Jurassic: The Hunted

We got pretty excited when we heard about Jurassic: The Hunted last year so it is without a hint of sadness to discover that it came out with AN ALMIGHTY WHIMPER!
Only two reviews on Metacritic and not so much as a sniffter of an EU release. We're used to hunting down obscure and unsuccessful dinosaur related games on auction websites but not when they were published by Activision! What is the world coming to when a dinosaur game with this kind of pedigree fizzles to release? More on this when we get it.

UPDATE: My co-author, Richie! over at That Guy's A Maniac took justice into his VERY OWN HANDS and contacted Activision about the EU release, they had this to say:

"Unfortunately, we cannot answer questions about a game until it has been released. All new game information is available on the website or in our press releases."

Having just spent the last twenty minutes waiting for all those ridiculous flash videos to load up (why do publishers insist on website design circa 1990? Hello! User friendly!) we cannot find any news related to Jurassic: The Hunted. SO WE@RE TAKING THIS AS CONFIRMATION THAT IT WILL BE COMING OUT SOON! You heard this juicy morsel of dinosaur game related news here first people!

Escape the Museum and Jurassic: The Hunted.

Ever since gaming got mainstream, the hardcore have complained that games have been ruined. More people now play hidden object games or social games through facebook than those really good games about big marines shooting aliens. Gaming proper is officially dead. Long live gaming.

Except when your hidden object game has dinosaurs in it! In which case, screw hardcore gaming we didn't like it anyway and step up Escape the Museum for the PC and now for the Wii!

We haven't played it yet because it is still £14.99 and we'll wait until it drops to around £5. We have to be careful though because once games go to £5 they next just dissappear from the internet and you have to go looking in dirty pawn shops and antique shows in order to find them again.

SURPISE DINOSAUR GAME! Also expect to see Jurassic: The Hunted in stores soon for the Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and Wii. It looks like next gen finally got on the dinosaur train. And we haven't been this happy for SEGA. It is a shame that Activision didn't get Flash Bang's memo about feathers though :( A possible step backwards for dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures in games.

Stranglehold Revisted, Xbox 360, PS3 and PC

Hello readers! You may remember recently (ish) that I mentioned the game Stranglehold in the pages of this here blog. Since then I have had a chance to visit the museum proper and boy o they have a lot of stuff on display! Here's a guided tour (ish). Apologies for the broken objects but at the time of the tour I was under some pretty heavy fire you know?

Welcome to the Chicago Field Museum a museum in Chicago! I'll be your tour guide Tequila Yuen! It's a name!


The museum has at least four taxidermy specimens of Thylacinus on open display! You won't see these in the wild unfortunately!


A nice Parasaurlophus skull!



What a surprise! On your right you'll see a Tyrannosaurs skeleton :(


And wow what a treat! A taxidermy Dodo. You won't see many of these around.


You uncultured bastards!


Giggidy


A GIANT Rhamphorynhcus!


Eeeeygh!


Here you will see a Camarasaurid sauropod just past the goons!


This was a tail.


This was some vertebrae with ribs but...


Yafleur!


It's just tommy K


And that brings us to the end of our tour. Please wait here for the tour of the Archaeology section and apologies to those visitors who lost limbs and relatives.



Dinosauriness: Countless of prehistoric creatures in these galleries and some nice recent examples of extinct animals including: Tyrannosaurus rex, Stegosaurus, Camarasaurus, a couple of pterosaurs, a sabre toothed cat, Einosaurus, Parasaurlophus, Triceratops, Mosasaurus, Rhamphorhynchus, an Ichthyosaur, various dinosaur eggs and footprints, Velociraptor, Thylacinus, Raphus cucullatus and a selection of flightless birds!

Scientific Accuracy: Museum conservation issues aside (the taxidermy specimens of the dodo and thylacine shouldn't be on open display) they are striking representations of real specimens with the rare exception of a few enlarged specimens.

Buzz Bonus: If you shoot all of the bones off of the large sauropod skeleton you can run up the back of you get the achievment "Palaeontologist".

GTA IV, PS3, Xbox 360, PC

Hello readers! It's time for an update! Today we are looking at the popular videogame Grand Theft Auto IV and the dinosaurs therein!

Tucked away in Liberty City, where the AMNH would be in the real New York, is a lovely museum! As you can see from the expert images taken here, Rockstar copped out by including the museum "undergoing redevelopment" which is a lazy way of saying we have better things to do than fill a museum with objects.


The museum includes a bunch of Egyptian bits and pieces, a whale skeleton AND SOME FRIGGIN DINOSAURS LADIES AND GENTLEMEN. They have a Tyrannosaurus rex and a Triceratops (species unknown). If you so wish you CAN SHOOT ALL THE BONES OFF AND DAMAGE THEM. Why you would I don't know but vigilant curators magically fully repair the skeletons by the next day. Good work museum guys.

The museum even has labels, where are the anti GTA guys now huh? This shizzle is educational as well as violent. Time for the business however.

Dinosauriness: Just two this time round, the classic match up of Tyrannosaurus rex and Triceratops.

Scientific Accuracy: The skeletons seem pretty accurate although I did notice abnormal vertebrae numbers and morphology of forelimbs on the Triceratops. Also, the poor Tyrannosaurus seems to be without gastralia. I hope they are just in storage or something. More importantly though, the specimens are repaired every day which certainly is not accurate. It would take months of work to repair thedamage by machine guns.

Buzz bonus: Technically, birds are dinosaurs as any smart arse palaeontologist will tell you so we should include all the birds (the collectible pigeons). Do you have all the pigeons yet reader?