EDIT: Updated with achievement info. Also thanks to Guirec730 for reminding me of the journal entries, I had forgotten about them when I initially wrote the review.
Critiques and criticism are welcome, this is the 1st review I've written on TA so your comments are much appreciated.
Welcome back to Isla Nublar. For many this will be a treat to revisit Jurassic Park. I myself have always been a fan of this ill-fated theme park. Telltale Games brings a new gameplay style to the Jurassic Park franchise and it suffers both pros and cons. The gameplay style is more akin to that of arcade titles such as Dragon's Lair and Space Ace. If you are looking for an action game then you will be sorely disappointed. The game was toted as "filling in gaps" and answering questions that viewers had. Having completed the game I feel that this was sorely misleading. The only item of interest is the barbasol can lost by Dennis Nedry. For a game claiming to run parallel to the movie, there sure are a lot of velociraptors. As several people have commented the population could be argued. Though I must admit, what would Jurassic Park be without raptors?
Now let's break the down the pros and cons.
Pros:
1) The island is brought to beautiful life and we see not only landmarks from the film but new ones as well.
2) Beautifully done cinematic sequences that capture the essence of the film.
3) Intuitive puzzles that involve characters working together.
4) The characters themselves are developed for the most part. You learn each one's personality and past.
5) If you play through the game there are some interesting journal entries to read from Dr. Sorkin. In them she attempts to explain things such as why the t-ex has bad eyesight and why the velociraptors are so tall.
Cons:
1) The gameplay involves lots of precision button mashing which can get very frustrating.
2) At first glance it appears that there is more than one solution to a given puzzle/problem, but this is not the case. The game is extremely linear, the only diversity comes in the form of conversation topics used when the player is interacting with other characters. Despite what is said, the result is always the same.
3) While the cinematic/action scenes are great, the gameplay actually takes away from it. Players can easily find themselves distracted watching a scene and completely miss a button press. The button prompts never appear in the same place and can be anywhere on the screen.
4) Continuity wise the story attempts to follow the established film, but it also directly conflicts with it in several ways. In addition, over 90% of the story takes place
after the movie
a. Dr. Harding is a different person. The addition of his daughter comes off as a forced attempt to include a "child" character.
b. A new dinosaur species, Troodon is introduced. Apparently they are all over the island. Dr. Sorkin speaks of hatching them in her lab, but this would have been done on Isla Sorna.
Achievements:
The achievements in this game are nearly all tied to getting gold medals on each scene/chapter of each episode with only a few exceptions. Once completed each chapter can be individually played so you can go back and get any level specific ones you've missed ie "You Must Be This Tall to Ride". This also includes the "Life Finds a Way" achievement, if you did not unlock this on your 1st play then just replay chapters that do not have gold medals. The final chapter of the last episode will require 2 plays as their are achievements tied to your decision to rescue the barbasol can or Jess (the achievement unlocks right away so alternatively, you can pause, reload your checkpoint, and select the other option). If you missed the "World's Best Dad" achievement on your first playthrough you will need to play through the entire 1st episode and make the correct conversation choices to unlock it. As far as difficulty the achievements come down to just how well you can button mash. If you have a turbo controller you're better off using it.
The Final Word:
If you are interested in playing the game, rent it. With enough patience you can easily bust out all the game's achievements over a weekend. While this game was advertised as being a direct movie tie-in/parallel story, it would be better described as a game loosely based on events from the movie.
2.0