Jurassic World: Evolution Review

"Slow Evolution"

Campaign

Jurassic World: Evolution is a modern take on the thrills of running a theme park, but with dinosaurs. Based on the iconic franchise players will be able to design their own park and care for the various large creatures they produce within it. It's even narrated by the legendary Jeff Goldblum with some other recent film guests lending their voices.

This is rather amazing actually and really helps liven things up. The core of the game is working to unlock islands and grind out dinosaur genomes. It's weird how restrictive the title is considering how awesome and fun it could be with better pacing. I did find it enjoyable, it's just such a hassle to unlock anything or progress as its one tedious journey.

They even make you work for quite a bit prior to unlocking the free sandbox island to do whatever you'd like with, that should be present from the start as I just wanted to have fun. That aside, I worked through the islands to meet the requirements and then would move forward.

Each island presents a different test and starts you out with practically nothing or even less than that. You'll need to turn things around to gain a profit and cultivate a successful home for your dinosaurs. There are many hours of gameplay present in that regard, if you're choosing to do the campaign elements it feels so slow to unlock new content.

Gameplay

The visuals were impressive, especially on Xbox One X as it was highly detailed with great performance. I really didn't come across any issues and it was smooth no matter how fast I zoomed in or went through the park.

There are all kinds of views from a very high point to even an up close and personal zoom so that you can really see those dinosaurs in action. Building on that, there are vehicles you can manually drive for a different perspective. It looked great, and it was particularly awesome to see the creatures moving about.

Obviously being a park builder you'll need to manage the cages while making a profit off the guests. There are extra missions and goals to earn money as well. The dinosaurs each have various needs, as do your guests and money will have to be balanced for all.

The game has a pile of buildings to create and many levels of detail. You send helicopters to scavenge for fossils to collect the genome to produce new species. There are the crews responsible for managing the dinosaurs and of course fun public visitation setups. It's a lot to take in and honestly the tutorial doesn't give enough details for this one.

The Conclusion

Jurassic World: Evolution can be really boring, yet really rewarding and I didn't feel it hit the perfect balance. I still had a great time with it and once you get a park going it can be so much fun. The main issues I had were just with how slow collecting genomes are and how tedious the experience can be.

It can take forever to get a good amount of revenue flow going as the game just bombards you with problems at times. The visuals were impressive, it looked fantastic on Xbox One X and played perfectly well. There's a lot of depth and it's easy to control no matter what part of the park you're tweaking. I was impressed with the cast and the selection of dinosaurs present. It has some problems, but for the most part this is a grand time and I just wish it went faster.

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Jurassic World: Evolution Review on Xbox One X
Review Code Provided by Mav PR

Rating Overall: 7.4