As a LEGO fan and a gamer, I have enjoyed many of the LEGO video games, but LEGO Jurassic World has been my most anticipated LEGO video game by far. I like the superhero film franchises, like Batman well enough, and LEGO Batman 2 is thus far my all time favorite LEGO video game, but I love the Jurassic Park franchise, so I have been eagerly anticipating this release. LEGO Jurassic World covers all four movies, but it seems to give the player the opportunity to decide if they want to start at the beginning (Jurassic Park) or with the latest (Jurassic World). I assumed the game would require you to go through the first three before you could explore Jurassic World, but it does give the option to go right to Jurassic World. I wasn’t actually ready to play the Jurassic World part, and I couldn’t figure out an easy way to back out of the cut scene (which is long), so if you don’t want to know anything about Jurassic World don’t choose that route. I was finally able to back out of Jurassic World and return to Jurassic Park, so this review covers the first hour of the Jurassic Park level, which includes the “Prologue” and “Welcome to Jurassic Park.”
The game follows the movie pretty closely, and I found this useful during gameplay, as the puzzles are easier to figure out if you recall what happened in the corresponding scene of the movie. The puzzles aren’t particularly hard either way, but recalling the movie did help me out a couple of times. The gameplay is pretty typical LEGO video game style. Following the various cues makes the game pretty easy to play through. The game’s inherent “helpfulness” can get a little annoying at times, though, like when the camera pulls back to make sure you notice something important, it seems to stay that way for far too long. They also included little floating DNA strands to give you extra help if you got stuck. (I thought the floating DNA strands were so very cute.) The game also uses the typical LEGO mechanic of assigning each character specific abilities, and requiring the player to use the right character at the right time. (Although, these games make choosing the right character pretty hard to mess up, as well).
You start off with the characters from the beginning of the movie, including Dr. Ellie Sattler and Dr. Alan Grant. (Although, I suppose she’s still a graduate student at this point in the game/movie.) At the beginning of the game, it seemed that Dr. Grant was the only one who had the ability to build things. I was becoming a bit concerned that Dr. Sattler was not going to have the ability to build, but, she does get the ability to build. As I continued the playthrough, I realized that the only thing she can’t build is the dinosaur skeletons. I guess that makes sense because Dr. Grant is the paleontologist and she works in paleobotany. For the most part, the characters abilities seem to match their roles.
One of the things that really bothers me, though, as a LEGO fan is the construction of the actual dinosaurs. In both the video game and the Jurassic World themed LEGO sets, the dinosaurs are built with large custom LEGO parts, rather than the detailed, LEGO dinosaur build I would love to see.
I recognize that this is likely due to cost: a higher piece count means higher prices, and the LEGO Jurassic World sets are already pretty pricey to begin with because of the licensing, I imagine. But as an adult fan of LEGO, I really hope we eventually get to see something more like this, which is currently undergoing the LEGO review process:
That minor irritation aside, this game is fun. I imagine this is probably a fun game even for people who aren’t that familiar with Jurassic Park, but fans will recognize a lot of jokes directed at the movie. This is also the fourth LEGO video game to use the original voice acting and soundtrack from the film, which I was not expecting and it greatly enhanced the experience. The game is rated E, so at times I worried that things were about to get too violent, but they manage to work around that with humor. (In at least one case, hotdogs save lives, folks!) This game is hilarious! I love the familiar LEGO gameplay, and I love how beautiful the game looks on my Xbox One, but it’s the humor that’s going to keep me coming back.
