and was pleasantly surprised to see all my research and genome progress carried over. It was nice not having to start from scratch and it was much easier building the park the way I wanted this time. It didn't take long to unlock the second island but I never eneded up checking it out. I was having to much fun just finishing my research and excavating the last few dig sites I had.

if you click on a particular dino there are a series of slider looking deals, with white sections and red sections, different for each species. If a slider is in the red for any amount of time, they will freak out and try to escape. I had my (I can't recall what that entry level mid-size carno is called) go nuts on the regular because he didn't have enough open space in the forest filled enclosure i had him in. built out the wall a bit, deleted some trees (which immediately adjusted the 'forest' and 'grassland' sliders) and then he was content to nom on goats for guest amusement

Yeah the sliders are useful for pin pointing what's causing anxiety. I'm hoping I'll be able to use this to build some mixed exhibits. Would love to have a site B going with more of a conservation type feel to it then a zoo. I wish there was genome sequencing for aggression. I'm really hoping this gets some decent post game support. Seems like a really solid foundation.

UI and the graphics look great too. Plays very smoothly.

Balthezor wrote:

UI and the graphics look great too. Plays very smoothly.

Works well on Ps4 as well, no major frames dropped and controller feels very natural.

Oh this looks so great! How much freedom is there in choose how to build your park? I love sandbox games like this, and hearing it doesn't have any (yet) is a slight deterrent. Also - it is fine on Console? I am considering getting it on Xbox so the GF can follow along the progress of the park while I play.

Each island has a circumscribed "build-able area" and inside that area you are free to build however you like and landscape how you like, including morphing terrain in a way similar but less granular to what is possible in Planet Coaster (i think, i never actually played planet coaster). place buildings, place fences, create lakes, etc etc

Awesome - Thanks a lot! That sounds sufficiently sandboxy for me

Having a more simplistic game might be a good choice for a licensed property; if it's more accessible, Jurassic Park fans like my wife (who rarely plays games) might enjoy it. And frankly, it's always a happy miracle when a licensed game isn't a pile of crap.

Of course, nothing will please my wife like the Sega Jurassic Park game, where you could play as a raptor and eat people. That's pretty much what she wants from a game.

I loved that game so much. Playing as a raptor was the best.

I've got my eye on this, but from reading some of the reviews I think I'm going to hold off for a sale. The two big quality of life changes that I'm hoping will be patched in are

1. Some sort of fast forward. It's crazy that a business sim game at this point doesn't have a fast forward for those times when things are going smoothly and you just need to collect some more funds.

2. Apparently you have to manually assign your workers to refill the dinosaur feeders and other similar tasks? They don't just patrol and take care of it if you have enough of them?

Overall I'm really liking what I've read and seen though. It seems like it has a good foundation, and you have to figure they crunched to meet this release date (I develop software for a living, I know that big software projects and ironclad release dates don't mix, honestly the fact that it seems limited but not buggy shows that they were super disciplined and competent with their schedule managing). They've done great after-release support with Planet Coaster, so I have every reason to hope they'll do that here too!

It does seem... feature light. but the most important part, the dinosaurs, are in-universe accurate (no feathers they look like the dinos from the movies) and move and behave flawlessly. I think you're right, they are absolutely wanting to have this out ahead of the movie release next week

I heard it described as less of a Park Management sim and more of a Chaos management sim, which seems like a pretty apt comparison.

You can't automate alot of systems but because of that you can have some pretty interesting situations happen.

A small example is a disgruntled employee is angry because I haven't worked on my entertainment contracts. They then sabotage my power station causing my electric fences to fail. Since systems aren't automated I have to contact the crew to tell them to reset the station, unfortunately the power being out has also knocked out our radios. Now I have to manually drive over to the power station to do a full reset. This means I don't have a full overview of the map and dinosaurs could be up to no good. It feels more like a movie then a traditional park sim would be.

I mean there is of course no reason automated systems can't be added without taking away that stuff. The game is a little lacking on depth but there are immersive systems that do play well together. I'm hoping to see what kind of situations I can create or what the game throws at me.

You just have to understand that it's a Unix system...

Anyone done anything evil in the game yet?

You mean opening the gates to your enclosure and letting your T-rex eat everybody? Nah, not yet.

I prefer to think of it as chaotic neutral.

My science division opened all my gates because they felt i wasn't paying enough attention to them (needy much?!) and i learned that the ideal social group of 5 deinonychus is a ridiculous deadly threat. They killed hundreds of guests, but worse they killed my entire pack of velociraptors and most of my smell herbivores. I did learn the deinonychus can live peacefully with large herbos. My favorite exhibit so far is a mixed deinonychus and brachiosaurus exhibit.

Do they do pack hunting? Or do they just go of to do individual fighting like Rexes do?

Hmm, well they move as a group, but i think the fights are individual.

My visitors must be expenses because I'm sparing none of 'em.

I'd love a little more building variety but am quite enjoying some of the scenarios

Havent been able to get into this one as much as Id hoped unfortunately. I just wish for more customization options. The parks seem pretty bland. This is the first purchase Ive made in a long time that I really regret. Im hoping they update it with some more park options and more to do besides just building pens.

Its a good base but feels pretty shallow, I could see it improving though.

Picked this up in the sale for like $10 and have really been enjoying it. The park management stuff clearly isn't as deep as other park management sims, but I'm ok with that. The real reason I'm here is to design my dino park (also, the DLC coming next week that's based on the original movie), and at that this seems to be pretty good.

Anyone still playing this or did everyone get their 10 hours out of it and then move on to something else?

Picked this up on the Steam sale today. Wasn't expecting rudimentary driving and helicopter flying, let alone the introduction of Yelp-esque ratings as a scoring mechanic, but there you go. I keep expecting a litany of I-Told-You-Sos from Jeff Goldblum when things really start going wrong.

It's almost like the herbivore dinosaurs wait until your island becomes insanely profitable and then stage a mass riot.