Jurassic Park fans are in dire need of a good videogame – and they aren’t shy about making it known. While movie tie-in games are often times weak, games allowed to find their own voice within the franchise can be groundbreaking and a ton of fun. The Jurassic franchise has had its fair share of games in the past, though most were nothing to write home about, especially the more recent entries. Nowhere to be seen is anything like ‘Alien: Isolation’, ‘The Chronicles Of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay’, ‘Star Wars Battlefront’, ‘Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor’, ‘Knights of the Old Republic, or even ‘Jurassic Park Operation Genesis’.
This complete drought of new, well made videogames within the Jurassic world is made all the more frustrating by knowing the raw creative potential that exists. That potential, coupled with the record breaking success of the most recently released film makes the lack of any high budget games within the film universe entirely puzzling. Sure, there are the mobile Free-to-Play Pay-to-Win games by Ludia, but those are mainly mindless time killers, and nothing genuinely intriguing.
That’s why it hurt so much in May of 2015 when we learned that Cryptic Studios Seattle was working on a Jurassic World game – only to have it canceled due to the studios closure. Later that summer, game artists began to post some of their artwork and videos from the game, and we covered it. But then something interesting happened – Perfect World Entertainment, the games publisher, went after the artists. It appeared the game was not dead.
More recently, another artist posted a screenshot of a very early Pre-Alpha build of Jurassic World Survivor (then called Jurassic Park Survivor) – we believe this predates the builds of the game we have seen prior, and is when it was quite early and exploratory. What stands out the most, is this version of the game was a First Person Shooter – everything we have seen and heard about the game has indicated it will be third person, so again, this points to it being from very early in development. This version of the game was described as “Left 4 Dead like” and “was cancelled by Universal because of weapons in the game.”
The latter quote aligns with what we heard about other versions of the game, which would have minimal gun usage, and rely more on other tools – and that it would not be possible to kill dinosaurs, only injure and scare them. What we know about the game now is it will be third person, open world action MMO (Massively multiplayer online role-playing game) with a heavy emphasis on survival and exploration of Isla Nublar. The game was dude to hit Steam on PC first, followed by its Xbox One and Playstation 4 console releases back in 2015, but those plans may have shifted since.
What we do know is the game is very much not dead, or at least was still alive and kicking as recently as December 2016, which is when Universal applied for trademarks on the title. Prior to that, Perfect World Entertainment registered domains for the IP in late October 2016, so all signs point to the game existing, surviving, and waiting to be officially announced. Gaming expo e3 kicks off June 13th, with some panels starting sooner – our money is on if it is shown, it will be revealed at the PC Gaming Show this upcoming Monday, June 12th at 1pm EST.
However, it is worth noting that Perfect World and Cryptic Studios California (the developer we assumed took over when the Seattle branch closed) just announced a new Free to Play Magic the Gathering game. Sadly, this does seem to reduce the odds of Jurassic World Survivor making an appearance, but perhaps it’s just one of many new surprises Perfect World has up their sleeves.
Stay tuned for more news, and let us know what you want from a Jurassic World game – do you think Universal is on the right track to stop the property from becoming a shooter, or are they getting in the way of solid gaming entertainment? Sound off!
