Jurassic World Evolution | Nintendo Switch version review
Jurassic World Evolution in pills
Jurassic World Evolution is the management software with dinosaurs by Frontier Development, already authors of the excellent Planet Coaster, where, led by the voice of Jeff Goldblum as Ian Malcolm, we will be able to build and control our very personal park populated by the most varied prehistoric creatures. Too bad that, as expected, not everything always goes well. Once the game has started, in fact, you can choose whether to opt for the most canonical of the Sandbox modes, which however will require you to unlock the various elements available through the campaign, or immerse yourself in a story mode which, however, particularly suffers from redundancy. to the limit of tedious.The Jurassic World Evolution campaign, in fact, will ask us to reach some objectives in six different islands, making the adventure progress and allowing us to unlock equipment, and dinosaurs, with which we can then dedicate ourselves to sandbox mode. The Nintendo Switch edition also boasts of containing all the additional content released to date, including the Return To Jurassic Park expansion which, apart from relying on the nostalgia of the older fans of the brand, adds little variety to the dynamics of the game, limiting itself to guaranteeing a good longevity to the offer but, undoubtedly, little variety in the proposed situations.
The dynamics proposed by the game are always the same for each island: in each park we will have three department heads (the one dedicated to entertainment, that of security and that of science) who will offer us main missions which, in turn, they will allow us to obtain additional elements for our park or new DNA samples, with which we can create new dinosaurs. To get these missions, however, we would have to win the favor of the various department heads, carrying out minor tasks, and not very sensible in most cases, which will bring us money and reputation. The problem, however, will be to balance our collaborations to prevent some departments from feeling neglected, starting to boycott the park and creating further problems for us.
These basic mechanics, however, are never expanded or differentiated internally. of Jurassic World Evolution, where visitors are relegated to mere extras with no interaction and economic budgets are managed in a summary manner. The revenues are calculated automatically based on the satisfaction of each dinosaur by the public and by the commercial activities that we have positioned inside the park, too bad that if at the beginning we will only be able to earn a few tens of thousands of dollars per minute, forcing us to exhausting waited until finally being able to clone a carnivorous dinosaur that will quickly increase our earnings, in the advanced parts of the adventure we will find ourselves with so much money that, also thanks to the small size of the islands, it will be impossible to spend it.
The difficulty curve, exaggeratedly calibrated downwards, also collides with the real criticalities of Jurassic World Evolution: the small size of the building land and the absence of automation. As for the first factor, once construction of the first park has begun, it immediately catches the eye how much the building area is reduced to the bone. Unfortunately this is not a temporary limitation, but each island has a rather narrow space dedicated to construction. Even the sandbox mode will offer such a small extension that it is difficult to build enough enclosures to house all the dinosaurs present.
Regarding the lack of automation, however, the rangers in the jeeps take care of the maintenance of the structures , food supply and dinosaur care, while the ACU helicopter administers tranquilizers to the animals. Each time, however, we should manually select the right unit, looking for it on the map, and entrust it with one or more activities to carry out. It is useless to confirm that everything turns out to be tedious in the long run, where an automation system of the more constant activities would have guaranteed a greater lightness of the most redundant mechanics. , we are faced with the element that partly saves the experience offered by Jurassic World Evolution. In fact, it is possible to modify the parameters of attack, defense, duration of life, resistance to diseases, evaluation by the public and even the color of the skin by applying different pre-set skins. It will be possible to play with the various types of DNA to create aggressive herbivores and more docile carnivores, as well as to make them collide with each other, as long as you become aware that it is a completely end in itself activity and undermined by an AI truly basic and not very stimulating.
The general experience, however, is still enjoyable, especially if enjoyed in small sessions. Jurassic World Evolution, in fact, leverages the basic mechanics of the management genre to erect a playful structure that leverages the player's excitement through the creation of parks seen only in the films of the series. Although everything may prove to be very limited in the deepening of the management mechanics, the title still manages to entertain during the construction phases and, especially, in those dedicated to the creation of dinosaurs.
The version for Nintendo Switch
The element able to compensate for the shortages on the management side of Jurassic World Evolution resided in a graphics sector, really well done. The polygonal models of the dinosaurs were rich in details, the parks filled with distinctive elements and the possibility to visit their creations, aboard a jeep or a helicopter, gave the player that sense of immersion that every fan of the franchise sought in a game of this type. Unfortunately, however, the version for Nintendo Switch takes a necessary step back in this area.The lower computational power of Nintendo Switch, in fact, has required an important reworking of the technical sector but something seems not to have gone completely successful in the optimization phase and Jurassic World Evolution shows in Docked mode some very heavy drops in framerate and a low resolution that makes the comparison with the other home versions of the title unequal. The speech, unfortunately, does not change in portable mode where, even if the framerate problems do not manifest themselves, a very heavy blur effect constantly dirties the image going to lose that immersion that characterized the title in its version for home consoles and PC .
Ultimately, therefore, we are not faced with the best porting ever made for Nintendo Switch. The game, undoubtedly, manages to entertain and the presence of all the additional content makes it an excellent choice for those looking for a disengaged, long-lived and full of fan service management software. On the move, Jurassic World Evolution offers the best of itself precisely by virtue of its predisposition to better cover short game sessions compared to long marathons of several hours. The heavy blur that afflicts the Handheld mode, and the heavy drops in framerate in docked, however, undermine a port that could, undoubtedly, be more accurate in its implementation.
