Amazing. Simply amazing. It took no fewer than 18 programmers, graphic artists, and sound technicians to take the most exciting flick of 1993 and turn it into a bunch of extremely dull arcade sequences linked together by silly full-motion video clips of people running through jungle scenery. (Remember 10 years ago, when it took only three or four programmers to turn a great movie into a terrible game?)
Jurassic Park Interactive gives two objectives to the person bored enough to be playing it: rescue five to eleven endangered visitors, depending on skill level, by guiding them to Isla Nublar's heliport, and crack the park's Engineering System computer to recall a raptor-laden cargo ship headed for Costa Rica.
Rescuing the visitors means playing three different sequences. "Spitter Shoot" is a first-person shoot-'em-up where you blast fast-moving Dilophosaurs with an electro stun-gun; it's challenging, but extremely boring by the fourth go-around. "T-Rex Chase" is an atrocious driving sequence that has you outracing the hungry tyrannosaur in a Ford Explorer; the highly repetitive scenery and the terrible collision-detection (which makes it all too easy to crash into roadside debris) add up to boredom and frustration. "Raptor Maze," the only half-decent sequence in the game, is a slightly souped-up version of the graphic engine used in another 3DO game, Escape from Monster Manor (which is in turn a knock-off of the PC game Wolfenstein 3-D).
The worst sequence is the Engineering System computer, in which you're forced to play five games based on late 1970s coin-ops, like Space Invaders , Galaga , and Asteroids . Interactive? You betcha. Interesting? Not even remotely.
At least Universal Interactive has hope of redeeming itself in the eyes of now-wary 3DO owners: their upcoming beat-'em-up, Way of the Warrior (demoed at June's Consumer Electronics Show), promises to have more gore, more secrets, and better audiovisuals than that current king of fighting games, Mortal Kombat.
Jurassic Park Interactive for 3DO: US$59.95. Universal Interactive Studios: +1 (818) 777 8934.
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