So I Completed Jurassic World Evolution on Switch

I don't like city and park builders. Not because I don't enjoy the gameplay, but because I enjoy it too much, causing these games to quickly take over my life for several consecutive days and nights, meaning I don't sleep, work or function properly until I've done absolutely everything one can do in these games. So when Jurassic World Evolution landed on Switch, I tried to dodge that bullet by putting it on Claire's console and getting my fix from watching her play. 

Naturally, this strategy never works and is exactly how I ended up with my own Switch in the first place. Back when Nintendo's hybrid was released, I bought one for Claire, watched her play Breath of the Wild, then very quickly ended up having one of my own. Suffice to say, I was fully hooked on my own copy of Jurassic World three days after gifting it to my significant other.

I find it very difficult to resist these guys.

I was never a huge fan of the movies. I mean, I find it very difficult to be a big fan of most things, because most things are stupid. I liked the original Jurassic Park, second one was okay, third one ... right. I'm already feeling the strong urge to post a massive hate blog about how much the third film sucks, how little sense it makes even for a film about modern day dinosaurs and how incredibly hateable some of the supposed protagonists are, so let's quickly move on. Jurassic World. I like the artwork and some of the dino and building designs, hate the weird plastic bubbles they drive around in and absolutely fucking hate the 'story'. The Indominus Rex - the new park's main attraction, people from all over the world allegedly come to see, so they give it the ability to cloak itself like the Predator. Because you want the best, most popular creature of your prehistoric zoo to be invisible, apparently. Little did I know at the time that things would get so much dumber in the sequel.

Anyhow. It's all about the gameplay and the dinosaurs and there's plenty of both in here. Thing is, I really didn't bother much to inform myself about what this game really is all about, so my expectations were a bit off. See, if you follow the movies, it usually boils down to dinosaur parks going horribly wrong due to greed, ignorance, incompetence and gross mismanagement. Not once or twice, but what's soon to be six times, because if there's one thing people absolutely refuse to do, it's learning shit from history.

Some of them are as tall as buildings and their favourite food is people. Let's invite ten thousand visitors!

Here's what I thought I was gonna do: Set up nice little areas for all of my favourite dinos, make sure they're happy and properly looked after and well-fed, so they won't go on a mad, stompy rampage, murdering countless people and other dinosaurs in unbridled rage.
What I actually had to do: Become dinosaur Hitler.

See, the game starts with you doing pretty much what I had hoped one was supposed to do. But then it introduces three characters, who quickly dictate every single thing you do on each of the five islands: Science Lady©, Entertainment Dude™ and Security Guy®. They all give you various tasks and missions, which you should complete if you want to unlock all possible dinos, upgrades and rewards, as well as finish the story and progress through the game. And it's easy enough at first - attract more visitors, make sure all the dinos are nice and visible, generate enough profit, that sort of thing.

It all goes wrong once you hatch your first carnivore.

But things get very weird very quickly. It starts when Entertainment Dude™ asks you to deliberately get two of your dinos to fight. You know, maybe put a harmless plant eater in the raptor paddock and see what happens. You can refuse, but that means you also pass up on an opportunity to gain reputation with the guy. Don't rank up your rep with all three of these people and you won't get certain unlocks and rewards. What's worse - they will straight-up sabotage you, if you refuse to accept their missions. And this is where it gets really fucked up. Get Security Guy® to dislike you and he'll knock out your power stations, meaning none of your important facilities will work for a while. That's really great when you need to medicate a dino or transport it somewhere safe. And you can't. Because no power.

Meanwhile, Entertainment Dude™ will simply open every single gate in your park and let all the dinos out if you ignore him for too long. Because nothing's more entertaining than having your face torn off by a velociraptor. Last, and most certainly least, there's Science Lady©. Earn her scorn and she will poison your dinosaurs. I'm not making this up - as a scientist and researcher, she can't think of anything better to do than to make your dinos violently ill, causing them to die if you don't medicate them quickly.

And things devolve so much further from there. For instance, when Dr. Wu makes an appearance. You know, the actually rather friendly guy, who was a minor side character with 30 or so seconds of screen time in the original movie, only to be turned into some sort of super evil villain mastermind in the new films. Basically, he asks you to breed a very specific selection of dinos, then carries them off by helicopter for a while. You get them back a while later, only to realize they're all half dead, dehydrated, starving and infected with rabies. He tells you to 'deal with it', because knowing what happened is 'well above your pay grade'. Which feels a little bit weird, coming from a gene-splicing laboratory scientist underling talking to the facility manager, but heyho.

Don't get attached to any of your dinos.

Towards the end, you're told to deliberately torture dinos, make them miserable, then create catastrophic dinosaur moshpits and keep them alive and unhappy for as long as you can. I'm not making this up. There's a mission where you actually have to lock up some dinos and deprive them of food, water and company, then keep them contained and alive while a timer ticks down. 'For science' or some shit. In a later mission, you're asked to perch up a huge amount of dinosaurs together, which will cause them to be incredibly agitated, meaning you'll spend most of your time fixing the walls and facilities to prevent the dinos from breaking out. And then you're asked to release a hungry carnivore right in the middle of them. If too many of your dinos die or you get too many visitors killed when a dino inevitably breaks out, the mission fails.

It doesn't help that you perform all of these questionable deeds whilst constantly getting moaned at by Jeff Goldblum. Yes, he's right and I agree with him, but you either keep Goldlbum happy or you finish the campaign - these two options are mutually exclusive. Also, I can just picture everyone crowded around the sound booth when they recorded his lines, egging him on to 'say the thing'. Because 'finding a way' is mentioned gratuitously in this game. 

Basically, you only win this game by not giving a shit. Don't care about your dinos, don't give them individual names and colour patterns. Treat them like stock. A means to an end. Otherwise, things get depressing fast. I mean, you're supposed to lock up a single dino without food or water, watch it scream and lose its mind, watch it starve, then tranquilize it and put it back in its cage if it manages to break free. I know it's only a game, but virtual animal cruelty is still a very strange form of entertainment. It also made me incredibly creative in my methods of torture, just so I could actually beat the game.

The DLC is where I peaked.

There's a 'what if' scenario set in the 90s, where the original characters return to a failed Jurassic Park to give it a second shot. You get the original main characters voiced by their actors, as well as some guy attempting (and failing miserably) to sound like Richard Attenborough. "John? Damn, I thought you said Richard Hammond!" He's not great, but at least he's trying a little harder than 'generic young white guy' voice actor standing in for Chris Pratt in the game's main campaign.

One of the missions in the Jurassic Park DLC puts you on an island inhabited by dozens of herbivores. You're supposed to build paddocks around them, keep them safe and alive, which is pretty much impossible, as the island is ravaged by hurricanes and deadly diseases. Also, locking up the dinos causes some of them to feel miserable due to overcrowding. Some dinos end up feeling lonely, because there aren't enough of their kind. And you can't breed any more of them, because the mission doesn't give you the tools to create more of that specific kind of dino. And then you're told to add three more dinos to the mix and keep their happiness-meter up high for a certain amount of time. Did I mention one of these three dinos you're supposed to add is a carnivore?

You're meant to add a carnivore to an island full of vegans, whilst keeping the lot of them content. Which works just about as well in Jurassic World as it does on social media. Basically, what I resorted to in order to win the mission was to tranquilize the two enormous longnecks, who were constantly miserable due to being lonely (as in, they wanted more longnecks, but I couldn't breed any). Now they weren't miserable, because they were knocked out. Meanwhile, the carnivore was super happy, because he was eating the sleeping longnecks. Mission accomplished!

For what it's worth, the final mission and ending to the Jurassic Park DLC is so glorious (if totally stupid) and such a nice homage to the film, that it was still a pretty satisfying experience and I'm glad I finished it. I'd love to describe it in more detail, but since the two and a half readers of this blog actually play the game themselves, I'm gonna keep the spoilers to myself.

And now that I've pretty much 100%ed the game, I finally get to use it all in sandbox mode, set up a park where the dinos are actually cared for and make up for my horrible crimes against virtual animals. Yay. 

Now don't get me wrong, I actually quite like this game, even though I'm absolutely baffled at the motivation behind some of these missions. I mean, some of the characters in the movies (and novels, presumably) had to be fundamentally stupid and/or evil for the plot to play out the way it did. But I don't remember any of them suggesting to actively torture any of the exhibits, let alone get them to kill one another. That said, I find the dinosaurs in this game rather fascinating and quite a step up from Ark: Survival Evolved.

They have some impressive fighting animations. You can watch them drink and see their fully-animated tongues. An iguanodon will get on its hind legs and grab leaves with its weird hands. And every now and then you can catch the more sociable ones gathering in circles, where they make noise and motion at each other like they're socializing. And sure, you might be tempted to say that's a bit silly, because certainly that's not a thing dinosaurs actually did. Well, about that...

Bunch of frogs totally not socializing.

You get the iconic musical score from the films, all the original dino noises and Jeff Goldblum doing whatever the fuck Jeff Goldblum does. Yes, I know most people find him delightful, but the internet has seen a bit of a Goldblum oversaturation over the past two or three years, where the guy somehow ended up in every podcast and every YouTube video, ever. It's, um, fine, but you should ... ah ... give it a bit of a, you know, break. 

The game is also a bit of a technical marvel on Switch. Not only does it look and run significantly better than, say, Ark: Survival Evolved, but it's also one of the very few games in my collection of 100+ titles on this console, which I absolutely cannot seem to crash, even during an 8-12 hour play session. And yes, these absolutely are a thing. For as much as I love the Switch, many games are a little prone to crashing. Even quality ports and decent games by experienced studios will ultimately crash out every 3-4 hours with that dreaded message, 'The software was closed because an error occurred'. Which really isn't a big deal or anything, it's just a thing the Switch does during extensive play sessions. I managed to get two or three infinite load screens on Jurassic World when rapidly moving between fully maxed-out isles, but that's it. No crashes, game-breaking glitches or any other major issues, which is rather remarkable for the little system.

Well then, I'm off to start my sandbox. Without sabotage, hurricanes or some prick©™® telling me to kill my dinos. Good thing I haven't got any plans for the coming week.