Honest Review Jurassic World Evolution.

[lysan]

In this review I will try to sum up the good, the bad and the ugly part of the game.

Played on PC:
MOBO ASUS RBED i7 4960X
32GB RAM
GTX1080OC
SSD

First impression:

The opening scene is great, you get that Jurassic vibe we all love and remember, the first Island got all the infrastructure you need to get familiar with the game.
Graphics looks good, the FPS is on my rig good no issues there, the animations are very nicely done and when we talk about the dinos, it is really well done.
I must say the dinos are superbe and FDEV really nailed it in this game.

Sound is what one can expect for a game carrying the Jurassic World Logo, good and sufficient.

GUI is made so it can support consoles however as a PC user it is not too much in your face and you quickly learn to navigate around in the game.

Gameplay:
The first missions are made so you get started, learn to navigate around, when you get your first surplus you can build whatever you are allowed to on the first island.
Restarting the Island is a good option, you can quickly build a park filled with guests who are happy and spend lots of money.

As you rank up, the game opens up and gives you more options and it also gives you more to manage.

All in all my first impression is thumbs up and positive.

The Bad:

Beneath the surface, the game is struggling, the AI for the crowds are not very good, these NPC's make even chickens look clever! the carnivores goes on a killing rampage even if the they are full, no predator does that in the real world, from snakes to komodo dragons they stop killing when they no longer are hungry. Also they do not attack the rangers or damage their cars, this is kind of weird as they chase the rangers if they are angry. From a management point of view adding Ranger damage would also add depth to the game, as you need to keep your employees safe too. So AI is lacking in several departments.

Animation of the ranger jeeps are also lacking, however this is just a detail and not really a game breaking issue, just something I noticed, if you look at other games (where you got cars, they are much better animated. Staying with the Rangers, why can't we tranquilize dinosaurs from a jeep? To make this possible maybe you need two Ranger teams to do this, one guard and the other do the job?

CTD, and I had a lot of those, the game is just in some areas unstable, mainly if you zoom quickly in and out, go to GUI and back several times.

Island size, these Islands are SMALL, and you can't build water falls or anything to make it more interesting, this was really a surprise to me.

Domes, there are no domes in the game? no flying or sea dinos/creatures? disappointment.

The ugly

The price, for in my case $65 USD this game is over priced, much potential, however i get more if I buy Cities: Skylines than buying this game, I expected more, however what I got was a pretty gift with a so and so present.

 

[Ian Skippy]

the carnivores goes on a killing rampage even if the they are full, no predator does that in the real world, from snakes to komodo dragons they stop killing when they no longer are hungry. Also they do not attack the rangers or damage their cars, this is kind of weird as they chase the rangers if they are angry. From a management point of view adding Ranger damage would also add depth to the game, as you need to keep your employees safe too. So AI is lacking in several departments.

Animation of the ranger jeeps are also lacking, however this is just a detail and not really a game breaking issue, just something I noticed, if you look at other games (where you got cars, they are much better animated. .

Good review. Few points however:

1) Your point about animals not killing when not hungry is absolutely false. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surplus_killing
2) I think it would become very tiresome if you had to tranq every dino in a pen every time you need to feed them. It would be fun if you had only a few dinos to take care off, but with a large park I cant see it being much fun anymore.
3) Ha, I was actually just thinking yesterday how detailed the rover is. Compare it with other 'builder games' like City Skylines, Tropico or whatever; In JWE you can see the hands properly turn the wheel, matching your controls. Its not Assetto Corsa, but for a tycoon game I thought it looked pretty impressive!
4) Surprised about the CTDs; your rig is better in every way than mine yet zero crashes here. No error messages or anything?

 

[lysan]

Good review. Few points however:

1) Your point about animals not killing when not hungry is absolutely false. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surplus_killing
2) I think it would become very tiresome if you had to tranq every dino in a pen every time you need to feed them. It would be fun if you had only a few dinos to take care off, but with a large park I cant see it being much fun anymore.
3) Ha, I was actually just thinking yesterday how detailed the rover is. Compare it with other 'builder games' like City Skylines, Tropico or whatever; In JWE you can see the hands properly turn the wheel, matching your controls. Its not Assetto Corsa, but for a tycoon game I thought it looked pretty impressive!
4) Surprised about the CTDs; your rig is better in every way than mine yet zero crashes here. No error messages or anything?

The Jeep:

The wheels keep spinning even if the jeep is stationary that just popped into my eye, however as I said it's just a minor detail, nothing game breaking.

Killing rampage, I think we can agree that if the carnivorous was doing this, they would not have lasted for millions of years as they would very quickly run out of food.

CTD: my graphic driver crash and restarts...

 

[Ian Skippy]

Crap, just to be sure, did you grab the JWE-ready NVidia drivers? Not that I use them on my 1070, but maybe the 1080 needs them? The wheels sound odd, I'd assume I would notice that but now I will definitely be staring at the wheels later today.

 

[Sparkledragon]

Besides so many other problems, including those you mentioned, what still has me raging profusely is the fact that visitors cannot look at your dinosaurs from a path, even if it's right next to a paddock with an open steel fence and a dinosaur is right there sticking its head out. What the actual hell.

 

[lysan]

Besides so many other problems, including those you mentioned, what still has me raging profusely is the fact that visitors cannot look at your dinosaurs from a path, even if it's right next to a paddock with an open steel fence and a dinosaur is right there sticking its head out. What the actual hell.

well, true the AI is lacking a lot to be more interesting.

 

[lysan]

I will just leave this link here for future reference.

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...f-a-response?p=6796636&viewfull=1#post6796636

 

[Dorian1334]

Let's be honest, the only real gamebreaker is that there's no map that's a reasonable size. All of them, Nublar and Sorna included, are tiny. The AI bugs are annoying, to be sure, but at least they'll probably get fixed, while I can see the devs and fanboys sticking to their guns over the map problem.

 

[MarcWP]

Let's be honest, the only real gamebreaker is that there's no map that's a reasonable size. All of them, Nublar and Sorna included, are tiny. The AI bugs are annoying, to be sure, but at least they'll probably get fixed, while I can see the devs and fanboys sticking to their guns over the map problem.

I haven't had any problems with map size yet. The whole challenge is that you have a limited amout of space, so you have to map out your park and make sacrifices... What's the fun in just building everything. I'm so glad the maps aren't endless and pose a challenge. Or else it would be way too easy.

 

[Heradon]

Woah...

Complain about a game that has a good launch, barely any bugs at all. Say it's pricy but compared to your PC spec, money shouldn't be a problem. Games are quiet cheap these days. Games today cost about half today then it did 20 years ago and also back then you only needed a small team of developers. AAA titles today have a many hundreds employes working on a single a game. In 1999 i paid 60$ for a game and it still cost the same, even it has become much more expensive to make today . A bottle of cola cost me back then 1,25$ and today its about 3$.


About the animals not killing for sport. Have you never seen a house cat before? Cuz they kill for fun, they are even a threat to the enviroment because they are killing so many wildlife animals.

Ranger jeeps are actually surprisingly good in this game. I expected them to be worse coz this game ia about dinos and park management.

Vehicles are not destructable is a good thing as the game is now. It would have been pretty annoying to spend money and repair all the time. Why would the park risk employees and jeeps just to feed a t-rex every 5min?

Vehicles could have been destructable if we didn't have to do a monkey job like refilling the feeders all the time.

If you gave rangers tranq, whats the point of having ACU?

Haven't had any CTD at all.

Yes, this game definetly need bigger maps.

 

[Adge]

Woah...
Vehicles are not destructable is a good thing as the game is now. It would have been pretty annoying to spend money and repair all the time. Why would the park risk employees and jeeps just to feed a t-rex every 5min?

Vehicles could have been destructable if we didn't have to do a monkey job like refilling the feeders all the time.

Disagree on this part. For me, the only real challenge in the game is dealing with space restrictions. Even keeping dinosaurs happy becomes pretty easy after a while. Coupled with the fact money is irrelevant after a while then I see no reason to object to vehicle damage based on financial or difficulty reasons.

These are dinosaurs, not docile farm animals.

 

[Shadowear1991]

I haven't had any problems with map size yet. The whole challenge is that you have a limited amout of space, so you have to map out your park and make sacrifices... What's the fun in just building everything. I'm so glad the maps aren't endless and pose a challenge. Or else it would be way too easy.

Map size is definitely something more noticeable when you’ve 100% completed the game and still can’t put more that 6 enclosures on Nublar because your trying to make the perfect park and that requires power, hotels shops etc..

It is at this stage you certainly feel the constraints of the map sizes, or when your sat at $4,890,785,865 on Tacãno but you can’t spend any money because you have no room to move. I dunno some people obviously like putting their dinos in 4m2 enclosures

Random carnivore killing sprees is also an issue for me partly because of the 5th science mission, I won’t spoil it for any of you but trust me carnivore random killing sprees is a think you should think about before creating the carnivore, on a side note I-Rex and I-Raptor should both be psychopathic killing machines and so random killing sprees for them is expected but the others like T-Rex I don’t feel like they should be exerting all that energy for the fun of a kill 1 after the other maybe once in a while to sate some need for hunting, which could and should be added...

 

[Parad0x89]

This discussion about the map sizes and stuff getting really frustrating, atleast to me.
Can we come together, that in the campaign, when you play the 5 death islands the map size is fine and you need to work with that to reach 5 stars on that specific map and that is totally fine for me...
But we also have that sandbox element in the game, which I think needs to be improved. The best thing would be to add a map editor so you can create ur own island like you want it, with the size and style u like. Then you also have plenty of hours more to work on your own perfect island [heart]

 

[Shadowear1991]

This discussion about the map sizes and stuff getting really frustrating, atleast to me.
Can we come together, that in the campaign, when you play the 5 death islands the map size is fine and you need to work with that to reach 5 stars on that specific map and that is totally fine for me...
But we also have that sandbox element in the game, which I think needs to be improved. The best thing would be to add a map editor so you can create ur own island like you want it, with the size and style u like. Then you also have plenty of hours more to work on your own perfect island [heart]

Yeah I’m ok with admitting the five deaths are fine it’s Nublar that is the issue...

 

[Winterwalker]

No killing sprees? Ever had a fox get in with the chickens? (NO survivors)

I've worked with birds myself, for some years trained eagles and worked in captive breeding. Anyway, you have to be exteremly careful introducing birds in a breeding scenario because there's a VERY high chance the wife will kill the husband. Some things never change .. but it's not about food I can assure. It's a about territory and about being wired tight to kill things.

Predation is a tricky business, most hunts end in failure because without fences, things can get away. If you get the chance, you kill it and if that ends up in you killing off all your prey species, either choose another prey species or so be it. Dinos don't have environmental pressure groups to warn them of such catastrophes (ARE extinct) and in general, prey species have lots of babies - the shoaling response to predation - which counter balances.

Try building a fence free environment in JWE. I suspect you'll enjoy the predators a whole lot more. And besides, visitors to theme parks ARE dumb.

Yeah I’m ok with admitting the five deaths are fine it’s Nublar that is the issue...

I think we should get away from the JPOG / Jurassic Park paradigm, where everything lives on one island. This is Jurassic "World" .. and INGEN uses all five of Las Cinco Muertes for it's operations.+ Nublar.

 

[Shadowear1991]

No killing sprees? Ever had a fox get in with the chickens? (NO survivors)

I've worked with birds myself, for some years trained eagles and worked in captive breeding. Anyway, you have to be exteremly careful introducing birds in a breeding scenario because there's a VERY high chance the wife will kill the husband. Some things never change .. but it's not about food I can assure. It's a about territory and about being wired tight to kill things.

Predation is a tricky business, most hunts end in failure because without fences, things can get away. If you get the chance, you kill it and if that ends up in you killing off all your prey species, either choose another prey species or so be it. Dinos don't have environmental pressure groups to warn them of such catastrophes (ARE extinct) and in general, prey species have lots of babies - the shoaling response to predation - which counter balances.

Try building a fence free environment in JWE. I suspect you'll enjoy the predators a whole lot more. And besides, visitors to theme parks ARE dumb.



I think we should get away from the JPOG / Jurassic Park paradigm, where everything lives on one island. This is Jurassic "World" .. and INGEN uses all five of Las Cinco Muertes for it's operations.

A Fox is a bad choice of modern animal to use as they are known to kill for the fun of it that’s why hey go out of their way to kill outdoor cats.

Your example over Eagles fighting for territory, would be the same as two Rex’s fight that I’m ok with, but....

If we imagine that a single Edmontosaurus could feed a rex for up to a week why it need to go kill the other 9? Straight away?

 

[AstroCreep]

I will just leave this link here for future reference.

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...f-a-response?p=6796636&viewfull=1#post6796636

The problem with that is that it appears Frontier have no direct plans for JWE, unlike Elite Dangerous where they had very concrete plans from the very start with detailed road maps during the game building process (Pretty much the same with Planet Coaster to a lesser degree).
To me it seems they rushed the games release to coincide with the Film (this is obvious), then sit back and decide what to do next as they were too focused on solely getting the game released. It's good to know they may work on the game in the future, but any hope of this actually being anything like Planet Coaster with Dinos (which quite frankly is what it should be) is pretty much over.

 

[Shadowear1991]

The problem with that is that it appears Frontier have no direct plans for JWE, unlike Elite Dangerous where they had very concrete plans from the very start with detailed road maps during the game building process (Pretty much the same with Planet Coaster to a lesser degree).
To me it seems they rushed the games release to coincide with the Film (this is obvious), then sit back and decide what to do next as they were too focused on solely getting the game released. It's good to know they may work on the game in the future, but any hope of this actually being anything like Planet Coaster with Dinos (which quite frankly is what it should be) is pretty much over.

I’m glad I’m not alone in this thought, thank you

 

[Heradon]

Disagree on this part. For me, the only real challenge in the game is dealing with space restrictions. Even keeping dinosaurs happy becomes pretty easy after a while. Coupled with the fact money is irrelevant after a while then I see no reason to object to vehicle damage based on financial or difficulty reasons.

These are dinosaurs, not docile farm animals.

I had no challenges except limited space, so I avoided using the useless monorails.

50k per ranger jeeps + law suits, negative reputation would have been expensive and made it more difficult. Especially early game.