Video Reviews for Jurassic World Evolution 2

We don’t like the spoilers in Tweakers, but it’s hard to properly explain where Jurassic World Evolution 2 is without citing the ending of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. If you’ve never seen this movie in 2018 and are planning to do so, this might be a good time to click away.

When Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom ends, a Velociraptor named Blue and several other dinosaurs escaped beyond the “safe” islands of Muertas. We see a snapshot of prehistoric creatures roaming the wilderness and hear Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) explain in the US Senate that a ‘new Jurassic era’ has arrived and that humanity must find a way to live together with the dinosaurs, which from that moment on Onward it became a part of life on Earth again. In short: Where in the past dinosaurs always roamed in certain locations, they now simply live in places on Earth that are familiar to us. This is the starting point from where Jurassic World Evolution 2 took off.

This immediately removes one of the downsides of the first game. That match took place in the Muertas Islands. These islands were a little different from each other and some islands were more challenging than others, but overall there wasn’t much difference between the islands. This gave players the feeling that each new park they built was a repetition of the steps, in an environment that was very similar to the other locations. This side is now gone. When we recently had a few hours to start the game, we saw areas in Washington state and Canada, and of course the end game will include many other areas. This also involves changes in climate. Originally, we mainly saw a lot of bush and therefore warm areas, but in Jurassic World Evolution 2, we will also see landscapes with a taiga biome and end up in snow and desert areas.

I learned from Planet Zoo

This immediately brings with it new challenges. In the first game you had to provide the enclosures you created for the dinosaurs with food, water and some trees, but that didn’t go deep yet. The dinosaurs in this second part require a lot in this regard. You can guess how development studio Frontier Developments came up with this idea. After all, the studio also released Planet Zoo between the two dinosaur games; Basically the same concept of Jurassic World evolution, but with some of the more common animals. In Planet Zoo, looking at what animals need in their enclosure and then adapting that enclosure to their needs played a major role. This game element has been ported to Jurassic World Evolution. Whether it is as broad and in-depth as in Planet Zoo remains to be seen, but the similarities are astounding.

This means that some additional detailed management will come your way. For example, you will have to build a Ranger station in your dwelling where the Ranger can sit and watch the creatures. Only in this way can you gain insight into the performance of your dinosaurs and can take the right steps. Rangers are also the workers who can detect medical problems of dinosaurs, after which you can operate your own medical team. This team can work in the barn of sick animals, or you can take the dinosaur to the medical center so that it can be treated there. Keeping dinosaurs healthy isn’t new, but the way you solve problems is a little different. You can also improve a dinosaur’s DNA profile by examining what’s called a genome. On this basis, you can eventually develop stronger and more resilient versions of your first ones, which may get sick more easily. This is also nothing new, and he still plays a role in Jurassic World Evolution 2.

Dangerous Dinosaur Tracker

Elsewhere, too, Jurassic World Evolution 2 promises to demand a “hands-on” approach from players. For example, as part of the campaign mission, we had to go on an adventure ourselves with a jeep, in search of some dangerous dinosaurs. One of the ideas behind the setting is that the player is responsible for building gardens so that the most dangerous dinosaurs can be taken from the wild for shelter in a safe environment. Finding those dinosaurs is part of the game. This means that sometimes you are driving around in your jeep or flying in your helicopter, looking for dinosaurs that you can then electrocute yourself. This all seems a little strange. It doesn’t run badly, but it’s also not so smooth that it’s really fun to run.

Building and developing your garden remains more fun and challenging in this regard. During the gameplay session, part of this challenge was caused by the lack of technology cooperation. Game companies nowadays often allow journalists to play via their streaming service, so you never get the perfect client-side audiovisual experience. It’s not too bad, but when the connection is poor and the session hangs multiple times, it becomes really difficult to appreciate the value of the game. Our experience at that moment is no longer entirely positive, but that’s not the fault of the game itself. Anyway, we had to deal with a faltering connection, so sometimes we lost a little explanation and the game became more difficult than intended.

The latter is difficult, because Jurassic World Evolution 2 asks a lot of players. It takes some time before you are familiar with all the menus and know how to use all the additional tasks involved in this game. For example, there is a completely new system for managing scientists that you can develop through a training center. In addition, scientists have different characteristics that make them somewhat suitable for tasks such as expeditions or the development of genomes that should lead to new dinosaur eggs. That alone is good work to get busy with, especially since your scientists are tired and need some rest. It’s almost impossible to stop scientists from doing anything because you haven’t had a chance to get them back to work yet. We may have to build some skill into this or that something can be automated in the future, but for now this doesn’t promise to be the best part of the game.

The rule is still the same

In this regard, building your garden is of course much more fun and is also the core of the game. Its basis has not changed. You build fenced enclosures for your dinosaurs and depending on how dangerous the dinosaurs are you make these enclosures stronger. Ensure that all buildings are connected to the pathway network through your garden and ensure that there is sufficient power to make all buildings functional. Outside the famous buildings there are some new facilities especially in the field of services for your guests. Players also get more options to visually adjust the park to their liking, but we haven’t been able to play with this ourselves yet. It remains to be seen how deep these options go.

Another thing we haven’t been able to try yet but that sounds fun is a new mode called Chaos Theory. In this, players encounter all kinds of familiar moments from the movies, only they are now responsible for the failed park and therefore also take on the task of solving problems. The recognition is good, and in the end most players will play this game because they’ve seen one of the Jurassic movies they’ve ever seen. In retrospect, you can say that the first development of the Jurassic world used relatively little of its connection with films. A second part that will do more seems to be a good thing up front.

Initial conclusion

Having such an additional mode is great and the changes in the environments will also be beneficial to the game, as well as the new set of dinosaurs and other new elements in the gameplay. However, the two parks we created during the game are exactly the same as our parks in the previous game. New features like searching and rescuing dangerous dinosaurs in the wild are great additional features, but the question is whether that’s enough to mask the fact that the foundation of the game has remained largely the same. Conduct expeditions to discover genomes, develop eggs and breed dinosaurs in your pack: we’ve done this countless times and will have to do it again in Part Two. Jurassic World Evolution 2 will have a lot to prove when it launches on November 9 on Steam and on PlayStation 4, 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.