I Don’t Like Jurassic Park: The Game... and Not For The Reasons You Think

Fun fact, Jurassic Park: The Game is 10 years old, which is about the same age as I was when I watched the movie it’s based on, 28 years ago! I would later attempt to read the Michael Crichton book and just be bamboozled by technical words because I was 10.

This game is the literal middle child of Telltale Games, before their closure in 2018. It really shows too, as it’s not quite as interactive as their earlier titles, but less restrictive than their later ones, and nobody “will remember that”. But I’ll talk more about the actual gameplay in a bit. Suffice to say, it looks and feels like a Telltale game, audio & graphical glitches and all.

The story of Jurassic Park: The Game begins part way through the movie, with dino veterinarian Gerry and his visiting daughter Jessica mentioning the fact that John Hammond currently has visitors on the island. The storm which leads to the park becoming deadly (sorry, spoilers?) occurs when the mysterious Nima arrives, with a mission to locate Nedry and the Barbasol canister containing dinosaur embryos — and things spiral from there.

The gameplay takes place in sections across each of the four episodes, giving you a rating out of gold, silver, or bronze for each bit depending on how well you do, though these are ultimately meaningless. Some parts of the game have you looking around and doing things such as reactivating systems, or just talking. Then there are the action sequences, which can be as simple as hacking through a jungle, or as complex as fighting off a dinosaur. The action sequences use my least favourite game mechanic: quick time events. Worse, most of them require pressing two (or more!) buttons in quick succession, and while you will see the first one before you need to press it, the second one is hidden and needs to be pressed very quickly after the first. Sometimes the buttons have a delay before you have to press it, to really screw you over! If you’re thinking of the QTEs from A Wolf Among Us or the Batman games, you are very mistaken and I can only assume that they learnt lessons after this.

But quick time events aren’t why I hate Jurassic Park: The Game. It’s not even the game engine which freezes for half a second on every scene change — it’s a Telltale game, I’m used to that from playing literally any other Telltale game. The writing is decent, the acting is great… But I do hate this game.

Cards on the table, I actually have an unusual phobia: I’m terrified of Dilophosaurus. I have been ever since Nedry was attacked by them in Jurassic Park, and I apparently really hurt my dad’s thumb because I was squeezing it so hard. I don’t like them in movies, I don’t like them in TV shows, I don’t like them in The Simpsons: Tapped Out “Treehouse of Horror XXXII” event… I do not like them! While writing this, I came across a photo of a Dilophosaurus made out of LEGO and had to close the tab immediately. Yes, while playing LEGO Jurassic Park I hated them in that, too!

Maybe you’ve never seen the movie, or perhaps the name of them just isn’t seared into the fear centre of your brain. Dilophosaurus are the ones in the movie that are a little smaller than Velociraptors, have a red frill around their necks, and spit stuff in people’s eyes. Fun fact you probably knew, in real life they’d have been much bigger than the turkey-sized Velociraptor. Fun fact you may not have known, Dilophosaurus was one of only two dinosaurs in the movie that were actually from the Jurassic era. The rest were from other periods, because there were lots of dinosaurs across the millions of years that they existed.

With this knowledge in mind, you’ll remember that Nima’s mission is to find Nedry. Well, as I mentioned, Nedry was attacked by a pack of Dilophosaurus. To find him, Nima — who I might add didn’t yet know about the dinosaurs — made her way to the Dilophosaurus enclosure. She’s then attacked by them and makes a run for it, and I’m being vague because I’m honestly trying to block the whole section out of my mind. It’s tough hitting the right direction key for a quick time event when you’re not willing to actually look at the screen, you know? Just know that the very first predator you encounter in Jurassic Park: The Game is a Dilophosaurus.

I had hoped that would be it. Canonically it made sense that you’d encounter them, because your mission was directly tied to them. It’s a good premise, because the question of what happened to the Barbasol canister wasn’t answered by either of the sequels. I hated it, but I can’t fault the logic behind it.

But remember that I said there were four episodes? When selecting an episode, there’s a “feature” dinosaur that stomps along and roars at you while you’re wondering if you should change the settings or not. The first episode screen features a T-rex — it’s iconic, and it features several times throughout the episode. It stomps into view, growls a bit, does ‘that’ ear-splitting roar, then clomps off only to return about five seconds later.

You already know where I’m going with this, so I’ll just confirm. The second episode features a Dilophosaurus. It drops into view, making its clicks and purrs, then it hisses and that damn frill pops out! Yes, it’s the second episode so I can just click Load Game as soon as possible, but gods forbid if I pause the game! Like I said, the dinosaur just does a loop, so while the game is paused during episode two this Dilophosaurus keeps dropping down, over and over.

Sure, I made it past episode two eventually, but it was hard going. Honestly, I was glad when I graduated to raptors. However, one troll moment from the game comes in the loading screens. It shows a dinosaur fossil, one of a random selection, and yes the Dilophosaurus is represented. Thankfully, it seems that its skeleton on a side view doesn’t set off my phobia, so that’s something at least.

I always thought that I was slightly arachnophobic before, but confronting my true phobia with Jurassic Park: The Game has given me a new appreciation for arachnophobes. I don’t like spiders, but I can at least look at the damn things without trying to retreat through the backrest of my chair…