The Media Man Reviews: The Jurassic Park Games

It's been a while since I've talked about video-games on this blog, hasn't it? Well, time to fix that.

While I would never call myself a diehard video-game player (especially since I don't have the money to constantly buy new consoles and games to play and I'm also very picky about what games I like to play), I've always had a soft spot for video-games and can get lost in a game just as much as any other player. Sadly...I can be a bit of a sore loser when it comes to games too, which is probably another reason why I don't play that many of them.

But when it comes to games I do enjoy such as Pokémon, racing games, LEGO games and games based on franchises I'm in to like Sonic the Hedgehog and Transformers, I also enjoy playing park building simulators, or more accurately park building simulators that involve animals like Zoo Tycoon. My favourites of that genre include the Jurassic Park/World park building simulators. I've played three of them, Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis and both Jurassic World Evolution games. But which one do I think is the best? Which one do I enjoy playing the most? That's why we're here, so I can answer that question!

For this post, I'm going to do mini-reviews and comparisons of the three different Jurassic Park/Jurassic World park building games I've played. We'll start with Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis and then cover both Jurassic World: Evolution games and determine which one is the best of the three. So without further ado, let's dive in:

Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis

The nostalgia I have for this game is immense. I remember just seeing it in a supermarket one time (Asda, I think?) when I was a kid. I can't remember how old I was at the time, I was most likely either a teen or a pre-teen, but I saw it on a shelf in that supermarket and instantly wanted it. I can't begin to tell you the hours of fun I've had playing this back in my childhood. But does it still hold up?

Released back in 2003, Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis was the first park-building simulator we got bearing the Jurassic Park name, and for a first outing, it's a solid first impression. I would enjoy hours upon hours of fun building parks on this game and seeing what species I can house. I like the design of the buildings and the features you can put in your park such as a hot air balloon tour, a jeep tour and various view points to get a good look at the dinosaurs, it was always fun being able to fly the ranger helicopters and rush into action if danger occurred and I like how the developers went the extra mile to let you click on the guests and learn their names, country of origin and their thoughts on the park. And of course, the dinosaurs themselves were really cool. You got a lot of fan-favourites in there and some lesser known species and many of the dinosaurs are depicted with colour schemes and designs based on the three Jurassic Park movies we had at the time, which only helped sell that this was Jurassic Park game. Hell, several characters from the movie are even in the game such as Alan Grant who's in charge of fossil digging, Ellie Settler warning you if any dinosaurs are sick or dead , Henry Wu being the guy you go to to research items and disease cures and John Hammond himself is even watching over your progress. It's all great fan-service and really enhances the Jurassic Park experience by having these characters be a part of the game.

While building parks is the main thing in this game, you also get to play out missions and by completing them all, you get to unlock Site B, an island where you get to just unleash dinosaurs and let them live their lives out in the wild, which was pretty cool and a nice call-back to The Lost World: Jurassic Park, the movie where Site B was featured. This really is a game that feels like it's made for fans by fans, and the later Evolution games continue that feeling.

As is, the game has...aged to put it politely. This IS a game from 2003, so no duh it looks outdated compared to today's games. The graphics, while aged, were still pretty solid for the time and surprisingly detailed too. They were able to render reflections in water and even make it so you could see the dinosaurs eyes open and close (depending on which one as they couldn't do it on the smaller dinos). By 2003 standards, these graphics were pretty damn good, but they don't hold a candle to the other games I'll be talking about. But if there are any criticisms I have of the game that have nothing to do with outdated graphics, I do have a few:

1: There's not a lot of options when building your park. You only really get an eating kiosk, a gift shop, a rest room, a rest area and the park entrance, and in terms of entertainment, you only get a balloon tour and a jeep ride. It just feels rather restrictive and the fact you can't customise these buildings means you're essentially putting up the same buildings everywhere, which doesn't exactly make for the most varied looking park ever. The Evolution games rectify this greatly.

2: Speaking of restrictive, that's the worst part about this game. For some unfathomable reason, you're limited by what you can build and what dig sites you can unlock. Why this is a thing, I'll never understand. So when you play this game, you have to pick and choose which five dig sites to unlock, which can be annoying if you want certain dinosaurs but you can only pick five sites and that's it, meaning you may have to play favourites when picking what you want. You have to hack the game in order to remove these restrictions, but you shouldn't need to do that anyway, these restrictions should never have been there in the first place. The later games would rectify this so you have all the options available to you and can have any dinosaur you like.

3: I dunno if it's a thing with the PC version only, but I recall a few times when the game would just randomly turn itself off without warning, which never ceased to annoy me, especially if I lost any progress at the time. I imagine it's just a PC problem and the console versions likely didn't do this too.

4: The game doesn't offer a whole lot more to do other than the missions to unlock Site B as mentioned before. You've basically got "build a park" and that's it, so those who might want something extra to do may feel this game's a little underwhelming in that regard. Once again, the Evolution games rectify that.

And that's pretty much all I can say about Operation Genesis. For it's time, it was a fantastic Jurassic Park game and a very fun play, but it is showing its age as time goes on and the restrictions it has during gameplay hold it back somewhat and it could've done with more options when building your park so you're not always putting up the same buildings.

For the time, this was all us JP fans had for Jurassic Park park building simulator games. That would change in 2018 when...

Jurassic World: Evolution

...Jurassic World: Evolution was released.

To say this game was an upgrade is massively underselling it. I mean it's a 2018 game released for then modern consoles such as the PS4 (which I have), Xbox One and the Nintendo Switch! I'd be amazed if this game wasn't an upgrade over Operation: Genesis!

Much like the previous game, this game is a park building simulator too and has much of the things that Operation: Genesis includes, such as appearances from characters from Jurassic Park and Jurassic World (some such as Claire, Henry Wu and Ian Malcolm are even played by their actors from the movies) in supporting roles as they watch over your progress as you building your park, a lot of references and call backs to the movies and fun features such as being able to fly helicopters or drive jeeps around the park. I especially often have fun driving the ranger jeeps into a dinosaur enclosure and sometimes letting the dinosaurs destroy them. Don't ask why that amuses me. XD

But compared to Operation: Genesis, it's as clear as night and day how much of an upgrade this is. Jurassic World: Evolution has absolutely GORGEOUS looking graphics that give us the best looking dinosaurs ever depicted in these games with their appearances being straight out of the movies and they're rendered with realistic textures that further enhance how awesome they look. What's even more fun is that you can even customise their colour schemes, so you don't always have to stick with the standard appearance they have. I know I have fun playing around with different colours to see what the dinosaurs look like. The environments look beautiful too and the realistic lighting effects further enhances the realism of the game. It really makes your park look so...alive! I'm playing this game in 2025 and the graphics still hold up beautifully. Sometimes, you do get some odd things like the dinosaurs in weird fainting poses after you tranquilize them and it results in what I call "ragdoll physics", but for the most part, the dinosaurs are realistically depicted and animated here.

And it's not just graphics that got an upgrade. The gameplay is improved too. Gone are the stupid restrictions on dig sites and buildings, so you can have as many dinosaurs and buildings as you want, and there's more variety to what you can build too. In this game, you get eating places, a gift shop, a clothes shop, a toy shop, a bowling alley, a bar, a hotel an arcade, a monorail station and a Gyrosphere tour. All that alone means you get much more variety when you build your parks, which is much better than just putting the same kiosk, gift shop and rest areas everywhere. And if you buy any DLCs, you can get even more options such as a Jeep Tour, a Greenhouse, an aviary and more.

Speaking of DLC, this game has quite a lot of options. Some DLCs just give you more dinosaurs, some DLCs unlock more skins to pick from and some DLCs even give you a whole new campaign to play through such as Claire's Sanctuary and Secrets of Dr. Wu. I personally just buy the DLCs where I get more dinosaurs as I don't tend to play the campaigns on this game. While we're on that subject, Jurassic World: Evolution is also an upgrade from Operation: Genesis by having more to do than just building parks. You got different campaigns you can play through, the most notable one being the Five Deaths campaign. There, you have five different islands to build a park on and each island offers its own challenges to overcome. Some islands are trickier to clear than others, but I found the Five Deaths to be relatively easy to clear and unlock each and every island until I cleared them all. Getting five-star ratings on all of them are the real challenge, as anyone can tell you.

There's also a feature in this game where three divisions, science, entertainment and security, all give you contracts to complete and you win money if you do so. The catch is, you have to make sure you don't favour one over the others, otherwise you end up at the risk of sabotage from the divisions, and they can cause problems for your park you can't afford to deal with, so you've gotta be careful...

The game is relatively solid overall, but it too has something I can't help but criticize about it. So what problems does this one have?

1: There's a sandbox mode, but for some stupid reason, you have to unlock everything in campaign mode first before you can play around on sandbox mode and make your dream park. I...I can't even comprehend such stupidity. Who thought that made any sense? Isn't the point of sandbox mode to be "Build a park free of restrictions"? Making it so you have to unlock stuff to use in sandbox mode kinda defeats the purpose of a sandbox mode, doesn't it?

2: I hate, hate, HATE the fact that power stations are a thing in this game and its sequel. Operation: Genesis thankfully didn't need us to put these things everywhere to provide power to the park and I'm glad that in sandbox mode, you have the option to turn power stations off so you can build a park without any. Still, the fact these things are a feature alone is just dumb and it makes park building tedious when you have to waste valuable space just to put up a power station and provide power somewhere. These things shouldn't ever have been a feature in the game! They take up space and make park-building more tedious than it needs to be! And no, I don't care if it's for "realism", the game's realistic enough with its realistic looking graphics and lighting effects! That's all the realism I need!

3: Minor complaint, but I wish this game let you click on the guests and get some info about them like in Operation: Genesis. It really helped to personify the guests some more and make you feel more of a need to protect them, whereas here you can't interact with them at all and they're essentially just part of the scenery.

4: Unless you're playing on sandbox mode, dinosaur feeders need to be refilled manually, which can be annoying at times as you have to make sure you always remember to do so. Thankfully, the sequel fixes that by allowing you to assign rangers to an enclosure to automatically refill the feeders. In sandbox mode, you can turn this feature off entirely.

5: In this game, it's pretty much impossible to lose at it. I don't know what it is, but in this game, its ridiculously easy to make money. Once you get going, you're pretty much set and you never really struggle for money once you get over $1 million. Those who prefer a challenge may find this detrimental as it's not really much of a challenge if it's that easy to make money. Even when dinosaurs break out and attack guests, you barely lose any money and you can get your star rating back just as easily, unlike in Operation Genesis where you'd lose money for every one guest that dies and making back your star ratings is trickier. The sequel would fix this.

And this is more a minor nit-pick on aesthetics than anything else, but I do wish that they made it so the dinosaurs could damage buildings other than fences when they escape from their enclosures and go on rampages. It would've been neat to see them running around the park and causing damage to buildings as well as it'd make it feel more like dinosaurs on the loose and causing problems for your park. Again, not a major complaint, just would've been nice if this game and its sequel could've included that. Same for Operation: Genesis now I think about it.

As is, Jurassic World: Evolution is a fantastic and roar-some experience for Jurassic Park fans like myself to play through. Warts and all, I find it a great game to play, mostly in sandbox mode, and it's easily the definitive park-building experience for me in terms of the Jurassic Park franchise. The game was so good, that naturally, it had to have a sequel...

Jurassic World: Evolution 2

Released in 2021 for the PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and Windows, Jurassic World: Evolution 2 evolved from its predecessor in a number of ways.

Gameplay wise, it's more or less the same as the first game where you can build your own park, there's a campaign, a challenge and a sandbox mode you can playthrough and the game features returning characters from the movies. Like with Evolution, the sequel boasts great looking graphics (though for whatever reason, they don't look quite as good as Evolution's do), the dinosaur designs are all spot on and look incredible, the gameplay has more to do than just building a park and it's overall a very fun experience all round.

However, the sequel is in that weird position where it feels like an improvement AND a downgrade at the same time. What do I mean by this? I'll explain.

For the improvements, this game has EVEN MORE options to add to your park. You get new features to improve the look and engagement guests have with your park such as a viewing log you can put in your enclosure (no doubt a reference to the scene in Jurassic World where the guests are watching the T-Rex through one), viewing domes, a zipline ride, more variety in entertainment venues including an aquarium, a gym, a spa, a cinema and more, a jeep ride that's not DLC exclusive this time, and most importantly, you get to build aviaries and lagoons in this game. The aviary was a DLC exclusive in the first game, but the sequel makes it available right from the start and you can also build lagoons, meaning you can build parks with marine reptiles like the Mosasaurus and really make it feel like Jurassic World like as seen in the movie. I especially find it fun to build a lagoon first and build the rest of my park around it. The fact these lagoons tend to be big attention grabbers also makes them worth including in a park, especially when dinos like the Mosasaurus can help you reach the five star rating due to how popular they are.

I also like how hatcheries give you the option to release multiple dinos at a time, unlike the first game where you could only hatch one at a time, which made it a little tedious if you were trying to get a herd of dinos in at once so they wouldn't feel lonely and get stressed. The sequel fixes that and you get really cool cutscenes when you release the dinos and get a whole bunch of them come out at once. It's especially cool when you release a pack of raptors this way. I also like how you get multiple options for colour schemes and can play about with them a little more compared to the first game, and you can even get dinosaurs with alternate skins that are based on their appearances in the movies, which is lovely fan-service for Jurassic Park fans like me. There's also multiple DLCs you can get in order to unlock more dinos and more skins, meaning there's plenty of options for players to choose from, especially if they buy multiple DLCs. I'm not kidding when I say this game has A LOT of DLC packs! Really, it has a lot!

Oh and the feeders? You can assign rangers to fill them up automatically this time so no need to do it yourself. For the herbivores, they don't even need feeders like in the first game, they instead are content to eat whatever plants you put in their enclosure, which makes sense as herbivores don't usually need feeders and just need the right kind of vegetation in their enclosures. I'm so glad they fixed that problem.

Also, the difficulty is better handled too as it's not as easy to make money as it is in the first game, meaning those who prefer a challenge will be more satisfied as now it feels more like a challenge than before. And speaking of challenges, you do NOT need to play through campaign or challenge mode in order to unlock anything for sandbox mode in this game. Nope, it's all free and available for you right away, as it SHOULD be in sandbox mode, so thank god they fixed that!

OK, so the game sounds like it's better than the first, so how is it simultaneously a downgrade from the first? Just a couple of things. One, the graphics don't look quite as good as the first. I don't know why that is, I just can't put my finger on it. But to me, the graphics don't look as good as the first game. They look great, don't get me wrong, but the first game just looks better to me. Maybe it's the way they rendered the sunlight or something? I can't really explain why I think this way.

But the big one for me is the fact this game can NOT pull its own weight. I dunno if it's just a problem with the PS4 version specifically, but it's clear this game was NOT built for the console. If you try to build a decently sized park with lots of dinosaurs and stuff in it, the framerate becomes choppier and choppier to the point where sometimes, the game ended up crashing and turning itself off because it just couldn't handle everything at once. A game that can't pull its own weight is a bad game in my eyes. It's pretty sad when Sonic 06 and Pokémon: Scarlet and Violet are bug, glitchy messes and yet THEY pull their own weight better than this game does. The first game gets noticeably choppier the bigger and more populated your park is, but only slightly and it still plays just fine. This on the other hand is unacceptable. I want to be able to build big parks with as many dinosaurs as I want without the game crashing because it can't handle the size of everything! Even Operation: Genesis never had this problem, and that game came out in 2003! How is that game can play just fine regardless of how big your park is, but not this game which came out in the 2020's and runs on more powerful software? The worst part is that when looking into this issue, it seems it didn't use to be a problem and that it only became a problem after an update was installed. I thought updates were supposed to make a game play better, not worse. I've found that the best way to play the game is build your park, destroy as many unnecessary trees as you can and keep the park closed at all times. No joke, having your park closed makes the game run better because it only has the park and dinosaurs to render. Opening the park and having all the guests in causes it to become choppier and essentially unplayable. It's pretty bad when you have to run a closed park just so the game plays smoothly, and that's just unacceptable. Whatever update the game had clearly did it no favours if it plays worse than it did before.

Once again, I don't know if this is a universal problem of just a PS4 problem. I hear it runs better on the PS5, and I do plan to get a PS5 at some point, so maybe it'll run better on that? If anyone's played the PS5 version of the game, can you let me know if it plays better than the PS4 version and has no framerate issues? I'd appreciate the info, thank you.

So yeah, the sequel has a lot of great things about it, but it's hard to truly enjoy it when I either have to build a small park or run a closed park just to keep it running smoothly. If its inability to carry its own weight wasn't such an issue, then I'd call this the best Jurassic Park/World game yet. Instead, I have to call it a decent but flawed follow-up, and that's a shame as the game really could've been great without those framerate issues...

Conclusion

Overall, all three games are great, but I'd recommend both Evolution games above Operation Genesis due to how outdated the latter is by comparison. Which one do I recommend more? That's a tough one since Evolution and Evolution 2 both have their strengths and weaknesses. I prefer the gameplay of Evolution 2 but prefer the graphics and framerate of Evolution. In the end, I say play both and see which you prefer. Now I'm curious what we'll get when Evolution 3 comes out in the future...

And that's it for this little retrospective. I hope you found it fun and feel free to share your comments down below. Do you like these games too? Which Jurassic game is your favourite? Do tell me.

Next week I'll be doing a comparison essay between Liko and Roy and why one works and the other doesn't. See you then media fans!