The Jurassic World Evolution series’ greatest strength has always been how it sits comfortably in the sweet spot between serious park building mechanics and the giddy wonder of dinosaur related mayhem.
Jurassic World Evolution 3 is the best yet — not revolutionary by any stretch of the imagination, but a game that knows what made its predecessors enjoyable and doubles down on that while ironing out a few wrinkles in the process.
Case in point: the campaign.
You may recall from our review of Jurassic World Evolution 2 that we thought the main campaign in that game was a bit of a misfire but other modes made up for it. Here, the campaign is the best it’s ever been.
There’s a story involving a terrorist group that thinks dinosaurs should have stayed dead, and they’re working to undermine your attempts at irresponsibly turning the previously extinct lizards into zoo attractions for profit. It’s got big “are we the baddies?” energy.
The story is exactly as present as it needs to be for a game like this, offering a little flavour while never feeling intrusive. Terrorists, dinosaurs — we don’t need much more than that.
But the structure of the campaign is incredibly canny, having you start work on a park only to quickly hit a roadblock that requires visiting another site looking for a solution.
Perhaps you’ll need to research a vaccine for a disease or you may want to secure funding from a conservationist group but have to prove your chops by running a sanctuary for dinosaurs first to do so.
Once you’ve done what you need to do you can then move back to your original park and improve it, or continue on to other sites to build your skillset further.
Each new site is an opportunity to learn, and you can then return to older sites at any time and use the knowledge you’ve acquired elsewhere to further their development.
Playing through the campaign sees you hopping from park to park every few hours potentially, and while it does take a minute or two to get your bearings when returning to an older site, it helps create a sense that you’re managing a global network rather than working through missions, starting from scratch repeatedly.
While you’re managing your park you’ll be given updates by a crack team of advisors who mostly extoll your virtues as a park builder while offering insight into various dinosaurs. There’s also an obnoxious suit character who chimes in from time to time and only cares about the almighty dollar.
But the star of the show once again is the returning Jeff Goldblum as Dr. Ian Malcolm, whose role as an advisor is to prognosticate doom and gloom at every step while delivering lines with unhinged cadence and seemingly random inflections. Every time he pops up to let you know that mixing dinosaur DNA to create super-dinosaurs is probably a bad idea it’s a bewildering treat for the ears.
Actually managing your park in Jurassic World Evolution 3 remains a streamlined process compared to other games in the genre, and it benefits from it.
Food and drink shops rake in the profit but you won’t be tinkering with salt levels in the fries or anything granular like that. A handy colour coding scheme lets you know which areas of your park are sufficiently serviced by amenities so you know where to place new shops, and from there all you need to do is cater that shop to the tastes of the local tourists.
If your park is attracting thrill-seekers they may prefer a restaurant with a jukebox, but visitors interested in learning may want fossil displays with their Rustlers burgers. It’s simple, straightforward, and once done, you can pretty much leave your shops to generate coin for you to spend on more exciting ventures.
Dinosaurs! That’s what we’re here for and that’s what Jurassic World Evolution 3 serves up in spades.
There’s a vast array of scaly beasts you can bring back from extinction to be gawped at by tourists with more money than sense, ranging from cute, miniature lizardy things to big, bitey monstrosities.
Obviously, the bigger and nastier the creatures the more moolah you make, and there lies the central crux of the Jurassic World Evolution series; for every giant, terrifying dinosaur you add to the park, the probability that one of these rascals is going to get out and enjoy an all-you-can-eat tourist buffet goes up.
Eventually, it will happen. It has to. Jeff Goldblum warned you about this. And as always, a gigantic tooth-and-claw machine marauding through the streets and introducing itself to idiots in I ♥ Dinosaur tee shirts via the medium of chomping remains stellar entertainment.
When the inevitable happens, and the dinosaurs run amok, your capture teams will try to tranquilise the beasts, but if you want you can take control and take them down yourself from a helicopter with a tranq rifle. If you’re a terrible shot like we are then you should probably leave it to the professionals.
You can also visit any of your viewing platforms to see what the tourists see when they’re checking out your dinosaurs, and you can ride the tours through dino enclosures to enjoy an up close and personal view if you so desire.
And you may want to do that, since one of the cool new features in Jurassic World Evolution 3 is dinosaur families.
Listen, we don’t want to explain the birds and the bees to you — that’s what the magazine your dad hides in his sock drawer is for — but suffice to say, if you put a lady dinosaur and a fella dinosaur in an enclosure together, put some Barry White on, and open a bottle of claret, there’s quickly going to be eggs that will then hatch into baby dinosaurs.
Baby dinosaurs add a new dynamic to the game for two reasons.
First, if you’ve got dinosaurs that like to eat leaves from the tops of trees, it stands to reason that the baby versions won’t be able to reach their dinner, so if you’re planning a family you need to make sure you accommodate junior’s needs as well as those of mum and dad.
Second, left unchecked, dinosaurs can breed to the point of overpopulation and so you may need to build bigger enclosures than usual if you’re planning on makin’ babies.
Aside from the campaign you can also play a challenge mode which unlocks as you progress, and in this mode you’re tasked with fulfilling certain criteria in parks while adhering to strict rules, often with time limits.
There’s also the classic sandbox mode if you just fancy building a park full of dinosaurs without having to fulfil any particular obligations other than making enough money to keep going, or you can tweak settings to make the game harder for yourself if that’s your thing. It’s all good.
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