Cue the Universal logo and take your first trembling steps into Frontier Developments' theme park simulator, Jurassic World Evolution, where failing is fun and thousands of guests are mass-murdered by rampaging dinosaurs. In this PC game, you play with nature as you genetically modify dinosaurs to ultimately produce the monstrosity that is the Indominus rex, and now with the Fallen Kingdom DLC, the indoraptor. As a theme-park simulator, Jurassic Park Evolution can't hang with its heavyweight sibling, Planet Coaster, also developed by Frontier, but as a dinosaur exhibition simulation, the title is an entertaining one. Evolution is like the Jurassic Park from the movies—just not the version in a Spielberg-directed film. Build Your Jurassic World The $54.99 Jurassic World Evolution operates as Planet Coaster or any other park- or city-building simulator does by sucking you into a realm of micromanagement and addiction. The game tasks you with transforming the Five Deaths—the archipelago where the various Jurassic Park books, films, and games take place—into shining jewels of innovation and theme park wonder. By building a system of roads, operation buildings, enclosure fences, security buildings, guest amenities, and a power grid, you slowly transform empty islands into your Jurassic World. You're the boss and it's up to you to increase profit margins. View All 7 Photos in Gallery As you progress, each island is granted a star rating that fluctuates as you increase (or decrease) your guests' happiness. Increasing happiness means improving guest amenities by implementing advanced technology like the Gyrosphere (the glass spheres guests can use to explore enclosures) expanding the transportation system, incubating new dinosaur species, or constructing enough hotels and fast food establishments to meet customer demand. Those sound like relatively easy chores, but they are some of the most frustrating game elements. The buildable spaces are irritatingly small in the context of the dinosaurs' monstrous sizes, so attempts to squeeze one last power station onto your last remaining inch of land becomes increasingly irritating towards the end game. On the flip side, piloting your helicopter or driving your Range Rover through a lush world dripping with primeval atmosphere makes the dino-themed magic come to life. While in the Range Rover, you can snap dinosaur photographs for extra cash, reboot offline power stations, and repair damaged buildings and fences. While in the helicopter, you tend to the park and neutralize rampaging dinosaurs with tranq guns. Isla Tacano, the setting of 1993's Jurassic Park flick, bubbles with nostalgia, and is the area that pulled me into the game. Bolstered by the familiar movie music, as well as new compositions, Isla Tacano carries the scale and childlike wonderment that you expect, and need, from a Jurassic Park game. Incubating Dinosaurs As per Jurassic Park lore, you piece together dinosaur genomes from the DNA found in fossils or amber. The wondrous moment when your dinosaur takes its first steps out of the Hammond Creation Lab will remind you why the series is so beloved. The dinosaur roars boom, and their footsteps shake the world beneath them. Unfortunately, there isn't much dinosaur variety in the base game. I'm particularly miffed about the exclusion of the pterodactyl and other flying dinosaurs, but I hope they'll be released as future DLC. With the $10.99 Fallen Kingdom DLC, dinosaurs seen in the recent film are now attainable. The Hammond Creation Lab releases each dinosaur with an overview of the creatures' preferred habitats, social groups, and individual comfort weighed in accordance to the amount of forest, grassland, water, food, and other dinos in the area. As you build your dinosaur zoo with species such as the Brachiosaurus, Velociraptor, Stegosaurus, or Spinosaurus, you can research genetic modifications to make the beasts bigger and better-rated than before. Modifying dinosaur genomes reduces the creatures' viabilities, but increases their aggressive instincts, bone densities, and other mental and physical aspects. High-ranking dinosaurs mean a better profit margin, so it's worth tinkering with them. Later in game, you can unlock hybrid breeds like the Indominus rex. Beware, genetically modified dinosaurs are more likely to act up, but that's just another day in Jurassic Park. Constant Crisis Those who have seen Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom may or may not be happy to learn that Evolution's story loosely follows the events in that movie. The barebones, spite-fueled main narrative unfolds via missions. Successfully completed missions increase the rating for the three branches that oversee your park: Entertainment, Science, and Security. For example, pitting a Velociraptor against a Dilophosaurus (the dino that ate Newman that one time) increases your security faction. However, boosting the Security squad's ranks lowers the effectiveness of Entertainment and Science teams. As a result, you must find a multi-team balance that lets you successfully run the park. There's a lot of resentment going on in Jurassic World universe, and you'd think the humans would handle their beefs with care instead of purposely sabotaging each other on an island full of literal monsters. The narrative is one that's old hat, and it would've been nice to see some exploration of the dinosaur activism that was reflected in Fallen Kingdom film. Each island features unique challenges to overcome, such as violent weather patterns, ultra-small island boundaries, and an area overrun by wild and rampaging dinosaurs. If one of your dinosaurs' comfort levels drops into the red, prepare for the big guy to go berserk. Crises are common; there just isn't enough space on the islands, so you have no choice but to build restrictive cages packed with dinos. There is no escaping constant crisis mode in Jurassic World Evolution. A lot of people will die. But, you barely feel the impact of park deaths, and once the money starts rolling in, you won't even notice it. Such are the woes of capitalism. Managing Your Park Everything in Jurassic World has an astronomical price attached to it, and it's up to you to balance the spreadsheet. For example, Isla Tacano begins the game with a multi-million dollar deficit. Working within your budget means getting rid of any superfluous amenities or enclosures, selling fossils gathered on other islas, and incubating low-cost, but high-reward, dinosaurs (such as small carnivores or herd herbivores). Many missions revolve around making more money or selling your dinosaurs. Each mission completed is accompanied by a cash reward. The challenging financial simulator gives some incentive to play through the narrative, even if the story is not engaging on its own. Initially, it's a pain to balance the books, but once you hit a decent profit margin, you can build a monorail system, sell thousands of Barbasol cans, or even battle genetically modified dinosaurs like a Ceratosaurus against a very ornery Tyrannosaurus rex. Building your park with millions of dollars in the bank is fun until you realize that the variety of amenities is so limited that your park becomes a single stream of sameness. You plop a fast food restaurant here, hotel there, squeeze a fossil center right there. You can't place benches, bathrooms, or garbage cans into the game world. There's simply no depth when it comes to the needs of the guests. These are features that Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis, a 15-year-old game, had in 2003! You Don't Need a Bronto-Size PC Jurassic World Evolution doesn't require a beefy computer. The minimum specs, as per the game's Steam listing, include an Intel i5-2300 or AMD FX-4300 CPU, 8GB RAM, a Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 or AMD Radeon 7850 GPU, and 8GB of storage. My gaming laptop carries more than the minimum specs, so I enjoyed a relatively smooth 40 frames-per-second gameplay experience. That said, the frame rate dipped to roughly 20 FPS when driving the Range Rover or during a dinosaur release cut scene. Evolution supports Steam Cloud, Steam Trading Cards and, unfortunately, the controversial Denuvo Antitamper DRM that's known to negatively impact game performance. It's Got Bite, But No Roar As a theme park simulator, Jurassic World Evolution drops the ball in a few key areas. Particularly, there's need for a greater variety in buildings, attractions, and amenities. As a supposed evolution from Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis, Evolution seems more a devolution than anything else. Still, those who are new to building dinosaur parks may find enjoyment in the beast battles and somewhat limited park management aspect. For more on simulation games, check out The Most Niche Simulation PC Games We Could Find. Jurassic World Evolution (for PC) Bottom Line: This dinosaur-tycoon theme park simulator is bare bones, but delivers a few Jurassic Park-size thrills.

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