It’s safe to say this fall season is looking abnormally crowded, with October set to be the busiest month of the year when it comes to big releases. Quite high on our priority list, we have Frontier Developments’ Jurassic World Evolution 3, which aims to right the wrongs of the second game while expanding on the management and creative sides of the experience.
This week, GameWatcher was invited to an immersive experience event in the heart of London, so I was able to go hands-on with the game’s early story campaign sections as well as the fan-favorite Sandbox mode, which is much deeper this time around. With so many trailers and showcase videos already out in the wild (and the release date around the corner), we were just wondering about how the new features, content, and quality-of-life changes would affect the gameplay loop and ‘rhythm’ of the game in its busier moments.
After a quick walk through the Dinosaur Integration Network’s Centre of Evolution (a tuned-up Museum of London), where we learned about the game’s hottest new features and the atmosphere Universal and Frontier are going for in the threequel, I jumped into a gameplay session that went on for around 80 minutes. Needless to say, we still have some dino-sized questions as we approach the launch, but I left the event feeling this might be the definitive Jurassic Park/World management sim Frontier has wanted to crack since 2018’s Jurassic World Evolution.
The most obvious move in the right direction is the return of an expansive, worldwide story campaign that appears to double in size that of the original game while following the same structure. This is no glorified tutorial like Evolution 2’s (to be fair, the sequel made up for that disappointment with excellent Chaos Theory levels), but another multi-level, globe-trotting management adventure which presents 10 distinct parks in the post-Jurassic World: Dominion world, each with its unique natural environment and set of objectives. Moreover, the progression took me back and forth between levels as new problems arose; this is no linear journey.
Even the in-game cutscenes have seen improvements: As you’re thrown into the arid Badlands level, all you see are the fossilized remains of a Velociraptor, only for the living animals, now roaming free across North America, to stop on them, leaving footprints behind. Jurassic World Evolution 3 isn’t suddenly making a pivot to a narrative-oriented campaign, yet its presentation feels weightier and more stylish.
Coming along for the ride are veteran characters from past Evolution games as well as Doctor Ian Malcolm, once again fantastically voiced by Jeff Goldblum. We don’t know for sure whether other faces from the movies are returning, but his presence alone gives this ‘soft canon’ campaign the needed importance. Similarly, I noticed the use of music tracks from the movies beyond the legendary themes we know and love is slightly more generous.
The visual presentation has also seen a marked improvement, especially when it comes to how the prehistoric animals are rendered and animated. Mind you, Evolution 1 & 2 already were lookers in the park management sim space, but leaving last-gen platforms behind yields instant results. Of course, consoles don’t have as much horsepower as the high-end PCs we played this preview build on, but the overall lighting upgrade and the level of granularity gained by the vegetation and other environmental assets are enough to call Evolution 3 a substantial jump in graphics.
Thankfully, the improvements don’t stop there: Frontier seemingly took plenty of notes following the heavy criticism of parts of Evolution 2 such as the often tedious and dull micromanagement around menial tasks. With new additions like a maintenance-oriented building and security cameras, the broken fences, damaged facilities, and dinosaurs on the loose are automatically taken care of as long as you own enough and smartly place them around. It’s an expansion of what Ranger and Medical teams did (and continue to do) in answer to hiccups that weren’t very fun to deal with when you had larger fish to fry and big decisions to make… or simply wanted to spend more time looking at your precious prehistoric animals.
Likewise, small but noticeable QoL changes and tweaks quickly pile up to make the entire experience more pleasant. For example, the left-hand menus have been slightly reworked and ‘environmental needs’ bars don’t go away when you bring up the rock, terrain, and vegetation brushes that directly deal with that, saving us from the hassle of opening and closing menus until a certain species’ needs are met. Furthermore, if you jump into those straight from a species’ live details, the right brushes will be marked with hearts. It’s the sort of change/addition that makes so much sense that it’s weird Frontier hadn’t cracked it before, and there are so many little things like this which indicate dealing with large parks outside of a Sandbox map with creative settings is more enjoyable this time around.
At the center of Evolution 3, of course, we find the juvenile animals, which appear to be available for every species in the game except the monstruous hybrids. Sadly, there’s no dinosaur-on-dinosaur steamy time to be seen here, with eggs magically spawning inside nests after the female animals spend a few moments with the suitable males. As humans exit the process of creating life, the newborns inherit traits from their parents. Life finds a way… and gives us extremely cute baby dinosaurs. It remains to be seen how growing into mature animals is handled visually or how carnivores interact with juveniles which they want to eat, but letting nature do its thing to up the number of dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals in the parks versus the traditional genetic engineering injects some more wonder into the formula. Watching a peaceful herd of Maiasaura become a huge family unit was a thing of beauty, and I can’t wait to add some twisted cuteness to the carnivore mix of my parks.
We were kicked out of the Campaign mode right before things took a more interesting turn with the wild pack of Velociraptors in the Badlands causing a ruckus, and the fact many of us were bothered by having to jump for 20 or so minutes into the more open-ended Sandbox portion is a good sign. Soon, however, I realized I hadn’t even played with the new customization and blueprint tools taken straight from Planet Coaster 2. If you haven’t been paying attention, know players will be able to share not just the parks, but also entire building and decoration blueprints.
While the online features weren’t available for obvious reasons, we were free to jump into a couple of preset Sandbox maps with a basic layout and some dinos ready to be messed with. As soon as I opened up the decorations menu, I was instantly impressed by the sheer amount of little bits and pieces available, from rocks to trees to sign posts to lights to skeletons… and everything in between. After a couple of quick glances, I’d say almost every minor asset used throughout the game (and then some) can be placed separately, together, or forming complex structures with easy-to-grasp movement and snap tools. If you’re specially happy with how a chunk of scenery or specific building (they all can be customized) turned out, you can quickly make a ‘group selection’ and save the blueprint for later use.
When coupled with the new terrain tools – which allow you to create bodies of deep water some dinosaurs can swim in, natural waterfalls, and actual valleys – it quickly becomes apparent Frontier is giving the hardcore crowd every toy and tool they’ve ever wanted. That might be the key to securing a bright and long future for the game in the case a fourth installment never happens. Though I’m sure I’ll be proven wrong sooner rather than later, right now I’m inclined to say mods won’t be needed to manifest most of your crazy park ideas. As for dinosaur skins, a hot topic in the community, it seems that all patterns and colors (including special ones like the feathered T-Rex skin from Dominion) present in Evolution 2 are back… as long as the matching animal species is part of the base game’s roster.
By doubling down on community requests, iterating on what wasn’t quite working, and pleasing the sort of player who happily puts dozens (if not hundreds) of hours into each of these games, Jurassic World Evolution 3 might cross the “great IP game” barrier and become an all-timer of its genre. We won’t have to wait much longer to see if the entire package is as enticing and rich in details as this first contact.
Jurassic World Evolution 3 roars into PC (Steam, Epic, Xbox app), PS5, and Xbox Series X/S on October 21. Stay tuned for a developer interview straight from the event dropping soon as well as our full game review at launch.
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