Jurassic World Evolution

If you like the movies, you'll probably like this too.

---

This is what I've been watching and playing over the last seven days...

MOVIES

Only one movie watched in the last week and it was one I'm yet to write about in the form of The Social Network.

I still haven't had much free time thanks to a house move and lots of things needing to be assembled and unpacked, so I definitely didn't have the time to write about it properly this week.

Instead, it'll be what I write about next week and no prizes for guessing the score considering I'll happily state now that it's a masterpiece and one of the best films of the twenty-first century so far.

GAMES

Jurassic World Evolution

Game summary: Bioengineer dinosaurs that think, feel and react intelligently to the world around them and face threats posed by espionage, breakouts and devastating tropical storms in an uncertain world where life always finds a way. (Steam)

I haven't played the full game or even close to it, so take this 'review' for what it's worth, but I had pretty much completely lost interest after 4.5 hours of playing Jurassic World Evolution.

In a way, I think the licence is actually the biggest issue and I think I might've liked it more if it wasn't so linked to a film series.

I say that because the Jurassic Park/World films have never been the most serious big screen outings in the world - they're about dinosaurs in the modern day for crying out loud.

On top of that, many of the characters are exaggerated or larger than life in the movies too, which can be both a good thing or a bad thing.

The biggest problem the game has is that it has none of that - instead, it's a very serious, strait-laced management game based on running a dinosaur theme park.

Even the characters in the game - plenty coming from the movies - are pretty one-note, offering up advice about how to best run the park and little else.

Maybe things could've been saved if the game had a strong narrative to give players a reason to keep pushing forward, but there's nothing there and the only reason to keep going is because that's all there is to do.

I'll have to caveat the above by admitting that I have no idea if a story becomes a focal point later in the game, but even so, any narrative should kick in faster than the time it takes to watch two of the movies from start to finish.

As for the gameplay, there's nothing bad here by any means, but there's just not enough to overcome the completely sober tone that permeates the game.

Jurassic World Evolution isn't a bad game, but is highly unlikely to keep you interested unless you're a pretty big fan of the films. [5/10]

TV

Andor, Season 1

Episodes 1-3 here.

Episodes 4-6, "Aldhani", "The Axe Forgets" and "The Eye"

Now this is the level of quality I was expecting from how much everyone was raving about this series!

While I didn't dislike the first three episodes, they were a lot slower than these three and, in retrospect, it's hard to see why.

The start of a series could be excused for being slow as it has a lot of people to introduce and a premise to set up, but there's a lot of new people in these three episodes too.

Admittedly, there is a certain Rogue One-ish feeling as many of the new characters in this arc are killed off, but it doesn't stop you caring about what happens to them while they're alive.

It's also interesting to see more of what's happening away from Andor's high risk situation and see how life is on Coruscant, both for future Rebels and the Imperial Security Bureau.

Again, while I did like the first three episodes, they did feel very much like introductory episodes of a TV series, while these three felt far more cinematic.

And wow does this series make TIE Fighters seem like intimidating weapons of war rather than the cannon fodder for X-Wings they can often comes across as.

The praise for this show leaves me positive that the rest of the episodes to come are more like this than how Andor began.

---