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.

Attack of the Verbose Dinosaur

Who says games are all evil? Who says games can't educate? Who says that the shocking pulsating bag of creations that game designers call 'dinosaurs' seem to be accurate according to fifty year old scientific consensus? ME. ME ON THAT LAST ONE. For example, let's take a look at the Xbox Live marketplace title, Attack of the Verbose Dinosaur.
Mother of the mechanisms that lead to the improbable evolution of life as we know it! What is that? Look at that posture? Why is it in a city? Why does it want to affront the street creole that now passes as the language known as English? According to the official trailer this is the last of the dinosaurs and he lived at the bottom of the sea and learned to read from the books that would fall from shipwrecks. He was happy until he got the internet whereupon he decides to seek vengeance on those who abused the beautiful language. Sounds reasonable I suppose. Makes more sense than the plot of Jurassic Park.
Here's the scoop:

Dinosauriness: One incredibly arthritic, overweight internet surfing, book reading, angry marine 'dinosaur' that is some kind of carnosaurian-godzilla love child.

Scientific Accuracy: Unfortunately, the teeth seem to be built into a continuous bar, one on the upper jaw and one on the mandible. Apart from this single slip up this is a pretty accurate recreation 9/10.

Buzz Bonus: I cannot spell dissappear, tommorrow or suprise. I used to be able to but my brain cells are starting to die from playing all those awful Land Before Time GBA games.

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.

Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise- Xbox 360

I am painfully aware that there should be an accent somewhere over one of those letters up there in the post title. I apologise but it doesn't matter anyway because SHOCK HORROR do we have a drop in standards by covering this game?

Very early on, I made it clear what exactly constituted a dinosaur and/or prehistoric creature and hence what kinds of things I would and wouldn't be covering. So for example, Yoshi would not count as a dinosaur but Rampardos would. Where is the rationale you might ask? Well it's my blog and I'll do what I want. Plus those Pinatas are so adorable I just had to include Choclodocus even though I imagine it won't exactly flourish in the following analysis:

Dinosauriness: Well a Choclodocus (should I italicize it? yes, yes I should) can take many forms, shall we say 'taking inspiration' from such dinosaurs as Ankylosaurus, Stegosaurus, Triceratops and some kind of Sauropod.

Scientific Accuracy: Well it does look very cute. Look at his liddle face. I don't think we need to ruin the atmosphere by going on and on about scientific accuracy. Do you?

Buzz Bonus: I was rooting around the internet and came across the following coded message "Place the skull, ribs, spine, and amber gem into a store house. Eventually they will fuse into a Choclodocus egg. This egg can be hatched by a Cluckles wearing a Jurassic Hair accessory". Presumably that means something to somebody but alas that person isn't me.

Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie-Almost every platform

Widely (and rightly) ridiculed for it's ridiculous name, this game was released on a shed load of platforms. Some of them were surprisingly good considering the film tie in (PS2) and some were pretty bad (GBAand the DS version ). Either way dinosaurs were a feature of the films and games and they are a delight in this title. Fans of dinosaurs in games should endeavour to pick this title up (on the consoles) as rarely have nicer dinosaurs been seen on the little screen.

Dinosauriness: A number of dinosaurs with very silly names. Quite why the silly names I'm not too sure. Perhaps it is so that know-it-all palaeontologists can't later poo poo some of the made up dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures as they are want to do. Perhaps there has been some crazy isolated insular evolution going on on Skull Island which led to the total loss of feathers. And silly names. Anyway there's some sauropod ones, theropod ones, some hadrosaurs, some permian mammal-alikes, ancient giant crocodiles, some pterosaurs and the very silly named Vastatosaurus rex.

Scientific Accuracy: I quite like the idea of making up some dinosaurs rather than lazily skimming described species. This gives you a lot of artistic freedom and a way to ignore the palaeontologists who go to cinemas and concentrate on biodynamics and scale rather than the action/drama etc. I'm giving it a 5/10 but only because it could be a 0/10 (they are all made up) or a 10/10 (they made them up so how can it be inaccurate?).

Buzz Bonus: All dinosaur fans should play this game. It has some nice settings some cool set pieces and spear throwing. Who doesn't love themselves some spear throwing?

Small Arms- Xbox 360

Small arms is a poor man's (and suitably cheaper) Super Smash Brothers. The idea is to jump around and beat the other guys but without all the tech. The characters are cutesy and a little more-than-a-little-bit Fur fighters. It's available on Xbox Live Arcade which means that a gazillion people played it for two days before going onto the next PlayStation-era-esque throw away.

Regardless of the merits of Xbox Live arcade, Tyrone, one of the characters in small arms is a dinosaur!



Dinosauriness: Some kind of genericy raptor jobby.

Scientific Accuracy: He was created in a science research facility, a la Riptor from Killer Instinct so it may be possible that he doesn't have feathers, is ludicrously coloured and carries and ice ray thing to fight a mouse, a chicken and a small ninja woman. Overall 7/10.

Buzz bonus: Tyrone falls very close to the line of being a not real dinosaur (like Yoshi or godzilla and therefore not eligible to be covered here) but he has such a nice little face. Look at his face. Lovely.

Doritos Dash of Destruction- Xbox, Xbox 360

Is now free to download on Xbox live. Despite being a free game and one that is corporate sponsored it is probably one of the best single screen co-op games in the world. Much better than the new Battlefront:Lord of the Rings edition by a long shot.

The premise of the game, if that is the right phrase, is that you have to deliver doritos around town but a number of Tyrannosaurus rex and other delivery drivers try to stop you. Pretty straight forward really but very very playable. In multuiplayer if you get stomped by a T.rex you then become a T.rex. First to 20 odd number of deliveries is the winner!

Now for the breakdown.

Dinosauriness: Just T.rex yet again. But it comes in a range of neon colours which some consider a measure of awesomeness.

Scientific Accuracy: No feathers, unlikely colours but scale is okay. Umm 4/10 for this one.

Buzz Bonus: This game is allegedly the easiest XBLA game to earn all the achievments for so now you have four reasons to get hold of it*

*Because it is great. Because it is free. Because you can get easy cheevos and because it has dinosaurs in it.

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?

Guitar Hero 2

Guitar Hero 2- Xbox 360 & PS2
Yep. That's right. I completely discovered this on my own. Don't believe me huh? Yeah that’s right Guitar hero 2! I’m sure you are all asking yourselves, “Dinosaurs in guitar hero? How? Where ? As if!” Well they are and they are not… there are 2 separate references to Dinosaurs.First up we have the two player select screen (see above).

Dinosauriness: As you can see from the above picture it depicts a Mammoth, Sabre-toothed Tiger, an extinct antelope, an ancestor of the foxes, some kind of Dinornis, smaller mammals, cats etc.

A Fighter jet dropping a bomb on them all.When I first saw this I was admittedly shocked to see some obscure extinct animals just on a 2 player co-operative sceen. But then I realised that this may be a graphical representation of one of the songs, which brings me nicely onto the next instance of “Dinosaurs” in Guitar hero 2:One of the bonus tracks: Fall of Pangaea, by Valient ThorrAdmittedly when I saw this track name in there I should have spewed a load into my underwear straight away. However my ejaculate was suppressed as Pangaea nowadays is rarely used properly, it is usually used in Sci-fi or Fantasy as the name of some country on a different planet/reality. For those of you who don’t know what Pangaea is, it is the name given to the “Supercontinent” millions of years ago when USA, Russia, Africa, Europe Australia etc were all joined together in one big happy land-mass. Anyways back to me attempting to fertilise my boxers… I never really listened to the song as, well, the song is rather “Metal” and the lyrics can sometimes be inaudible.Check out the Lyrics:before the dawning of mankindother creatures roamed this landthey were from a far off timeand they brought with them a planfrom a dying portal in the sky it came, a grey transporter set the skyablaze in search of sanctuary to the earth they came all life beforethis point had just been washed away asteroids and comets ripped rightthrough the atmosphere laid waste to all the dinosaurs its a cycle itsa cycle thats been going on since before this world began, even thoughthey cause destruction they’re vital they’re a vital part of reality,the spores in side were alive, when the dust settled over the oceanbedthey watched it they watched the natural process of evolution in theraw, lifeforms grew in the water and this is what they saw they sawvolcanoes, Earth was a wreck, the cooling of the lava produced a sideeffect they saw amoeba combine with light, they saw the first thingcrawl on land and try to walk upright they saw the dolphin, they sawthe ape, the combination of the two would help the world take shape(they bred them) on the beaches, it was called Pangea population spreadso fast it caused an imbalance, but that couldn’t stop em even then,c’mon!let’s get on the road, i got somethin to show, pull up yr roots, andpack yr bags, let’s go!let’s get on the road, i got somethin to show, pull up yr roots, andpack yr bags- let’s go to the mountain and then you will see the placewhere Pangea Ma-jor used to be the tectonic plates moved where workershad mined the shift in the continents divided mankind Tidal waves brokethe goddamned thing in half, 7 pieces that wouldn’t last spread likegerms, thats the human virus form seeds were planted here on earth,young mothers then gave birth they remembered the men from the sky,named them gods and never questioned why?climb up the mountain and see for yrself, the ice caps are melting awayfrom the shelf the earth is evolving, you must have forgot, the life onthis planet has only one shot.Tidal waves broke the goddamned thing in half, 7 pieces that wouldn’tlast earths been silent many times, u seem to forget:we are temporaryyou are temporarywe’re all temporaryAs you can see the lyrics do site some rather humorous palaeo-references. The whole song almost seems like an evolutionists “The end is nigh” sign… “The mass-extinction is coming”

Scientific Accuracy: Well the scale is out and there are some big anachronisms. The plane and the bombs? They came much later. I would also like to note that this entry is also not very scientifically accurate. The animals aren't given their proper names. It is as if I am having an off-day. Or like someone else wrote it....... Strange.

Buzz bonus: I also write another blog http://www.thatguys.co.uk/ with Richie. I always beat him at Guitar Hero 2 especially this song too!

Stranglehold and Super Smash Brothers

Stranglehold- Xbox 360 and PC

Mucho speculatory with this one but screenshots tell us that this game has a level set in a Natural History Museum and/or gallery.

Dinosauriness: From this screenshot alone (sorry) looks like we have: Archaeopteryx, Brachiosaurus, Dunkleosteus, a Mosasaur, Pteranodon, Tyrannosaurus (snore) and a Velociraptor.

Scientific Accuracy: Pretty scientifically accurate there my friends. All of the dinosaurs seem to be to scale and you can even see specific specimens, so the Velociraptor skeleton at the back on the left is the exact specimen from the 1971 Polish-Mongolia expedition and right at the back, almost obscured by the strut supporting the T.rex it looks like the British Museum specimen of Archaeopteryx! Wowsers. Probably the nicest looking virtual museum you'll ever see.

Buzz Bonus: There is currently only 2 PCs worldwide that can play Stranglehold the specs are that high. There is always the 360 tho'.

Super Smash Brothers Brawl-Nintendo Wii
Speculation city right now but from the looks of this screenie currently over at Smash Bros. DOJO it looks like fossil-o-rama at the new Pokemon Stadium.

Dinosauriness: From this screenshot and this screenshot alone it looks like we've got Kabutops and Omastar fossils which are the poke-parodies of Trilobites and Ammonites.

Scientific Accuracy: Well considering that it's set in a game where all the Nintendo characters come together to beat the crap out of each other I'd say.... PRETTY FRICKIN ACCURATE. 90% Accurate in fact.

Buzz Bonus: I don't have a Wii but this might change all that. Keep your eyes peeled citizens.