Last week, the action-adventure game LEGO Jurassic World was finally released on iOS. It’s been a while since the title debuted on Mac, PC and consoles, so has developer TT Fusion made good use of that time in porting it to iPhone and iPad? Here are our own thoughts…
The Jurassic films, but with a LEGO twist
While the Jurassic movies – which could almost be described as watered-down horror – initially seem a strange fit for the cute and cuddly world of LEGO, in this instance, the pairing works. That’s largely because it trades on nostalgia, not on recreating the original stories to the letter.
Though the plots of all four movies – yes, even the much-maligned Jurassic Park III – are retold in computer-generated brick form, most people who download LEGO Jurassic World are likely to have already seen the films and, therefore, appreciate the various humorous twists on the familiar proceedings. So, plants can be punched to produce bricks to collect, portals to successive levels can be built in LEGO form, and even the piles of dino excrement now comprise of piles of brown bricks.
What little tweaks and enhancements have been made?
For the most part, controls are as simple as is convenient for iOS – though, should you occasionally find them too flimsy, we would advise you to switch from the default system to on-screen controls. Reviews of LEGO Jurassic World around the time of its original release complained about glitches and crashing, but it looks like TT Fusion might have ironed some things out since then; we personally found the game to, on recent iOS hardware, work perfectly smoothly from a technical standpoint.
One previous criticism that hasn’t been addressed, however, is the back-loaded Dinosaur Customizer feature. The idea of using DNA to create your own dinosaurs is an interesting one, but you have to progress quite far through the core gameplay before you can make much genuine use of it.
A veritable chocolate box of a game
LEGO Jurassic World can appeal to a surprisingly broad range of people: think movie buffs, LEGO fans – of which many, these days, are adults – and even casual gamers who haven’t seen any of the Jurassic films for a while, but are in the mood for a nostalgia fix. And the game is packed with so many little challenges and side tasks that you could find yourself having fun with it for quite a while.
Though the game carries a charge of $4.99, this is actually low compared to many prices of the older versions even now. Throw in lots of dialogue from the films, and you’ve got a pretty great value package. Expect to devour this like a tyrannosaurus rex tucking into a foolish lawyer on a toilet.
