Jurassic Park: Dinosaur Battles. I'm amazed at what the developers did with the game. They made a new format for the game with a simple story about getting of the island by controlling a dinosaur. The game was mostly about having fun. ( adventuring to look for more dinosaur and leveling them up ) The battle system was the best part of the game ( you needed to rest to get stamina back, choose the right attack to hurt your opponent and dodging attacks )
Hands down, the one and only game that can be tied as the best Jurassic Park game with Operation Genesis, even though they're nothing alike. I love the simple story as a person who is also stuck on the island with kids, and somehow receive the ability to control a dinosaur. The battling system was amazing. The leveling up system (if that's what it was even called) was kind of confusing but I like it for being unique. I also loved the idea that you could use a velociraptor and still defeat and T. Rex and a Spinosaurus.
Jurassic Park: Dinosaur Battles. I'm surprised that there are no reviews for this game yet! I guess not a lot of people have even heard of this game. Believe it or not, I actually owned a copy of this game when I was very little. In that case, I guess I'll be the first to review it. Personally, I love Jurassic Park. At least, I love the first movie and the books. Other then those, there is not much more I love with this franchise other than the dinosaurs themselves. The sequels to the movies were crap, and there have also been several crappy video game adaptations of the franchise. Okay, there were some good ones too. I love The Lost World Jurassic Park arcade game. How about this game? Is this game a fantastic game that must be played by all JP and Dinosaur lovers, or should this game be left extinct? Let's find out. All I can say about the gameplay of this game is this: it is absolutely terrible! The game tries and fails to be like Pokemon. In other words, it is an RPG style game with an overhead perspective, but when you encounter a dinosaur, the game suddenly shifts into a battle between two dinosaurs. On paper, this sounds like one of the best ideas to ever come out of a video game, but the execution is very poor. The way you control your dinosaur makes me feel like I'm hamstrung. The battles are not turn based like in Pokemon, they are more action oriented. This would be good if you could take direct control of your dinosaurs, but that's the problem: you literally can't! Instead, you have to hit buttons with your mouse that make your dinosaur get into offensive, defensive, and neutral postures. This may sound like it works in practice, however, more often then not, I felt like the dinosaurs had a mind of their own. Often they keep running away from the other dinosaurs when I am telling them to attack. Also, it **** because everything must be controlled using a mouse, even the attacks. I found myself constantly fumbling around with the mouse, all because I had to keep clicking to attack as well as choosing a posture, and the whole time, I was just getting me butt handed to me by the other dinosaur. The game is also very redundant. Every battle seems the same no matter what. Another annoying thing about the gameplay is how your dinosaur learns attacks. It won't just learn them. You have to activate it by completing genetic sequences of DNA. Once again, this sounds like a brilliant idea, but it was poorly executed. The way you set these up is very confusing. It's so confusing in fact, I can't even explain it, if you want to, you'll just have to find out for yourself! Also, the game is terribly unbalanced! There is one dinosaur in this game that you can get that is invincible to practically everything. Once you get this dinosaur (Ankylosaurus), you can just plow your way through the rest of the game, as it provides a cheap victory over all but six of the dinosaur types in the game. I think that the only good thing about the gameplay that is actually better than Pokemon is the battle mode, in which you can just choose a dinosaur and battle any dinosaurs you have fought over the course of the game. Still though, since the battles in this game ****, it doesn't even matter. Overall, there really aren't too many redeeming qualities about the gameplay, and in the end, it is absolute rubbish. As for the graphics, they are on the just okay side, but generally lean more toward the bad side. The overworld looks beautiful, and the dinosaurs look okay, but the backgrounds you fight in just look downright ugly. They literally look like they were done in less than a minute. Plus, it is also worth mentioning that this game came out in 2002. By this point, Super Mario Sunshine was already out for the Gamecube, and it looked absolutely beautiful for its time, so there is little excuse for graphics to look this shoddy. Overall, the graphics are better than the gameplay, but that doesn't mean they are good. As for the story, it is just awful. It is a cliched story of children going to Site B by accident, and needing your help to get off the island. There is also a story with the stereotypical mad scientist super-villain thrown in to make things interesting, but it ultimately comes out as flat. The characters are not well developed, the voice acting is bad, and in the end, the story is just terrible, no matter how good they try to make it. Overall, this game is absolutely terrible. Nobody should play it at any point in their lives whatsoever.
Gameplay: 2/10
Graphics: 5/10
Story: 3/10
Overall: 3/10