One thing I have learned from playing Jurassic World Evolution is that there are a heck of a lot more species of dinosaurs than I knew about as a kid. Guess I never knew my prehistoric history as well as I’d thought. This leads us nicely onto my Jurassic World Evolution review.
The game may have been out a little while now, but the RTS dinosaur sim is far from old news with the Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom movie only just leaving cinema screens.
So without further delay, lets crack on with the Jurassic World Evolution review.
Your very first park
When you start out on the very first island (there will be new islands to tackle as you build bigger and better parks) you will have a power station, hammond creation lab where you’ll incubate dinosaurs,
ACU and Ranger teams
When I started this game I assumed it’d be just a matter of me building fences and hatching dinosaurs, then keeping the guests happy like your typical sim game, much like Theme Park. In fact there’s a heck of a lot more to it than that.
So what’s an ACU you ask? Well in short an ACU Centre is a key requirement of your park. Once you build it (not forgetting to connect a path) you’ll see that a helipad with one helicopter appears. If you haven’t worked it out yet, it’s basically there as an entity that when selected will fire tranquiliser darts at dinosaurs that may have escaped. Once they get a direct hit they’ll administer a sedative and the escapee will fall asleep.
You can then use a transport team who will collect the dinosaur by chopper and put them back into your chosen destination (usually their enclosure). Transport teams can also sel dinosaurs if you choose to when you pick them up.
You also have the option to pilot the ACU chopper manually if you wish, this is useful if your have a power cut and you lose the ability to auto-assign tasks.
Ranger Teams on the other hand serve a different purpose; similarly to the ACU centre you’ll get provided with a 4×4 vehicle as standard that you can assign tasks to. Task include things like repairing fences, curing sick dinosaurs, replenishing feeders and nursing dinosaurs back to health if injured. In the same way you’ll be able to manually drive the vehicles and carry out tasks without automation.
In both scenarios you will be able to add additional choppers and 4x4s as tasks become more demanding, and trust me you’ll appreciate the extra help!
How to progress
In order to unlock new islands, new dinosaurs, and progress all-round within the game you’ll need to complete contracts. There’ll be three different sets of contracts; Security, Science, and Entertainment contracts.
You can manually request contracts or alternatively opportunities will present themselves giving you the option to accept or decline. Tasks my include things like hatching 4 new dinosaurs, ensuring no death by carnivores for 5 minutes, or assisting a dinosaur in a fight to the death.
Once you successfully complete a contract your rep for that contract type will increase as well as your available funds. Reach a certain rep level for a contract type and you’ll be able to attempt a mission, these are slightly more difficult than a simple contracts as they’ll need you to hit several requirements to complete. This may then result in the ability to build on a new island.
Give us power!
For your buildings to run at all, they’ll require power. To do this you’ll start by building a power station. You will then need to build a substation which will have a green radius, place buildings inside of this green zone for them to function.
Running a power station will come at a cost though, and a small power station will have a certain amount of available power units. Once these units are used you’ll need to build another. oh and you’ll also need to ensure your substation is connected to the power station by pylon.
Expeditions, fossils and research
To unearth new dinosaurs you will need two important buildings; an Expedition Centre and a Fossil Centre.
The Expedition Centre will be where you’ll select a dig site where certain fossils are found, send a team out to dig where they’ll return their findings to a fossil centre. You’ll then have the option to extract these fossils to discover new dinosaur genes. Find enough genome data to reach 50% for a particular dinosaur and you’ll be able to incubate and hatch one in the Hammond Creation Lab.
The Research centre as the name suggests is where you’ll research new medicines, building upgrades, and general attributes that will makes your life easier. Of course these research request will come at a monetary cost and will also take time to be researched.
Guest services and making more moolah
As well as building enclosures and creating new dinosaurs in the lab, you’ll want to build guest facilities to help increase your rep and your income. You will build a Gift Shop, Toy Shop, Fast Food or a Bar to help guests enjoy themselves even further, this will increase happiness and the best part of all – you set the prices!
There’ll be times where things get a little chaotic with dinosaurs escaping and therefore eating guests, storms that wreck your buildings, and other general carnage. When you go into the red with your funds I find the best thing to do is keep your expeditions going as they’ll often find fossils with no DNA to extract that you can get a hefty price for.
Keep requesting and completing contracts even if they’re easy as this will also keep you from drifting into the red.
If you’ve already hit that mark though, you can sell your buildings and even dinosaurs to get you back onto your feet. As a last resort you may even find it easier to restart the island and do things differently.
Jurassic world Evolution review chomped up
hopefully our Jurassic world Evolution review has given you a taste of what this naturally great park sim has on offer. To summarise though, graphically it’s a beaut, gameplay keeps you wanting more, and at times you get the right challenge that you’d hoped for – often leaving you fighting to get out of the red money zone.