Jurassic Park 3: Park Builder
Score: 75% ESRB: Everyone Publisher: Konami Developer: Konami Media: Cart/1 Players: 1 Genre: Simulation
Graphics & Sound: There's not a lot to say about the graphics in Jurassic Park 3: Park Builder. When you first turn on the game, you are treated to a very nice movie showing off the dinosaurs in their natural environments. Unfortunately, this is one of the best and most impressive looking parts of the entire game. This is not to say that the game looks bad, because it doesn't, it's just that there's really nothing to go nuts over either. Everything is easy to identify and nothing ever gets too cluttered, so they do the job - which honestly is all you can expect considering this is on the GBA. Other than the great opening movie (the T-Rex running through the trees is something you need to see), I really liked the place cards used to show where you are advertising. As for sound, again there's nothing to get excited over. Again, the intro movie sports the best sound effects, mostly consisting of digitized sounds from the movie. In-game, sound plays little part and except for the 'Raptor scream' that happens when you place a statue down, there's really no sound effects. As for the music, it's nice and sets up a fun, theme park tone for the game, but after about an hour or two of hearing the same music playing on an endless loop, it gets annoying.
Gameplay: If you read my review of JP3: DNA Factor, you already know how I feel about the JP license. However, for those who haven't, I'll sum it up; I think it's a great license that hasn't been used as well as it could. It was very refreshing to see the license used in this type of game, and at the same time strange to think it hasn't been done already. Explaining every detail about the gameplay would take pages, and even I don't like my writing enough to read all of that. Anyway, the basic premise of JP3: PB is that you are given your own island on which to build the dinosaur theme park of your dreams. You can build hotels, restaurants, gift shops, and of course, dinosaur exhibits. Once your park is built, you are given power to adjust just about everything from prices to the quality of food you serve at your restaurants. In order to get dinosaurs for your park, you sent excavation crews to various areas of the world to collect Amber, which of course contains dinosaur DNA. Once the Amber is back at the lab, and you have collected a full sequence cap, you can engineer the dinosaur. Placement of your dinosaurs in their exhibits is all about balance. You have to carefully assess each dinosaur's strengths and diets so you don't have them eating each other or one eating more and starving the others. Also, putting more than one aggressive dinosaur in an exhibit (such as Raptors or Spinosaurs) could mean big problems for park security.
Difficulty: JP3: PB is not a hard game - if you know what you're doing (but thats usually the trick, isn't it?). The main thing that hampered my full enjoyment of the game was the lack of any type of tutorial. As soon as the game starts, you are given money and an island with no sense of what to do. Trying to figure out what do next is hard. Should you build a big park or a small park? Lots of dinosaurs or few? There's a lot to think about, and without any type of direction, it's easy to get bogged down and frustrated. A reminder window opens every once in awhile to tell you if something major happens, like dinosaur breakout or low park attendance, but it doesn't happen enough to help. You are also given a 'survey' that helps you to know what your guests are thinking, but sometimes their complaints are so obscure you can't figure out what they want (this is really a problem in regards to restaurants). Another key to doing well is knowing when to save. Because things change so fast (mostly money expenditures), it's easy to go bankrupt. I found saving at least after every three months worked well.
Game Mechanics: I was impressed to see how much Konami was able to squeeze into four buttons. The D-pad moves the cursor and A and B are select and cancel, respectively. The L and R buttons bring up the various menus to help you run your park, and while at first they may give you problems, they become easy to use later in the game. Another neat (although pointless, I felt) feature was the SLEEP MODE. Pressing R and Select turns off the screen and suspends the game. Pressing L and select resumes the game. The only reason I felt this was useless was because I don't see why the standbys of Start and Select couldn't have been used since they aren't used for something else. Overall, I liked Jurassic Park 3: Park Builder, and besides the few issues I've talked about, the only thing that kept me from really liking it was the system it was on. This game just feels way to big for the GBA, which results in some limitations and additions that would have made the game much better - such as placing rides in the parks.
-Starscream, GameVortex Communications AKA Ricky Tucker
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