• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

Jurassic Park Evolution

jmotivator

Computer Gaming Nerd
DP Veteran
Joined
Feb 24, 2013
Messages
34,698
Reaction score
19,158
Gender
Undisclosed
Political Leaning
Conservative
So I picked this up to days ago after watching some Youtubers I follow playing it. It's a very solid "Tycoon" style game with a constant threat of dinosaur rampages.

Well, sort of... I think I broke the game with a simple deduction.

My pros and cons:

Pros:
- The game is absolutely beautiful at every level of zoom. There was a lot of care put into the visuals of this game.

- The game is really very deep and full of some great hard decisions. When you make a bad choice it can take a while for the scale of that decision to present itself... this kind of "unseen hand" type game evolution is essential, and done very well here.

- The coordination of dinosaur dig planning, DNA splicing and theme park design is amazingly compelling

Cons:

- The one major one so far is that the common sense that would have saved people throughout the Jurassic Park movie series works in Evolution. The solution: Don't incubate meat eaters. I mean, I do, eventually, but you can make amazingly successful parks using only herbivores. Moreover, the game almost forces you down this path because your park's success depends pretty heavily on the variety of dinosaurs and their visibility... the upside of herbivores is you can put them all happily into one big habitat and they live together happily... you can't keep carnivores in a pen with anything other than fellow carnivores as they kill each other. So the trick: One giant habitat for herbivores, and then one or two small habitats for a featured carnivore to boost ticket sales.

The game has hurricane and tropical storm mechanics that wreak havoc on your power system and management buildings, but these storms tend to force you to open your emergency shelters anyway... so if/when a dino escapes, you usually don't have people in harms way.

.. granted, they ramp up difficulty with each unlocked island, and there is always warnings of potential sabotage... so no doubt there will come a time when dinos are released into the park teaming with tourists, but so far not so much. Your worst enemy is yourself and poor money management.
 
So I picked this up to days ago after watching some Youtubers I follow playing it. It's a very solid "Tycoon" style game with a constant threat of dinosaur rampages.

Well, sort of... I think I broke the game with a simple deduction.

My pros and cons:

Pros:
- The game is absolutely beautiful at every level of zoom. There was a lot of care put into the visuals of this game.

- The game is really very deep and full of some great hard decisions. When you make a bad choice it can take a while for the scale of that decision to present itself... this kind of "unseen hand" type game evolution is essential, and done very well here.

- The coordination of dinosaur dig planning, DNA splicing and theme park design is amazingly compelling

Cons:

- The one major one so far is that the common sense that would have saved people throughout the Jurassic Park movie series works in Evolution. The solution: Don't incubate meat eaters. I mean, I do, eventually, but you can make amazingly successful parks using only herbivores. Moreover, the game almost forces you down this path because your park's success depends pretty heavily on the variety of dinosaurs and their visibility... the upside of herbivores is you can put them all happily into one big habitat and they live together happily... you can't keep carnivores in a pen with anything other than fellow carnivores as they kill each other. So the trick: One giant habitat for herbivores, and then one or two small habitats for a featured carnivore to boost ticket sales.

The game has hurricane and tropical storm mechanics that wreak havoc on your power system and management buildings, but these storms tend to force you to open your emergency shelters anyway... so if/when a dino escapes, you usually don't have people in harms way.

.. granted, they ramp up difficulty with each unlocked island, and there is always warnings of potential sabotage... so no doubt there will come a time when dinos are released into the park teaming with tourists, but so far not so much. Your worst enemy is yourself and poor money management.

I might take a look at Quill's videos on the game and give it consideration. I have heard that it is surprisingly good.
 
So I picked this up to days ago after watching some Youtubers I follow playing it. It's a very solid "Tycoon" style game with a constant threat of dinosaur rampages.

Well, sort of... I think I broke the game with a simple deduction.

My pros and cons:

Pros:
- The game is absolutely beautiful at every level of zoom. There was a lot of care put into the visuals of this game.

- The game is really very deep and full of some great hard decisions. When you make a bad choice it can take a while for the scale of that decision to present itself... this kind of "unseen hand" type game evolution is essential, and done very well here.

- The coordination of dinosaur dig planning, DNA splicing and theme park design is amazingly compelling

Cons:

- The one major one so far is that the common sense that would have saved people throughout the Jurassic Park movie series works in Evolution. The solution: Don't incubate meat eaters. I mean, I do, eventually, but you can make amazingly successful parks using only herbivores. Moreover, the game almost forces you down this path because your park's success depends pretty heavily on the variety of dinosaurs and their visibility... the upside of herbivores is you can put them all happily into one big habitat and they live together happily... you can't keep carnivores in a pen with anything other than fellow carnivores as they kill each other. So the trick: One giant habitat for herbivores, and then one or two small habitats for a featured carnivore to boost ticket sales.

The game has hurricane and tropical storm mechanics that wreak havoc on your power system and management buildings, but these storms tend to force you to open your emergency shelters anyway... so if/when a dino escapes, you usually don't have people in harms way.

.. granted, they ramp up difficulty with each unlocked island, and there is always warnings of potential sabotage... so no doubt there will come a time when dinos are released into the park teaming with tourists, but so far not so much. Your worst enemy is yourself and poor money management.

I don't like many modern games. I usually stick to the old sandbox or pokemon, but the Jurassic Park game did look amazing. Based on your review, there aren't many cons and I don't consider most of the things you listed as cons anyway. It does look beautiful.
 
Well, sort of... I think I broke the game with a simple deduction.
Life will always find a way. As true in biology as it is in computer programming. :D
 
I don't like many modern games. I usually stick to the old sandbox or pokemon, but the Jurassic Park game did look amazing. Based on your review, there aren't many cons and I don't consider most of the things you listed as cons anyway. It does look beautiful.

I find the age old Disney model works amazingly well... a long road of shops and eateries with a hotel at one end and the main attraction at the other. :lol:

Now, I have to say that there are a bazillion "Tycoon" style games (I include the Sims) that I loved playing and eventually got bored with... and what do you do when you finally get bored with a Tycoon game? You plan mayhem... maybe that coaster loses a section of track... maybe don't put that fire out so fast... delete all of the bathrooms...

So the end game in this Tycoon game will be the merging of tourists and pissed off dinosaurs. Maybe I've talked myself into this being the best Tycoon game ever. :lamo

Oh, the other Con is it is very expensive for a PC game. $60 is a lot.
 
Last edited:
Life will always find a way. As true in biology as it is in computer programming. :D

Oh, that's another pro. Jeff Goldblum does voice acting here and has at least one moment that I literally laughed out loud.

Though I haven't heard from him in a while so he might only be in the game during the extended tutorial.
 
I find the age old Disney model works amazingly well... a long road of shops and eateries with a hotel at one end and the main attraction at the other. :lol:

Now, I have to say that there are a bazillion "Tycoon" style games (I include the Sims) that I loved playing and eventually got bored with... and what do you do when you finally get bored with a Tycoon game? You plan mayhem... maybe that coaster loses a section of track... maybe don't put that fire out so fast... delete all of the bathrooms...

So the end game in this Tycoon game will be the merging of tourists and pissed off dinosaurs. Maybe I've talked myself into this being the best Tycoon game ever. :lamo

Oh, the other Con is it is very expensive for a PC game. $60 is a lot.

I destroyed many a pokemon games using that break method :), as well as kept my original transferred level 100 charizard between 100s of different saved copies before I sold all the games. Since I can play them on the PC. I think the modern video games are great, and they have cool stories, they just don't appeal to me. Plus I don't have that much time on my hands to sit through a video game monologue. Even the basic games when I was growing up like Zelda got a bit annoying that way.
 
So I picked this up to days ago after watching some Youtubers I follow playing it. It's a very solid "Tycoon" style game with a constant threat of dinosaur rampages.

Well, sort of... I think I broke the game with a simple deduction.

My pros and cons:

Pros:
- The game is absolutely beautiful at every level of zoom. There was a lot of care put into the visuals of this game.

- The game is really very deep and full of some great hard decisions. When you make a bad choice it can take a while for the scale of that decision to present itself... this kind of "unseen hand" type game evolution is essential, and done very well here.

- The coordination of dinosaur dig planning, DNA splicing and theme park design is amazingly compelling

Cons:

- The one major one so far is that the common sense that would have saved people throughout the Jurassic Park movie series works in Evolution. The solution: Don't incubate meat eaters. I mean, I do, eventually, but you can make amazingly successful parks using only herbivores. Moreover, the game almost forces you down this path because your park's success depends pretty heavily on the variety of dinosaurs and their visibility... the upside of herbivores is you can put them all happily into one big habitat and they live together happily... you can't keep carnivores in a pen with anything other than fellow carnivores as they kill each other. So the trick: One giant habitat for herbivores, and then one or two small habitats for a featured carnivore to boost ticket sales.

The game has hurricane and tropical storm mechanics that wreak havoc on your power system and management buildings, but these storms tend to force you to open your emergency shelters anyway... so if/when a dino escapes, you usually don't have people in harms way.

.. granted, they ramp up difficulty with each unlocked island, and there is always warnings of potential sabotage... so no doubt there will come a time when dinos are released into the park teaming with tourists, but so far not so much. Your worst enemy is yourself and poor money management.

I noticed during the first video I watched that the frame rate of the game dropped way down at a couple points? Is that normal for the game?
 
I noticed during the first video I watched that the frame rate of the game dropped way down at a couple points? Is that normal for the game?

I don't know. I haven't seen any slow downs, but I'm running it on a GTX 1080.

Were the videos from the Dev, or from a youtuber? I can see where a Youtuber trying to play and encode the game on the same machine could get choppy.
 
I don't know. I haven't seen any slow downs, but I'm running it on a GTX 1080.

Were the videos from the Dev, or from a youtuber? I can see where a Youtuber trying to play and encode the game on the same machine could get choppy.

Youtouber(quill18), and that is a definite possibility.
 
The part that I hadn't considered until last night, and happens to be the most interesting thing to me, is that there are essentially three separate Tycoon games happening at once within JPE.

1) You have on the one hand the macro theme park game where you are designing the park for maximum traffic through exhibits, concessions, gift shops and maintaining tourist enthusiasm.

2) On a smaller micro level you play exhibit Tycoon where you have to design enclosures to suit the needs of the dinosaurs you are putting in the enclosure, as well as providing the proper view angles for the tourists, and even planning the best mix of dinosaurs and numbers of dinosaurs to prevent some of them getting too agitated. Some dinos you only want to release in pairs because they are very social and will lose their mind if you leave them alone (see: velociraptor) while others are more solitary, and are OK by themselves but get angry if there are too many other dinos in the enclosure (see: ankylosaurus, T-Rex)... then there is the delicate balance of building enclosures with both carnivores and herbivores.. the holy grail that I have yet to perfect.

3) And then finally there is the Fossil/Genome/Modification/research game where you need to keep ahead of the demands of #1 and #2 by finding new dinos to keep tourists interested, while modifying the dinos to make them better suited for various environments. I've only cracked the surface of the gene modification game, opting to spend money and research on the buildings and finding new dinos... at some point I will probably need to start figuring out how to make custom dinos that live longer, stay happier, have greener skin... but so far it hasn't been necessary. The nice thing is that in the campaign all of your island economies are separate, but the research is shared, so I can jump between island labs and have them spend their money of gene research while I work on making my latest island profitable.

The only silly thing in the game is that the research tree applies to all aspects of the park, leaving some rather silly/bizarre/dumb trade offs... "Hmmmm.... should I research to unlock a gene modification for longer dino life span... or unlock the bowling alley?" :roll: :lol:
 
Back
Top Bottom