LEGO Jurassic World (3DS) Review

A LEGO game set in the Jurassic ‘Park’ world was always going to happen, it just took us getting a new movie for us to get the entire movie catalogue in one game and the entire package here is better off for it.

The original Jurassic Park wasn’t the most action filled movie, you only see dinosaurs in it for less than 15 minutes of the entire run – extending this action to a whole game would have been difficult. So with not enough content from one movie, they’ve gone for four and like the movies themselves: the first one and the newest installment stand above the middle two.

The game opens in the now fully functioning Jurassic World, you start off in the Innovation Centre and that’s basically the entire hub for the Nintendo 3DS version of the game. You explore the movies as worlds through doors in the centre as the children from World. The first movie and World are unlocked from the get go, you’ll have to earn some bricks if you want to go full Ian Malcolm.

Unlike the console version of the game there’s no open park to just freely explore, there’s the Innovation Centre that leads to each of the movies’ ‘hub’ which does have some scenery to look at but no real exploring. Luckily you can explore the locations during the majority of the gameplay, it is nice to be able to see and play through all of those iconic locations.

LEGO Jurassic World doesn’t try anything too new to mix up the LEGO game formula you’ve probably played before. There’s less of a focus on raw combat during the game as human characters but there’s some nice dino-on-dino action that you can get involved in. There are also several chase sequences, the T-Rex on Jeep, the T-Rex in Isla Sorna from Lost World and several Velociraptor moments in Jurassic World. It’s not all running, there’s a few stealthy sections (although you’re never really in any danger), and puzzles which are quite easy to solve and definitely skewed younger.

It would be easy for anyone to just write LEGO Jurassic Park as ‘just another LEGO game’ but for the most part that is true. You collect studs, get ‘golden amber’ bricks, build stuff holding A and do little touch screen puzzles. It’s the Jurassic Park-ness that makes this game, the nostalgia trip is great as is seeing the new locations. It’s also got that LEGO game humour you come to expect and how that’s intertwined in the Jurassic Park movies. In the movies the dinosaurs kill and tear people apart, here they tickle and pose for the camera. The entire ‘tall grass’ segment of The Lost World is lampooned.

As you progress through the game you’ll unlock not only the main characters from the movies but also different dinosaurs. Playable human characters include all of the main cast but pretty much anyone who was possibly on the screen for even a couple of seconds – it’s pretty in-depth. As you progress through the game you’ll find dinosaur fossils which then can be used to mix and match your very own dinosaur. You can change the head, legs, tail or body of dinosaurs out and DNA-up your own dino creation and play with them in the two pens in the game. It’s a small addition and another thing to collect during the game and there are a lot of them.

All of the principal cast have had their lines lifted directly from the movies as well and it shows. The first three films often don’t match perfectly to what the LEGO characters are doing on the screen – the audio quality as well is quite poor at times with the film’s score muddling out the speech. The Jurassic World portion of the game fares much better, Jurassic Park isn’t exactly old so it’s odd to hear the difference in sound. Aside from the speech the game littered with the iconic John Williams theme, it doesn’t rely on it but you will hear it a lot. The entire game could do with a volume boost as well, even with headphones the game is quite soft and the poor voice samples don’t help.

There’s something that’s lost in translation on the smaller screen of the Nintendo 3DS, the game looks fine but can run slower in 3D and isn’t really worth turning on. It’s not the graphics but the prowess and the majesty of the dinosaurs is lost on the smaller screen. It’s not a problem with the game but the platform – if you’re after that same feeling you got watching the movies you’re better off playing it on a console.

LEGO Jurassic World might be at its core just like every other LEGO game you’ve played before but it’s everything else that makes it stand out. Being able to go through the entire movie line up and not just the latest movie is a great move and adds a ton of value. The 3DS version is competent but let down by the fact that some of the best parts of the LEGO experience come from playing with another person, plus the dinosaurs aren’t at all terrifying here on the small screen.

If you’re a fan of Jurassic Park you should spare no expense, for everyone else, you might reconsider visiting LEGO Jurassic World.