The 3rd installment of the award winning series Jurassic World Evolution is here and it features new creative tools not seen before in the previous installments.
The basis is exactly the same as one and two, you build your own Jurassic World in a new campaign, breed and look after dinosaurs, build attractions to please guests and build your dream park, aiming to raise its rating to five stars. There are also challenges along with a sandbox mode, allowing you to create your dream park without any limitations.
Now I haven’t actually played any of the first two games, so I can’t really compare them to the third one, though if ratings from Metacritic and IGN are anything to go off on, then it’s the best one of the series yet.
There were constantly things to do, so you’re never left bored
Running my own jurassic park was definitely a few things, it was fun, hectic and most importantly constant. There was never nothing to do, whether it was sending maintenance teams to fix things across the park, sending ranger teams to check statuses of dinosaurs, send your scientists on expeditions or even deal with the dinosaurs that have escaped from their closures, something always needed attention on and off site.
Once you unlocked all of the 10 campaign locations, there were specific objectives you had to complete in order to progress through the story, with an old face from the previous game Dr. Ian Malcolm (who is voiced by Jeff Goldblum) along with some newer ones there to help and guide you from the beginning. Once you finished those objectives the rest of building and transforming the park was left to you, with the final outcome (hopefully) being to raise the park’s ratings to five stars.
Despite the constant need to do something I actually really liked that aspect, one problem I’ve faced with a lot of games which I think a lot of people can also relate to, is that I get bored quite quickly which is either a result of waiting for something to happen or because nothing is happening, which is pretty much the same thing. Obviously not all games I have played are sandbox, therefore not all of them have different things which you constantly have to divide your attention between, but I enjoy sandbox games and I enjoy always being busy, so put those two together and you get games like Jurassic World Evolution 3.
Whilst I had fun creating my own park, the limited space didn’t allow me to fully capture my visions
Upon playing through the first few hours of the game and seeing what I had to work with in terms of the different locations, I had a rough idea of what I wanted the parks to look like. After completing certain objectives for each location you were able to unlock more of the area and expand the park, whether you wanted more enclosures, attractions or restrooms, there definitely was a good enough amount of space to build and place them down, however I found the space to be quite limited, which resulted in me not being able to place everything I wanted down.
I would have to choose between either placing a dinosaur enclosure which would take up all of the space, or place down a few other buildings such as a restroom, a food and drink stand or a hot air balloon tour. Now I can’t be too picky since if I wanted to capture my ideal park then I could just play sandbox mode, or better yet just be smarter with the space given, prioritizing specific things first even if it meant not looking the exact way I wanted it to.
I did eventually accept that and put things above others in terms of how much it appealed to guests, along with what needed to be added or changed to deal with the feedback from the guests and their satisfaction levels.
Now it sounds silly of me to moan about lack of space when sandbox mode is quite literally available from the get go, but I wanted to build my ideal park in the main campaign, it would just feel more rewarding and satisfying, since I would actually be working towards something rather than doing it in sandbox where I’m given everything right away without working for it. I feel the same when it comes to Minecraft, I like creative mode and the idea is great, but I’d personally go through all of the challenges that comes with obtaining whatever it is I want.
In Jurassic World Evolution’s 3 sandbox mode there are two different versions, the first one being standard in which the preset settings are the same as the main campaign but with unlimited money. The other version is creative, in which all of the game’s restrictions are disabled and creativity is in the palm of your hands. There are also a lot more options, from simple ones such as changing the weather and time of day, to more complex ones such as changing the levels of power outage frequency and dinosaur disease levels, allowing for a vast variety of customizable options to build your dream park.
With over 90 species of dinosaurs you’re spoiled for choice
Out of the three installments of the series, to no surprise Jurassic World Evolution 3 has the most species of dinosaurs available, with over 90 available in the base game and an extra four available by purchasing the deluxe edition. It’s a huge jump from the first game which only had 48 dinosaurs and there’s a good chance that even more species could be added in the future.
Having so many dinosaurs to choose from was both great and annoying. Great because there were so many different species so you could have flying, land and underwater dinosaurs all in one park, but annoying because it was difficult to choose from all of them with the limited space available. Most dinosaurs need pretty big enclosures to be comfortable so there’s only so many different species you can have in one park, some species can co-exist but even then the area will need to be big enough to please both of them.
Some of the dinosaurs I picked were because I liked them, though most of them were due to the appeal they would bring to guests, ultimately increasing profit. Gaining most dinosaurs was fairly easy, all you had to do was hire scientists (more can be hired by building staff centres) and assign them to research new species. After that’s done more dig sites will appear on the expedition app, which you can send your scientists on though make sure they’re rested enough to carry it out and have enough genetics and logistics skills to carry it out.
Completing expeditions will give you fossils which you can then use to increase the genome of said dinosaur, once you’ve reached a 50% genome level you can start to synthesize the dinosaur in the hatchery and then release it into your park. Be mindful though that the higher the genome the healthier it will be and the longer it will live, so try to aim for 100%.
The biggest dinosaurs like the T-Rex aren’t as easy to unlock however, though it’s more that you’ll have to put more hours into the game to actually get them, the amount of guests it brings to the park and the profit that you make will most definitely be worthwhile.
