Gaming Target - Xbox: Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis

Written by Leigh Culpin on November 14, 2002

First Impressions: Whaddaya mean the dinos are dead? They're right here!

Previous Jurassic Park games have mainly been shooters, with the occasional action oriented adventure here and there (the Genesis JP games for instance). Then there was Trespasser... but I'm just not going to go there. Now the license is taking a bit of a genre twist - a simulation version is in the works as we speak. In fact, fans of games such as Rollercoaster Tycoon might get a kick out of this game - you'll have the daunting task of creating your own Jurassic Park, something that may or may not appeal to a vast number of console gamers.

The game is shaping up to have a dozen missions and over twice that number of dinosaurs for you to play around with, so you'll certainly have variety if that's what you're really keen on. But wait, it gets better - you can apply different chemical... experiments to your dinos to alter their "personalities" in the game. Want to put on an entertaining (if rather violent) show for an audience? Just inject some of this mix in with a little of that, throw a few raptors and a couple Triceratops in a cage, and voila, instant entertainment.

Now, naturally, you'll actually need to accommodate your visitors with the usual - food stands, washrooms, etc., so there's at least some sense of building a theme park rather than an animal vacation center. You'll also need to make sure to offer a fair amount of protection for your visitors - who wants to pay to be eaten? This is where the game gets kind of cool though - you can actually take a first-person perspective to rescue those in trouble. In fact, the 12 missions won't all take place from your omniscient "God-view" but rather from inside a character's head. There is also, as expected, Dinosaur AI, so putting a few various predators in a single cage together (or some raptors and some poor herbivore) won't do so well for the old pocket book.

Obviously, being a Jurassic Park licensed game, the developers are going to have some serious resources, so we can hope that you're going to see not only some "true-to-life" (as far as we know) dinosaurs but they should behave in a manner which you'd expect to see in the film. Hopefully Blue Tongue can produce graphics as amazing as the CGI in the films, though the game has a much lighter atmosphere so don't expect to see anything like dark rainy scenes full of mud and bones. Interestingly enough, each island you create with will be a random creation - you'll get to control the tree population, water percentage and general number of hills and valleys within your level, but beyond that the game's going to create a random island for you each time you start anew.

As far as gameplay elements are concerned, it should be addicting to those who like the genre. Creating theme parks has been able to draw crowds on the PC, and who knows, maybe creating dinosaur them parks will find an audience on the Xbox. Naturally it's not a multiplayer game, however, and with the rush of fast-packed team-based games coming out over the next year, especially with the impending launch of Xbox Live tomorrow, Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis could very well end up forgotten on store shelves next to other games which would have made it a couple years ago, but it isn't anything terribly exciting nowadays.