Life Will Find a Way.

Well, I just finished Jurassic: The Hunted. It's a short game; it couldn't have taken me much more than 4 hours to complete. Despite its length, I left satisfied with the experience, and what I'd like to see now is a similar game with a little more time and money thrown behind it. And if that ever happens, it will need a LOT more marketing than this game got.

Jurassic was only about 4 hours, like I said. But I think if the game went on for too much longer with no variations on the gameplay, it would become repetitive pretty quickly. As is, it was a blast to kill dinos, and I was elated not to see any other enemies to distract me from doing so. There are gigantic scorpions, but I lump those into the same category as the dinos. As anyone with any credibility on the subject knows, wherever you find dinosaurs, you'll also find bugs and insects that are at least 10 times their normal size. Durh.

There were a couple parts that were pretty poorly designed, though. First off was one of the most dissapointing sequences in the game: my first encounter with a T-Rex. I knew the situation would inevitably come up, but I was expecting a much more dynamic experience. Instead of having to fend it off using my reflexes and skill, the developers decided a better use of my time would be with a generic turret sequence. The T-Rex charged, and I blasted it in the face. It ran away; rinse and repeat. In-between the T-Rex's charges, flying assholes would swoop down and distract me from my patient waiting. The turret would overheat if used for too prolonged a time period, but it was never very challenging. I didn't necessarily want an uber-challenging fight, though. I just wanted something dynamic and intense. Instead, I got neither. The salt on the wound, however, was that once the fight was over, I had to do it all over again. Ah, but it was different the second time around. This time, the T-Rex was colored red. Thanks, Cauldron. Thanks a lot. King Kong did it a lot better........4 fucking years ago.

The T-Rex sure looks impressive. Too bad the fight was shitty and I did it with one hand while watching water boil.

The game redeemed itself, however, with the next "boss" fight. Forget T-Rexes, this time I was up against a Spinosaurus. The fight actually went almost exactly how I had pictured the T-Rex fight before that debacle happened. I had free reign to run around, dodging the Spinosaurus' lunging jaws of death while popping slo-mo and aiming for his vitals. It was much, much more exhilirating, let me tell you. Again, the dinosaur character models and their movements are a thing to behold.

This guy, however, was bad ass. I RPG'd him like 8 times.

The second obnoxious part was a little sequence involving me running across a bunch of rope bridges while the same flying assholes from the T-Rex bit were flying around my face. Sorry, but it wasn't thrilling at all, just annoying. To kill them, I just had to aim my gun sightly upwards and hold down the trigger. Great. Luckily for me, it was a short sequence, and the only one of its kind.

Oh, I guess I'll tell you about a fantastic death I had. You see, when you're firing a weapon and it runds out of ammo, it will automatically switch to the next weapon in your inventory. Well, the next weapon in my inventory happened to be an RPG. Yea....I was holding down the trigger, shooting a big fucking monster when, oops! I blew myself up. Brilliant, yet again. If a gun runds out of ammo, it should just make that clicking noise and make you manually switch weapons. Otherwise, dumb shit like that will happen. I learned my lesson, though.

Those few points were really the only true negatives in Jurassic. Sure, it's not the most intense game I've ever played, and its budget roots show sometimes, but overall I'd definitely recommend you check it out when you get a chance. Cauldron obviously spent a lot of time and effort on the dinosaurs themselves, because they were fucking awesome. They moved and behaved like I thought they should, and were a little frightening, especially when more than one was running full-speed at me. I guess I wished there were more unique encounters with bigger foes, but I think the whole game would have to be lengthened and changed up a bit more for that to work. And for that to happen, more time and money would be needed, etc. But as it stands, if you have 4 hours to waste with a pretty atmospheric shooter with enemies you don't see very often, give Jurassic a shot.