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This is a game I could probably do a whole commentary on, given how much the Jurassic Park franchise means to me. It adapts not just Jurassic World but the original trilogy as well.
Some previous Lego games relied entirely on sound clips from their source movies for dialogue, so here I was pleasantly surprised to hear a fairly even mix of both recycled and new dialogue. In fact, I know the first movie so well that I could tell that some lines from it were re-recorded with new actors, like the computer tech at Grant's dig site. Donald Gennaro's lines also sounded different, so not even the main characters were immune to this. Each sequel segment seemed to directly lift the film's audio less than the last, and with Jurassic World, they apparently went all the way and got the original actors to actually record the new lines.
One thing I was especially curious about was how they'd tone down the movies' inherent violence to keep it child-friendly. Well, that's actually where a lot of the game's humour comes from. :-) There's an adorable sense of whimsy in how tame it's trying to be in contrast. For example, in the first movie's opening scene, instead of killing that worker Jophery, the raptor just… steals his hot dog! :-D (And apparently, that's still worth Muldoon screaming, "Shoot her!") Later, the T. rex still swallows Gennaro, but he was brandishing a toilet brush beforehand, so he goes down cleaning its teeth. :-D I also love how they handled the long grass scene in The Lost World: after dragging the hunters down, the raptors pop up wearing their hats or looking in their luggage for footballs and things. The raptors aren't hunting, they just want to play! :-D
In fact, the dinosaurs are often anthropomorphised for humorous effect, and it almost always succeeds. For example, in the waterfall scene in The Lost World, when Burke gets spooked by a snake, the T. rex watches him flee out past it, then looks at the other humans in a manner that clearly says, "Is he serious?" And in Jurassic Park III, when they realise where the satellite phone is, we see the Spinosaurus sleeping in a hammock nearby. At that point, I noticed something that had popped up quite often in the Lego games, and howled with laughter at the idea that even the Spinosaurus had a teddy bear! :-D
That's not to say all the humour works. It still has its share of characters being unprofessional bunglers, which would make anyone's confidence in the park's security even shakier.
But by far the game's best feature is the dinosaurs themselves occasionally becoming playable. Jurassic Park has the sick Triceratops, The Lost World has a Pachycephalosaurus, Jurassic Park III has an Ankylosaurus, and Jurassic World has three playable dinosaurs, including the raptors. (I love how the raptors are so intelligent that they too can operate machinery now.) You also control the T. rex a couple of times when it battles other dinosaurs.
In conclusion, this is the closest I've come to considering buying a movie-based Lego game. Its gameplay loop is still nothing spectacular, but it is the most consistently funny among its peers, and I'd take this over the actual Jurassic World any day.
My rating: 65%
