Jurassic Park III: Park Builder

"A decent management game for the GBA"

Introduction

I have always had a soft spot for management games like Theme Park and Theme Hospital so when I saw a similar type of game with the Jurassic Park license, I didn't hesitate to buy it.

The game requires you to build your own Jurassic Park and try to make a profit from exploiting those poor cloned dinosaurs. So that sounds like fun.

Gameplay

The goal of the game is to build a successful dino park and keep it running for twenty years.

As with any game on the GBA, the controls are simple. A lot harder is trying to find out what works for your park and what not. Designing a park is hard work and you shouldn't be surprised if you have to start over again and again just to get the start right. How about a learning curve next time, Konami?

Once you do get your park up and running, there still isn't time to relax and just enjoy the dinos, but that isn't a bad thing. There is advertising to take care of, ticket prices, shop prices, sick dinos, security upgrades for your dino fences (you wouldn't want your dinos to break loose and eat your visitors now would you?) You have to make sure that you're not putting a level 3 carnivore in a cage full of herbivores. And you have to send your excavation team all around the world to look for new fragments of DNA - which is an interesting aspect of the game.

There are 140 different kinds of dinosaur to find but your team doesn't just find a whole dino, they come back with fragments of DNA. Once you have found all the fragments of a particular strand of DNA, you can clone that species of dinosaur.
This makes it very exciting when your excavation team returns to analyze their finds; have they found that last missing piece of DNA so you can finally clone that rare Velociraptor?
Another nice aspect is that you can trade your DNA fragments with other people through the linkup option. Obviously, this does require you both to own a copy of the game.

Graphics

Hey, it's a GBA, what can I say? Graphics are nice and functional. No more, no less. It will not blow you away. Still pictures of the dinos look good and the intro is nice too, although it seems like an intro for an action game.
It would have been nice if you would have been able to see which dinosaur is sick and which isn't. Instead, this kind of info can only be found in the menu screens - which can be a bit of a pain when you're trying to keep track of fifteen dinos at once.

Once your park is successful you will have lots of visitors in your park. Their wishes and complaints come in the form of symbols over their heads; so you'll know when they think the hamburgers are too expensive or the wait for the bus too long.

It's no Theme Park though. There you have rides that are fun to watch. In Jurassic Park people just ride around in buses, oooh-ing and aaah-ing at the dinos and that's it. No entertaining animation routines or anything like that.

Sound

The sound effects are adequate but the music is truly horrible. No option to turn it down either, to the best of my knowledge. Luckily it has no real impact on the gameplay if you turn the sound off completely.

Replayability

If you get through the game's initial harshness, you could get hooked for quite a while. I myself have had a very profitable park for over twenty years, but when I discovered that my save file had been deleted I didn't exactly feel happy that I'd have to do it all again. So it'll give you a long playtime the first time round, but don't count on there being a second time.

Final Recommendation

A decent game with a steep learning curve (more like a learning wall). Persevere and it could turn out to be a fun little game.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 06/04/03, Updated 06/04/03