It must be admitted that when Jurassic World Evolution was released in 2016, it disappointed those who thought it was a planet coaster with dinosaurs. We can’t blame them too much because Frontier Development is also hiding behind this modern vision of the management game. The game was refined over time, however, making sure that sales were decent enough to benefit from a sequel. Jurassic World Evoltuion 2 was released in November of this year and tries to reconcile two approaches: that of accessibility and that of more advanced management. It remains to be seen whether the new recipe will actually work.
Video script
As usual in Jurassic World Evolution, You will be sent to the head of a powerful corporation that has some expertise in relation to the great Jurassic beasts. In summary, sustainable parks must be built that ensure the welfare of the dinosaurs and the safety and entertainment of visitors. But the formula has evolved a bit since the first episode.
graphic
We’ve got used to it now, Frontier’s all about making nice games. In this case, Jurassic World Evolution 2 is no exception to the rule. The game benefits from very nice lighting, a beautiful landscape and quite successful weather effects. But the stars of the game are, of course, the dinosaurs and the level of detail in their modeling is breathtaking. It was brilliant 4 years ago but this time the attention to detail was taken even further. By zooming in on the creatures, we can see the smallest details of their scales for a very convincing rendering. In addition, it’s the animations that have benefited from a little facelift. The movements of the many different species cry out for the truth. The battles between dinosaurs are quite spectacular and you can really feel the ferocity of these creatures. On the other hand, we can counteract a tendency towards clipping that regularly occurs at the highest decoom level.. Yes, it is easier to identify the location of the dinosaurs because the vegetation is partially disappearing, but it is more likely that these issues were not intended. Not enough to shy away from his amusement, the parks are truly a feast for the eyes and the dinosaurs have never been as believable and detailed as they are in Jurassic World Evolution.
Style of play
On the gameplay side, as mentioned earlier, Jurassic World Evolution tries to be more convincing in terms of management while remaining relatively accessible. Of course, to manage your business well, you will not get drowned in data tables so that even the amateur can easily create the park of their dreams. The game, no matter what mission you get, will always start the same way. First of all, a park skeleton with the entire administrative area must be created. A visitor reception center, a fossil recovery expedition center or an emergency group will be the priority buildings. Only when these buildings are built can you finally hatch your first dinosaurs unless your staff send them straight to you by helicopter. As in the previous episode, each species has its own environmental preferences. Some will need a lot of swamp forest, while others will be more comfortable on sand. You must therefore design your enclosures with this data in mind, because an uncomfortable dinosaur is one that breaks through its fence to bite your visitors. and here is a little novelty and you can feel it pretty well. Every time a dinosaur enters an enclosure, it takes possession of its territory. This territory is restricted to the area where he is most comfortable. This allows you to create two different environments so that different species can coexist in the same enclosure. Of course, you won’t stick a puny herbivore in a T-Rex enclosure that wants to be alone anyway, but other species are more sociable. This consequently forces you to optimize the design of your enclosures and to better manage the space of your park.
Another big change is the introduction of scientists. Each of them has 3 specialties. This is important because in Jurassic World Evolution 2 almost all actions require the use of one or more scientists. Whether dinosaur incubation, expeditions or emergency care, certain conditions must always be met so that the action can be carried out. For example, an expedition requires a certain number of logistics points that have to be distributed among a small number of scientists. If you need to hit 14 with 3 people but your stats don’t reach that number, they need training to improve their skills. To do this, it will be necessary to start research that is becoming more and more demanding even in terms of the skill points to be collected. This adds a more strategic dimension to the game and scientists are real game mechanics themselves. Also, be aware that these ladies and gentlemen get tired pretty quickly and must be given regular vacation days for $ 75,000. Yes, the sums of money in the game are still absurd and still don’t mean much.
Finally, always on the novelty side, it is necessary to conduct regular routine checks with your guards to ensure that your dinosaurs are well. If you don’t, your park’s prestige will suffer. Unfortunately, in reality, this aspect of management is quite tedious and adds rather unnecessary intermediate steps that are sometimes even cumbersome. The same applies to the care team, which regularly encounters path finding problems in an emergency and multiplies unnecessary back and forth, which often has to be corrected manually. After all, the emergency generators and the various buildings will from now on consume fuel and food, which must be systematically refilled. This still creates in-between manipulations that unfortunately don’t do much to add to the management component of the game, while understanding that you don’t have to wonder whether it is good or not for your park to spend insane sums of money on these different replenishments . That makes things a little unnecessarily difficult in the long run, without unnecessarily disturbing.
With the other allegations, we will always rail against the impossibility of taking out a loan to settle the accounts in the event of breakdowns. For example, if you’ve built buildings in advance that you didn’t need, there’s a good chance the in-game economy will make you pay for them. And since there are no real means of making money, you’ll have to start your campaign from scratch to do things at the pace the game dictates. Add to this the random arrival of storms that can abuse your structures Understand that while making money in the game isn’t that complicated, it can be just as easy to lose everything in a way that seems unfair.
Aside from these few pitfalls, we will always enjoy our parks thriving. It is of course necessary to bring stores that you can set up to ensure good visibility of your dinosaurs and better manage the safety of your visitors, as well as transportation and accommodation options. We will also welcome the long-awaited arrival of the flying and water dinosaurs. The first require the construction of aviaries, and the second pools of generous proportions. So, yes, once again it is a real feast for the eyes to see these marine and flying creatures. It also adds some extra aesthetic to your park, but in fact, dealing with these dinosaurs is like any other. Specifically, we do not appreciate these new creatures because of the variety of games that already belong to a particularly diverse catalog and have to be unlocked with expeditions.
scenario
What exactly is Jurassic World Evolution about? In fact, absolutely every movie that has been released around the franchise. We’re going to be quick to conjure up Campaign Mode which is actually a great tutorial of a handful of missions that will be completed in a matter of hours. It’s also a bit of a shame that it’s so fast and relatively underdeveloped, because the basic story was rather pleasant. The idea here is that the dinosaurs have returned to the wild in the United States and your mission is to capture them to prevent them from harming humans. This approach brings you to the control of vehicles fairly regularly for a slightly more varied gameplay, but ends almost at the same time as the campaign. The main interest of the game is in chaos theory mode.
contents
When it comes to in-game content, Jurassic World Evolution 2 is pretty generous. In addition to the Chaos Theory missions, which should each take between 2 and 5 hours, there is of course the small campaign and the sandbox mode, which are essential for this type of game. Another mode, dispensable but not uninteresting, is the challenge mode. As the name suggests, the goal of every mission in this mode is to complete certain missions in record time. The level of difficulty will increase and most importantly you will be able to test your knowledge of the mechanics of the game, so the game is probably not deep enough to keep coming back to, but you should do it without a problem and have 20 or 30 hours of fun in the company of the dinosaurs Your park and the characters from the various films.
soundtrack
The advantage of purchasing a license is that you can use all of the sound folklore that revolves around them. As a result, the music of the various films you are entitled to and the French dubbing are of excellent quality, even if not all of the original cast have dubbed their respective characters. We also take our hats off to the sound design in general, which gives your park a nice sound atmosphere, and of course to the roar of the various dinosaurs that sound more real than life.
No pun intended, Jurassic World Evolution 2 is the natural evolution of the Frontier formula. We immediately find our tracks in the management mechanics, and the joy of looking after the ultra-modeled dinosaurs continues unabated. Adding scientists is a great idea, just as dinosaurs manage their territory. Even so, the various new features that add many intermediate steps to perform certain simple actions can prove to be quite cumbersome. It doesn’t add great depth to this game that wants to be accessible and universally accessible anyway. If we had wished for clearer novelties, Jurassic World Evolution 2 is pleasant to play, fun, and sometimes spectacular. If you enjoy franchising and management games without too much of a headache, you shouldn’t be disappointed. For all of these reasons, we’re giving it a score of 16/20.
* Read our Jurassic World Evolution 2 review
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