Jurassic World Evolution 3 - Review

One of my all-time favourite movies is Jurassic Park and the novel ain’t so bad either. So of course, when the games started coming out, I started to play them. While I am not as enamoured about Jurassic World as a series, I do love the Evolution series that Frontier have created. Is it a third success for this trilogy of games, or as a little third picture fatigue slipped in?

Much like how the second game followed on from the events of the second Jurassic World movie, Evolution 3 follows on from the third movie. This means that dinosaurs are now living among us, and in order for humans and dinosaurs to co-exist, there needs to be better ways to take care of them. This is where DIN comes in, the Dinosaur Integration Network, a group of folks who believe that the two species can co-exist. Not everyone believes that a campfire and some guitar playing is all it will take, one such voice is Ian Malcom, again portrayed by Jeff Goldblum. As you begin your campaign, you will be given a few fairly simple tasks, but then Hawaii will beckon as there is a specialist there who can help you make male dinosaurs. Across the campaign, you will be given choices in how you approach almost every aspect, including the order you visit locations in and its quite freeing. Just be aware, that Dr Malcom is not the only voice against your work.

For those who want more of a challenge, you can jump into the challenge mode, which as its name implies, throws down a lot of challenges for you to enjoy. What makes this mode worth playing is that with each success, you will unlock new options for use in your campaign and sandbox mode. The latter is the free mode, you have no cash restrictions and can ignore the needs of the dinos, in order to just focus on building the park of your dreams. This is where the third entry shines, with its insane customisation to almost every aspect. Yes, in past games you could tweak the colours of the dinos, but now you can also tweak the buildings, paths and even the islands themselves.

Before I go to far down that, the major new dino enhancement is that of juvenile creatures. For that you do need to have both genders of dinosaur, because unlike Jurassic Park, the females can’t reproduce on their own. Now you might be forgiven for thinking that all you need is a love nest your adult dinosaurs will make some eggs, but there is more to it than that. Each creature needs a nest, so that part is right, but they also have additional requirements, including being comfy, because if they ain’t, you ain’t getting no eggs. What is incredible is that if you spend time tweaking the genome of any dino, giving them interesting colours or traits, those pass down to their offspring, just like what happens in real life.

Getting the adult dinos comfy means putting in the right terrain for them, ensuring that they have the right trees or water and so forth. Some critters are ok with a little pasture and a small body of water, but some need multiple terrain types, not to mention cover to use to avoid the more carnivorous creatures. Depending on the mode of play, you will also need to accommodate for their health, researching medicines if they get sick and so on. A lot of the mistakes I was making, came down to just being too eager to get some dinos into a pen, which always started with the fences. It took a few campaign locations, but I got my rhythm right. Now the game won’t punish you if you fail a campaign mission, you just start over, but when you have a sick dino or worse, one out of containment and you don’t have the funds to fix the issues, giving up doesn’t feel like an option.

With all that is going on, the general park management, staff, facilities, dinosaurs, and dealing with the occasional bad weather, I would love to say the game makes it all easy, but it has issues. Much like the past games and the other theme park simulating games from Frontier, there are times when the amount of information just becomes too much. Dealing with budgets, unhappy park guests, sick dinos, facilities in states of disrepair, it can be a lot and sadly the game is not the easiest to follow when it tries to tell you all of it. Now my background, outside of here, is in data reporting and analytics and when I tell you that some of the screens were to busy for me to follow, should tell you something. If you are playing in sandbox, you don’t need to know about any of that, but campaign and challenge mode require it. It would have been nice to see a simpler version, just to allow for more folks to enjoy the whole park full of dinosaurs thing.

Something that I am happy with is the presentation across the board. Now you might think that as a sequel, there really wasn’t much room to change things up, but you would be wrong. Sure, at a glance a lot of what you are seeing looks the same as the last game, but taking a look deeper shows much more to see. The game has a lot of defaults for you, default dino colours, default building designs and there is nothing wrong with any of them. With the simple touch of a button, you can swap between designs, allowing you to build a version of Jurassic Park or Jurassic World, but what I loved is that you can change everything. You can change the scale of buildings, the colour of banners, doors and even what type of lights are used. If you want to go crazier, you an even add more AC vents to the roof, letting your simple coffee shop look like an Amazon data center.

This level of visual freedom means that if you lined up 10 people and gave them the same tools, you would end up with 10 very different results. Couple the creative freedom with the ability to download designs from the Frontier Workshop, means that you will never be lacking for things to gaze upon. Sadly, there are a few visual hiccups that pop up from time to time. The most common one is clipping of the dinosaurs, either through vegetation or through other dinosaurs. When it’s the tips of a tail, you can just brush it off, but there were more than a few times when one critter walked right through another, which is harder to let slide. I did see the cars often drive through people as well, usually because they would just speed around the place, ruining the vibe of the park at the same time. The other visual issue I encountered was with the terrain painting, going from one terrain type to another, often had things flicker. Now I did not do that often, so it was not a common thing, but when it happened, I noticed.

One area I knew going in would have high expectations thrust upon it was with the audio, because the Jurassic Park theme or ‘Theme from Jurassic Park’ as it is officially called, is a piece I listen to a lot. So, any new music or sounds would have to match what I know from the movies and they did a pretty good job. They do use a lot of the melodies and even some snippets for winning moments, which just brings a sense of wow to things. But outside of that, the music is still great, from the opening piano version of the theme to the music that kicks in when a sandstorm or other weather event begins. The voice work is another hit, it was great in the past game and I just as delightful here, but I do wish that Jeff Goldblum was not the only star from the movies to join up. Don’t get me wrong, his voice is great and while he is less chaos theory Dr Malcom and more restraint Dr Malcom, having someone else would just give the game more to work with.

Jurassic World Evolution 3 really lives up to its name; it’s an evolution across the board. The campaign letting you decide what order you want to tackle things in is great and it’s a fun challenge. Challenge mode is going to test some players and sandbox is just a joy to let loose in. The game does struggle with the sheer amount of data it can present, which might leave some folks feeling overwhelmed. There is a lot to enjoy here and Frontier have proven that the third time is the charm.

The Score

9.0

Review code provided by Frontier Developments

The Pros

The juvenile additions do make a great difference when it comes to getting a park feeling like it’s a proper place

The sheer amount of customisation options is incredible and players willing to dive in will find themselves lost in the variety possible

The Cons

There are a lot of data presented to players, which might overwhelm some

A visual issues pop up from time to time, including dinosaurs walking through each other, which is weird