"Just one drop of blood contains billions of strands of DNA, the building blocks of life!"
--Mr. DNA, Lego Jurassic World
Isla Nublar and Isla Sorna are remade in the image of Lego bricks in the most lighthearted approach to the source material yet with Lego Jurassic World. Gone are Ian Malcolm's grave warnings about how technology must be used within moral constraints; gone is the less philosophical yet somewhat serious slant of the films. Lego Jurassic World replaces those elements with an atmosphere of typical Lego-style humor and a very summarized retelling of the plot. With a fairly vast set of open worlds to explore and five levels for each of the first four Jurassic Park movies, including Jurassic World, which was released in the same year the game debuted, this is far from the smallest Lego game despite the small number of levels devoted to each film.
Production Values
Unfortunately, like with several first-person shooters ported to the Switch, motion blur can interfere with screenshot clarity, but it is largely unnoticeable while actually playing the game. The graphics are ultimately neither close to the best nor close to the worst visuals the platform has seen. They are clear enough to avoid jagged edges in many cases. Some dialogue from the first four movies is even included, but the vast majority of it is left out. Lego Jurassic World only uses very select and abbreviated lines from the actual movies. Still, players can hear Jeff Goldblum, Laura Dern, Bryce Dallas Howard, Chris Pratt, and other series actors and actresses deliver limited lines from the film scripts.
Gameplay
All of the traditional mechanics of Lego games appear in Lego Jurassic World, such as buildable objects, 10 minikits in each level, optional co-op, and a meter that fills as you collect a specific amount of Lego studs in a certain level (this status is called True Survivor). Anyone who remembers the gameplay of the first Lego Star Wars games is already familiar with many of the features. The biggest difference between this game and its many predecessors is the introduction of dinosaurs as playable characters--including Velociraptors and a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Even the Mosasaurus from Jurassic World can be unlocked and used to swim around an expansive underwater area, although this creature is not actually a dinosaur. Larger dinosaurs and the Mosasaurus can only be summoned or controlled in specific places, mostly in the somewhat "open world" environments from which the levels are accessed, and the initial playthrough of a level gives only a small cast of characters as dictated by the movies, but free play opens up the roster dramatically.
You can switch between any unlocked character in free play at any time, which is helpful both when replying levels in free play mode and when exploring the islands between levels. Some minikits, amber pieces, gold bricks, and red bricks cannot be found without free play due to the very specific abilities needed to reach them. Ellie Sattler can retrieve important items from dinosaur dung, high-level Jurassic Park/World employees or executives like John Hammond and Claire Dearing can input special codes into electronic systems, Alan Grant can excavate and reconstruct fossils, and so on. Without using these abilities to obtain collectibles, some areas and dinosaurs are never found, which especially limits what you can do in the open worlds. Timed challenges and bonus chase levels on the islands are unlocked as the main levels get completed, with the latter letting players control a dinosaur as it runs to a fixed destination--and these additional levels, as brief as they are, have their own True Survivor status to be achieved by gathering Lego studs.
Story
Some spoilers are below.
Plot is not a major concern of Lego games, and Lego Jurassic World is no different. There are still enough cutscenes and lines to show key points from every movie in the series up until Fallen Kingdom. The fall of Jurassic Park, attempt to use dinosaurs from Isla Sorna for an exhibit in San Diego, trip to rescue Eric Kirby, and eventual opening of Jurassic World are all covered. Of course, each movie is retold using a more comedic approach, but the basic premise of each film remains intact.
Intellectual Content
The very mild puzzles in the levels and somewhat open world island environments that house the levels still cannot all be completed in a single playthrough. Since character/dinosaur-specific abilities are required to even access some collectibles that can be easily spotted, completions must replay each level at least once, and some levels with on-rails vehicle or chase segments can be especially challenging in this regard. The camera in these sections usually does not let you see most incoming objects, which includes minikits and amber. With no way to see how far ahead an item is, some parts might need to be replayed again and again just to line up in the correct part of the screen in anticipation of an upcoming minikit.
Conclusion
Among the many Lego games available on the Switch, Lego Jurassic World is one of the only ones that does not have a sequel or a fellow Lego game about the same specific franchise. Its 2015 release date, along with its lack of sequels, means there has yet to be a game in the series about Fallen Kingdom and the upcoming Jurassic World: Dominion, but there is still around 10-20 hours of content based on the other four movies, although that number will be much higher for anyone consistently revisiting levels and non-level park locations to find every single collectible. This is the only point at which players can frequently control dinosaurs, ranging from the tiny Compsognathus to the enormous Apatosaurus or Spinosaurus. The dinosaurs, of course, are the most major new innovation to the Lego series and the primary draw of Jurassic Park as a multimedia franchise, so someone more interested in them than in the other aspects of the game will have to play quite a bit to unlock them all.
Content:
1. Violence: Player-controlled Lego figures and dinosaurs can strike other characters, which eventually makes basic enemies fall apart into Lego pieces and disappear.
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