What Frontier did right
The quality of the product (outside of a bug I found related to the interaction with the Steam Overlay where all keyboard functions stopped working) is amazing. It's beautifully designed, has a fantastic feel to the UI, and the general polish is exceedingly high.
The fantasy the game is trying to satisfy is to create, raise and care for dinosaurs, and this is another area where Frontier really figured it out. Each Dinosaur feels alive and interactive, and while there is no obvious sign of "personality" per se (making the idea of developing your own Blue hard to envision). It is truly sad to see one of your first achievements finally die as they reach the end of their life span.
However, this leaves a LOT of areas where Jurassic World Evolution falls short.
Campaign
This is the first area where the game falls short. The false conflict created between Science, Entertainment, and Security never feels like there are honest consequences for your choices. The "sabotage" events are both immersion breaking since there is no possible upside for anyone to sabotage their livelihoods, no matter how irritated they may be that you are focusing on one over the other. They are also generally speaking, utterly irrelevant.
The process of acquiring your dinosaurs and building your park is fine, and the objectives sort of encourage you to proceed along the correct path.
I would recommend adding three "personal motivation" -- Military, Black Market, and Continuing Hammond's dream. The key being that the three factions (security, entertainment, science) are unaware of your personal drive and will engage you differently, actively offering you options which are better for the park, but detrimental to your goals.
Military would unlock additional capabilities to edit dinosaur genomes, create dangerous hybrids with desirable features. But, this means that traditional security measures are insufficient, and the process is expensive, so you have to push Entertainment by making your new creations the focal point of the park, and Science may struggle to see the purity of the projects.
Black Market revolves around creating the best fighting specimen you can. The better the specimen, the more you make financially. This might even be a place to add an online element where you have a black market arena where you can pit your best dinosaur against other people. Again, Science will be caught up by the excitement of creating the best dinosaur, but find the fighting abhorrent as they figure out that's your goal. You might find that these dinosaurs, even if social, become intolerant of their neighbours, adding constant threats to your park.
Continuing Hammond's Dream means that you seek to create the perfect experience at the expense of almost all else. Your biggest challenge on this path is represented by a higher level of demand from the visitors. Pushing you to ever expand the park even at the risk of pushing the limits of everything. Your perk is that you get access to additional attractions, and ways to get the visitors closer to the dinosaurs...
Park Visitors
While it would be unreasonable to expect Frontier to push the depth of visitor management to the point of Planet Coaster, the anonymous, unified blob of generalized opinions is a disservice to the game and the players.
Even if it's as simple as splitting the visitors in to 3 groupings, and give each it's own unique desires from the park. That would add so much depth. And this would drive forward the creation of new elements which I cover next... but researching additional food types, gift items, and rides/attractions would all be part of this.
What's missing?
A lot... Even the simple goal of recreating Jurassic World (the ultimate fantasy of this game) simply can't be done.
Frontier needs to add attractions:
- Dinosaur Petting Zoo
- Rafting Excursions
- Helicopter Rides
- etc...
It doesn't need to add nearly the amount you get in Planet Coaster, but it needs to satisfy the need of the gamer. And that need is that they are going to an experience where they have all the problems of a major theme park and a major zoo and their computers aren't even on their feet yet.
Right now, it's a zoo... the theme park part is almost entirely missing. But 7 or 8 interactive attractions for guests would go so far to change how the game feels.
More landscaping options should be included too. Remember, this is Jurassic World. It's a juggernaut of marketing, and branding. Not even the jeeps can be branded to match the park. Again, no, we don't need the level of depth of Planet Coaster. But theming the park with lighting, signs, dinosaur statues and skeletons, fossil-bearing rocks and paving, these are all important to making the park your own, and more importantly, a beautiful creation.
As dumb as it might be, you might even allow people to pick a colour palette for their park and offer the ability to research the capability to make your dinosaurs those colours through use of chameleon DNA.
And last, but not least, again, in the name of creating the Jurassic World fantasy...
ADD Flying and Aquatic Dinosaurs!! That these are missing is a horrible disappointment and again, you literally cannot make Jurassic World without them. By default it adds 2 new structures too... Dinosaur Water Tanks and Aviary.
One other thing to add, but I don't think I have seen this in any game as yet, is "scheduled events"... feeding T-rex, or the missing Mosasaur... or a fight to the death, I suppose, if that's your thing.
- The Dinosaurs!
- Presentation
The quality of the product (outside of a bug I found related to the interaction with the Steam Overlay where all keyboard functions stopped working) is amazing. It's beautifully designed, has a fantastic feel to the UI, and the general polish is exceedingly high.
The fantasy the game is trying to satisfy is to create, raise and care for dinosaurs, and this is another area where Frontier really figured it out. Each Dinosaur feels alive and interactive, and while there is no obvious sign of "personality" per se (making the idea of developing your own Blue hard to envision). It is truly sad to see one of your first achievements finally die as they reach the end of their life span.
However, this leaves a LOT of areas where Jurassic World Evolution falls short.
Campaign
This is the first area where the game falls short. The false conflict created between Science, Entertainment, and Security never feels like there are honest consequences for your choices. The "sabotage" events are both immersion breaking since there is no possible upside for anyone to sabotage their livelihoods, no matter how irritated they may be that you are focusing on one over the other. They are also generally speaking, utterly irrelevant.
The process of acquiring your dinosaurs and building your park is fine, and the objectives sort of encourage you to proceed along the correct path.
I would recommend adding three "personal motivation" -- Military, Black Market, and Continuing Hammond's dream. The key being that the three factions (security, entertainment, science) are unaware of your personal drive and will engage you differently, actively offering you options which are better for the park, but detrimental to your goals.
Military would unlock additional capabilities to edit dinosaur genomes, create dangerous hybrids with desirable features. But, this means that traditional security measures are insufficient, and the process is expensive, so you have to push Entertainment by making your new creations the focal point of the park, and Science may struggle to see the purity of the projects.
Black Market revolves around creating the best fighting specimen you can. The better the specimen, the more you make financially. This might even be a place to add an online element where you have a black market arena where you can pit your best dinosaur against other people. Again, Science will be caught up by the excitement of creating the best dinosaur, but find the fighting abhorrent as they figure out that's your goal. You might find that these dinosaurs, even if social, become intolerant of their neighbours, adding constant threats to your park.
Continuing Hammond's Dream means that you seek to create the perfect experience at the expense of almost all else. Your biggest challenge on this path is represented by a higher level of demand from the visitors. Pushing you to ever expand the park even at the risk of pushing the limits of everything. Your perk is that you get access to additional attractions, and ways to get the visitors closer to the dinosaurs...
Park Visitors
While it would be unreasonable to expect Frontier to push the depth of visitor management to the point of Planet Coaster, the anonymous, unified blob of generalized opinions is a disservice to the game and the players.
Even if it's as simple as splitting the visitors in to 3 groupings, and give each it's own unique desires from the park. That would add so much depth. And this would drive forward the creation of new elements which I cover next... but researching additional food types, gift items, and rides/attractions would all be part of this.
What's missing?
A lot... Even the simple goal of recreating Jurassic World (the ultimate fantasy of this game) simply can't be done.
Frontier needs to add attractions:
- Dinosaur Petting Zoo
- Rafting Excursions
- Helicopter Rides
- etc...
It doesn't need to add nearly the amount you get in Planet Coaster, but it needs to satisfy the need of the gamer. And that need is that they are going to an experience where they have all the problems of a major theme park and a major zoo and their computers aren't even on their feet yet.
Right now, it's a zoo... the theme park part is almost entirely missing. But 7 or 8 interactive attractions for guests would go so far to change how the game feels.
More landscaping options should be included too. Remember, this is Jurassic World. It's a juggernaut of marketing, and branding. Not even the jeeps can be branded to match the park. Again, no, we don't need the level of depth of Planet Coaster. But theming the park with lighting, signs, dinosaur statues and skeletons, fossil-bearing rocks and paving, these are all important to making the park your own, and more importantly, a beautiful creation.
As dumb as it might be, you might even allow people to pick a colour palette for their park and offer the ability to research the capability to make your dinosaurs those colours through use of chameleon DNA.
And last, but not least, again, in the name of creating the Jurassic World fantasy...
ADD Flying and Aquatic Dinosaurs!! That these are missing is a horrible disappointment and again, you literally cannot make Jurassic World without them. By default it adds 2 new structures too... Dinosaur Water Tanks and Aviary.
One other thing to add, but I don't think I have seen this in any game as yet, is "scheduled events"... feeding T-rex, or the missing Mosasaur... or a fight to the death, I suppose, if that's your thing.
