LEGO Jurassic World

Every few years I like to play through another new Lego game. They may not be the most complex games but the humor keeps me coming back for more. As you can infer by the title this follows the events of the 4 Jurassic Park movies. Starting off with John Hammond's ill fated enterprise to create a dinosaur theme park and the adventure through many different islands till someone decided to try to once again open the park in Jurassic World. Along the way like every other lego game they add humor into scene by scene recreations of the movies. It can be hit or miss if it’ll make you laugh but at minimum I expect you’ll have a smile on your face.

Lego Jurassic World has 2 different sides that form the gotta collect them all nature of every Lego game. First the open world sections recreate the two different islands in different forms depending on the movie. The main goal of these sections at first is just a linear path that the player must go through and solve puzzles to unlock the next story mission. After completing all the missions for one movie you can then explore the island and start collecting one of the many collectibles. Between the ever plentiful gold bricks to the many workers in peril simple puzzle solving will be required to find them all. Compared to previous titles like Marvel Super Heroes it feels like they made a much more linear world to explore this time.

The 2nd part is the story missions that recreate scenes from the movies. This part is superlinear compared to the open world sections with a assortment of side collectibles to find later if you decide to replay them in free play mode. Lego’s can talk and Travelers Tales once again uses audio from the movies. I thought they might have gotten better at ripping the audio from said movies but it turns out it still sounds like I’m listening to a line from a DVD. It didn’t cause me to not enjoy the different scenes but it really clashes with the rest of the lines when it sounds bad. To get through the story missions the player will need to use the different skills that each Lego person has. For example John Hammond can unlock InGen panels or Alan Grant can dig up dinosaur bones. For most of the game you will use one of those skills to create a path to the end of the level or defeat a boss. I rather enjoyed some of the boss battles in this game. They might mostly just be QTE battles between dinosaurs mixed with puzzles but they are fun to look at. The main other section in these story levels is running away from dinosaurs. These sections have no real challenge and were made just to add some flair.

All of that is fine but I kept thinking that the payoff for collecting everything wasn’t worth the effort. Which seems like a bad thing for a series all about collecting a bunch of useless items. Going by what they did before collecting gold bricks used to give the player a new mini levels to compete. In LJP all they do is a let you collect more gold bricks by letting the player summon bigger dinosaurs. Even the mini kits are pointless since all they do is give a different skin for some of the dinosaurs. I was disappointed with the lack of variety of reasons to continue collecting stuff after finishing the story other than if I wanted to get a platinum trophy. Which is fine I guess but I prefer games give me something for doing optional content. They took the easy way out for the bonus missions too. After already getting tired of the short run away sections mixed into the main game the bonus missions made me replay them again with a different Lego dinosaur. Which was a simple but boring way to extend the game a bit.

Overall Tt did a good job recreating Jurassic Park into Lego form. They even made most of the levels enjoyable to play through. Yet once I finished all those levels I may have ended up going for all the collectibles but if you don’t have the 100% bug like me I don’t see any reason to collect em all. No real fun with any of the bonus missions and the open world being more linear is a bummer. Still it is a good Lego game that can be enjoyed by anyone. Even if it isn’t their best attempt throughout the years it can still be a game worth playing.