Jurassic Park: The Game

I've mentioned the any day soon release of Jurassic Park: The Game and how I'm quite excited about it. I was excited about it. Having caught up with the available information about it, I'm struck by five things.

1. It looks quite QTE heavy. Like Heavy Rain but with dinosaurs. No biggie though. I prefer being explicitly told to "press A to win" rather than be given the mere facade of agency a la Modern Warfare 3 single player. Plus hopefully that'll mean the journey should be quite fun because it is so controlled? Not that you get to take in much of the action sequences when your scouting the screen for the next button to press.
2. The characters are still worryingly reminiscent of the characters in Timesplitters 2. Not the style of the characters in Timesplitters 2 but as if somebody had transplanted the characters in from that nine year old (and excellent) game. The dinosaurs look mighty shiny too. Too shiny. Like early days of the Xbox360 shiny. Bad shiny. Not that I'm a graphics snob, as long as a game has dinosaurs in it I'll happily play it, but I can't imagine that this game will be pushing the 360 or PS3 not to mention the PC and Mac. Confusingly, I thought that one of the main advantages of making a QTE game was that you could make it look beautiful because the player is limited in their interactions with the game and environments......
3. The Wii version was either never announced or dropped. I can't tell which, Telltale's own site says it'll be on "all major video game platforms". To not be on the third biggest platform (after PC and Mac) seems to make that sentence untrue. Sad because I think there's a lot of love in the world still for Jurassic Park. With some decent marketing I imagine it could have been a big hit on that particular platform. Ho hum.
4. This game is another great example of how poorly game makers serve their potential consumers. Telltale's own website isn't very useful on actual information about the game. The game itself is confusingly described as episodic by some sites and others don't mention this at all. Also, that lovely deluxe PC edition we told you about? If you want it in Europe before Christmas, ermmm there's no guarantee you'll get it for Christmas. You know, Christmas, that time of year that people like to spend lots of money on expensive presents for each other, possibly on video games, possibly on video games that come out at the end of the year. Even friends of fans of dinosaurs in video games like to splash out on video games with dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures for their dinosaur fan friends. Not if it won't be delivered on time they won't though. Oh also aren't we in the middle of an economic crisis or something? Telltale not bothered in maximising their profits at all? Good on you.
5. On that note, why is the limited edition for PC only? Xbox 360 owners get a free virtual T-rex for their avatar. Wait whilst I feign a yay. yay. Presumably it is the same game? Now I'm torn as to which one I contemplate getting (if I get it all straight away). Do I want to get it as quickly as possible with all that extra stuff to put in my big 'ol pile of limited edition game junk I've never opened or used? Or do I wait so I don't have to mess around with PC settings and get stuck with looking at Xbox 360 button prompts for my QTEs. I've not seen a video without Xbox pad prompts, presumably the mac version will be changed at least? A professional games company might clarify these things days before it is due out. Oh well.

Sorry to gripe. I like to keep this site as a happy place normally. Takes some doing to bring a dark cloud over talking about dinosaurs in games. Especially when talking about the biggest high profile dinosaurs in game release for a long long time.