Jurassic World Evolution

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AWS260
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Jurassic World Evolution

Post by AWS260 »

From the developers of Planet Coaster. I am intrigued.
As you progress through the campaign, you'll also meet a cast of characters with all the attendant flaws you might expect from having seen the films. You'll be doing missions for the scientist who only sees the dinosaurs as specimens and is blinded to the ethical implications of their work, the overzealous security officer who wants to run a ship so tight the park would never make any money, and the entertainment guy who sees everything as a commercial opportunity and doesn't seem to grasp how dangerous these creatures truly are. They wheedle and encourage you as you go, coaxing you into making the same mistakes Hammond and his successors have made time and time again on screen. As such, Evolution is a very different kind of park simulator, one in which failure is not only programmed into a bunch of the game's systems but given a starring role.
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Re: Jurassic World Evolution

Post by Brian »

Not interested unless there's a boob tattoo health meter involved.
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Re: Jurassic World Evolution

Post by Sepiche »

Here's about 45 minutes of the tutorial mission with Quill18: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDlv_AAelQ8

Looks fascinating to me, and I love the combination of base building, breeding the dinosaurs, and genetically altering them. I suspect the controlling the ranger team part of it might annoy some people, but it looked like it was optional and would be a cool way to explore your park at the very least. I'm pretty sure I also heard Jeff Goldblum doing a voiceover at one point, or else they got a really good impersonator.

Unless I see some bad reviews I'll likely pick this one up around when it comes out.
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Re: Jurassic World Evolution

Post by AWS260 »

Sepiche wrote: Mon Apr 02, 2018 11:09 amI'm pretty sure I also heard Jeff Goldblum doing a voiceover at one point, or else they got a really good impersonator.
That's definitely Goldblum. They trotted him out for interviews at the press junket.

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Lordnine
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Re: Jurassic World Evolution

Post by Lordnine »

Needs more meeples....

I've actually been looking forward to this one for a while. It makes me feel a little bad for the Prehistoric Kingdoms guys since they are going to have to work really hard to measure up this now.
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Re: Jurassic World Evolution

Post by Daehawk »

Been keeping up on it a little bit now. Looks fun.
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Re: Jurassic World Evolution

Post by Ralph-Wiggum »

I can't tell which is more likely in that clip: Goldblum is high or he's trying to flirt with his interviewer.
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Re: Jurassic World Evolution

Post by Ralph-Wiggum »

Just finished the clip. He is definitely hitting on her. And he's definitely high.
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Re: Jurassic World Evolution

Post by TheMix »

Ralph-Wiggum wrote: Mon Apr 02, 2018 11:37 am I can't tell which is more likely in that clip: Goldblum is high or he's trying to flirt with his interviewer.
I also can't decide who is interviewing who. :D

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Re: Jurassic World Evolution

Post by Hyena »

I always liked him, but his role in Ragnorok made me love him all the more. He's a goofy John Wayne or Christopher Walken; he's become a parody of himself, he knows it, and he owns it completely. Not sure if you've seen the Thor reviews that rate it at "10 out of 10 Goldblums, by Jeff Goldblum."

Freakin' awesome.
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Re: Jurassic World Evolution

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He seemed a bit effeminate in that video to me. Love the guy so who cares lol.
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Re: Jurassic World Evolution

Post by jztemple2 »

Don't know if this info has been distributed, but the official release date is June 12th, just over two weeks from now. Let the hype train leave the station! :D
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Re: Jurassic World Evolution

Post by Fitzy »

Is this a management sim? Or something else? I haven’t been paying attention, didn’t realize it was coming out this soon.
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Re: Jurassic World Evolution

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Fitzy wrote: Mon May 28, 2018 11:23 am Is this a management sim? Or something else? I haven’t been paying attention, didn’t realize it was coming out this soon.
Check out that Quill video I linked to above... it gives a pretty good feel for it.

It seems like a park management game with some additional features.
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Re: Jurassic World Evolution

Post by jztemple2 »

Since this is the company that gave us Planet Coaster I have hopes that it will be reasonably bug free at launch.

It does look like a management sim with some interesting twists. One of the problems with getting older and having played games all my life is that I tend to get jaded with any new game release unless it brings some new element to explore. The whole breeding dinos aspect seems cool.

I would watch the Quill video, but I find his voice somewhat annoying and, in the same way I'm against buying Early Access games, I don't bother with videos where the narrator feels that they need to be present in a window the whole time. I find it distracting and annoying, plus of course I'm losing the view of some part of the game screen real estate. It's strictly a personal issue on my part and probably no one that many folks share, but I'm rather sick of a society of celebrity.

I'll get off my soapbox now, if I can find my walker :D
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Re: Jurassic World Evolution

Post by tgb »

I read somewhere there would be no pre-release streaming allowed (always a bad sign), so this gives me a bit more hope for a decent game. Time will tell.
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Re: Jurassic World Evolution

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Want this to be good. Friend gave me Planet Coaster because I love coaster and park sims but Ive not been able to enjoy it at all due to weird camera controls.
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Re: Jurassic World Evolution

Post by jztemple2 »

New video from Rock, Paper, Shotgun called T-Rex Fights, Raptor Attacks And 5 More Jurassic World Evolution Features You’ll Love. I've learned enough from this and other videos that make me think I'll be pre-ordering so I can pre-load and start playing right at unlock.
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Re: Jurassic World Evolution

Post by Victoria Raverna »

jztemple2 wrote: Mon Jun 04, 2018 4:04 pm New video from Rock, Paper, Shotgun called T-Rex Fights, Raptor Attacks And 5 More Jurassic World Evolution Features You’ll Love. I've learned enough from this and other videos that make me think I'll be pre-ordering so I can pre-load and start playing right at unlock.
In the System Requirements, this game only listed minimum storage of 8 GB and recommended storage of 12 GB. So even without preloading, the download time will not be that long.
Last edited by Victoria Raverna on Sat Jun 09, 2018 2:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Jurassic World Evolution

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I may be crazy to get a building simulator on a console, but I want to get this for PS4 so I can see the dinosaurs on the big screen.
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Re: Jurassic World Evolution

Post by jztemple2 »

I found, via Reddit, a link to a Google doc that has a fan collected FAQ that seems pretty comprehensive.
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Re: Jurassic World Evolution

Post by jztemple2 »

I was going to get Jurassic World Evolution, but I've had some doubts about the gameplay. And after reading this review on Rock, Paper, Shotgun I think I'm going to give the game a pass. There are more positive reviews, but that one on RPS seems to confirm my concerns that the game doesn't have a lot of depth, especially as a park builder/manager.
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Re: Jurassic World Evolution

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I think the only thing I worry is with building placement. Lot of talk about how it doesn't auto form the land for them and you spend a lot of time leveling land and removing trees instead of simply placing a structure down.
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Re: Jurassic World Evolution

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jztemple2 wrote: Mon Jun 11, 2018 4:03 pm I was going to get Jurassic World Evolution, but I've had some doubts about the gameplay. And after reading this review on Rock, Paper, Shotgun I think I'm going to give the game a pass. There are more positive reviews, but that one on RPS seems to confirm my concerns that the game doesn't have a lot of depth, especially as a park builder/manager.
I have a 7 year old son that loves dinosaurs. I have to get this game even if I'd rather spend the money on a couple of other games...oh well...hopefully the other games are on sale soonish
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Re: Jurassic World Evolution

Post by baelthazar »

The reviews are not glowing. IGN gave it a 4.8 for much the same reason as RPS. I guess this is good news for me, as it means I can give it a pass until an inevitable sale (I mean, $20 is low enough to see dinos).
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Re: Jurassic World Evolution

Post by Sepiche »

I played it for a while yesterday. Most of those reviews have some good points about the game, in particular the interface could use a bit of love, but I feel like the most scathing ones all came into it with preconceived notions about how it was going to play based on Planet Coaster. It's not Planet Coaster, but I'm still enjoying it quite a bit.

I think it was the RPS review in particular that kind of yada yada yada'd over the whole campaign, but I'm finding the campaign to be pretty fun, and counter that review, you don't have to play through the whole campaign to unlock the sandbox island... you only need to get up to 4 stars on the very first island. That said, it does look like the campaign is currently the biggest share of the game, with the sandbox letting you get a little extra fun out of it, but I think I'm on course to have fairly thoroughly played it in about 30 hours. For most people I think this will be a wait for a sale kind of game since the starting price point is a bit high.

One other thing a lot of the reviews harped on was the building placement and constantly having to level terrain. The only thing I can think is the early copies they had worked differently, as I barely have to spend any time with the terraforming tool. Generally 10 or 20 seconds after building a new enclosure to adjust the mix of grasslands, trees, and water, or very rarely I'll need to spend a few seconds using the level and smooth tools to flatten out some really rough terrain to place a building, but again, counter to many reports there is some auto leveling that goes on when you place buildings, as long as the grade isn't too steep.

The overall management gameplay is fairly straight forward and mostly circles around the dino management. As you add new dinosaurs you get more attendees to your park based on their rating. Small herbivores tend to have low ratings while carnivores and large herbivores have much higher ratings. Getting even a couple modest carnivores into a park ups attendance by quite a bit. Each type of dino also has different requirements for their enclosure in terms of how much grassland they need, how many trees they need, how many of the same breed they like, and how many animals overall they like being around. This means some more social animals can be kept in massive, densely populated enclosures, while others, carnivores especially, will tend to need moderately sized enclosures all to themselves. All this is counted toward your dinosaur rating which combined with your park rating determines your islands overall rating. The park rating is increased by building enough food, fun, and shopping buildings to accommodate everyone in your park as well as keeping the number of guests eaten to a minimum.

Not taking care of your dinos needs will cause their comfort to fall, and while some dinosaurs are pretty laid back and take a long time to lose it in those cases, others like the t-rex and raptors are on a hair trigger, and if their comfort falls by more than 15 points they will start attacking walls and trying to get out. This brings us to another inaccuracy I saw in a number of reviews: that some animals will try to break out for no reason. This is not true. Animals will only try to break out when they become uncomfortable, but the key thing most reviewers missed, was that being caught in rainstorms lowers dinosaurs comfort level. The storms are never long enough to get the more passive animals to go crazy, but the worse storms can last long enough to set off t-rex and raptors among others. You basically just need to keep an eye out during storms for them attacking the walls, and have a ranger team nearby to repair.

The campaign as I mentioned is enjoyable. It's a series of 5 increasingly difficult islands with each one having a number of building and technology unlocks you can get by completing missions for the 3 different divisions or by getting your overall park rating higher. At a rating of 3 you unlock the next island in the chain, but it's pays off down the line not only to spend more time unlocking everything on each island, but even to go back to previous islands as you unlock new research and fossil dig sites and let your more established powerhouse parks do a lot of the work before switching back to your newer park with all the research and fossil excavation done.

There are a few other different mechanics I haven't touched on, but they are interesting as well... building up genomes, modifying dinos, research, and searching for fossils are the big ones.

On some of the downsides to the game... some definitely won't like how abstracted the park visitors are. They are really just drawn in as a representation of your parks popularity, and not as individual people who you have to keep happy. There's also a lot of busy work at times like constantly sending out fossil search teams that could really use some automation. For some weird reason you can queue up extracting DNA from fossils, but you can't queue up research.

The last big thing that might scare away some people is there is no pause button. This doesn't really effect things about 90% of the time, but when you have some dinos break out, things go crazy pretty fast, and it can be tricky to quickly repair any fence breaches and get your helos after any escaped dino before people start getting killed. That said, if you do lose a few visitors, it's really not too big a deal as it will impact your parks safety rating for a time, but it will recover pretty quickly as long as you get things stabilized.

TL;DR: While not for everyone, and having a pretty high initial asking price, don't believe the most negative reviews out there... there's a fun, if somewhat beer and pretzels management game with some incredible visuals and some novel new mechanics. If I had to guess I'd say it was rushed out a little early to meet the new movie release, but I expect we'll see some patches and DLC down the line that will add more elements to the game and fix some of these initial issues.
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Re: Jurassic World Evolution

Post by MonkeyFinger »

Good to know. 8-)

In a moment of weakness, I had pre-ordered the digital deluxe version and then came here the next day to see all of the negativity. Oy. Some of the issues don't really bother me since a) I generally suck at management sims but love the franchise and playing with dinosaurs plus b) I'll probably spend so much time on the initial playthrough that I doubt I would ever need to worry about replayability, just move on to the next shiny thing. I just hope I don't get all jammed up worrying about What The Heck Do I Do Next syndrome. LOL

Not all that far in but was going to mention the building placement issue really wasn't one as Sepiche noted. As you scoot something around, you'll see the build price fluctuate up depending on the exact placement, which I assume is the automagic grading / tree removal cost. Haven't done any manual terraforming yet.
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Re: Jurassic World Evolution

Post by LordMortis »

MonkeyFinger wrote: Wed Jun 13, 2018 6:52 pm Not all that far in but was going to mention the building placement issue really wasn't one as Sepiche noted. As you scoot something around, you'll see the build price fluctuate up depending on the exact placement, which I assume is the automagic grading / tree removal cost. Haven't done any manual terraforming yet.
That's how I play all computer resource placement games. If the cost differentials are huge, like Railway Empire, I might spend five minutes deciding how to lay a stretch of track, where to put the bends or auto level ground or auto build a bridge or tunnel. Is there any other way? :oops:
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Re: Jurassic World Evolution

Post by Sepiche »

After another half evening of play, a few amendments to my post:
There does seem to be a bug that rarely pops up where dinosaurs will get out of their enclosures for no apparent reason. It seems to be geography related as it happens to the same enclosures on the same maps, but not others. Everything will be fine, then I'll get a report of a dinosaur out, only to find a chill herbivore wandering outside. No damaged fences or open gates, just a magically escaped dinosaur.

I think the most frustrating part of the game is the late game in an individual park. Once you have a nice assortment of dinos and well rated park, the burden is having to constantly stop what your doing to cart away dinosaurs that die from old age, and if you have a complicated enclosure system, you also have to breed a replacement and relocate them to the right pen. I feel like having the animals age in the timeframe of the game is a bit silly to begin with, and doesn't add anything fun to the game. Moreover, I don't get why I have to order the dinosaur's body taken away... make it automatic as there's never a time you would want the body hanging around, and the cost to remove it is minimal.

Having the dinos die also adds the complication of throwing off the balance in that enclosure. Some dinos require certain numbers of the same species around, and if one dies and doesn't get replaced immediately, that can cause the others of that species to lose comfort, and there's no easy way to detect that except look around the enclosure and check each dinosaur to make sure it's needs are still met. Would be really nice to have a "losing comfort" warning, and a screen where you can quickly view the stats of all dinosaurs in an enclosure.

TL;DR: There is a lot of fun and charming gameplay in getting a new park setup, but some of the micromanagement in the later game is a pointless burden.
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Re: Jurassic World Evolution

Post by jztemple2 »

So I see this game and most of its DLC are on sale. Is it worth getting now that it has had a year of updates? And is it worth jumping in and grabbing all the DLC right now during the sale?
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Re: Jurassic World Evolution

Post by LordMortis »

I don't remember what I have, but I enjoyed what I had enough for the bit of campaign. They seemed to be releasing dinosaur packs hot and heavy and expensive and what I bought wasn't adding to the game. So pick and choose your DLC and its price. But as far as tyboon builders go, this one is a typical park builder, BUT DINOSAURS!!!! and that made it worthwhile for me. For $10 the basic game is fun. Wu adds to the game but appears to be another $10. Maybe? $20 is still OK, I guess. Steam says I bought the next two dinosaur packs after that. Meh. I see there is also now a $20 expansion but it doesn't look like it adds content but rather just another location and a bunch more dinosaur packs. I have no knowledge of these.
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Re: Jurassic World Evolution

Post by Blackhawk »

The core game is worth that price. It's made by the same people as Planet Coaster. It trades off some of the mechanical depth with themed missions and challenges, so it's a little 'light', but it's also fairly solid and fun.

The dino packs don't really have much appeal to me, although the missions (the higher price DLC) do, although I'll likely wait for a bigger discount. The $20 one is brand new, which is why it isn't on sale.
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Re: Jurassic World Evolution

Post by jztemple2 »

Thanks for the replies. I'll see what else on the sale appeals to me, but I can wait till early on the 2nd to decide.
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