Jurassic World Evolution 2 Preview – Where dinos also live in the wild

When Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom ends, the velociraptor named Blue and several other dinosaurs have escaped far beyond the “safe” Muertas Islands. We see a shot of the prehistoric creatures running around in the wild and hear Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) explain in the US Senate that a new ‘Jurassic era’ has arrived and that humanity must find a way to live together with the dinosaurs, which from that moment on are part of life on earth again. In short: where in the past the dinosaurs always roamed in certain locations, they now simply live in places on earth that are familiar to us. That’s the starting point from where Jurassic World Evolution 2 departs.

This immediately removes one of the negatives of the first game. That game was set in the Muertas Islands. These islands were slightly different from each other and some islands were more challenging than others, but in general there was not much difference between the islands. That gave players the feeling that every new park they built was a repetition of steps, in an environment that was too similar to the other locations. That aspect is now gone. When we recently had a few hours to get started with the game, we saw areas in Washington State and Canada, and of course the final game will include many more areas. This also entails changes in climate. In the original we mainly saw a lot of jungle and therefore warm areas,

Learned from Planet Zoo

This immediately brings new challenges with it. In the first game you had to provide the enclosures you built for your dinosaurs with food, water and some trees, but that didn’t go very deep yet. The dinosaurs in this second part are a lot more demanding in that regard. You can guess how development studio Frontier Developments came up with this idea. After all, the studio also released Planet Zoo between the two dino games; basically the same concept as Jurassic World Evolution, but with some more common animals. In Planet Zoo, looking at what animals need in their enclosure and then adapting that enclosure to their needs played a major role. That game element has been carried over to Jurassic World Evolution. Whether it is as extensive and in-depth as in Planet Zoo remains to be seen,

It does mean that some extra micromanagement will come your way. For example, you will have to build a Ranger Station in your quarters where a Ranger can sit to observe the critters. Only in this way can you gain insight into how your dinosaurs are doing and you can take the right steps. Rangers are also the workers who can spot medical problems with dinosaurs, after which you can put your medical team to work. That team can work in the sick animal’s enclosure, or you can have the dino transported to the medical center so that it can be treated there. Keeping your dinosaurs healthy isn’t new, but the way you solve the problems is slightly different. You can also improve the DNA profile of your dinosaurs by examining so-called genomes. Based on that, you can eventually develop versions that are stronger and more resilient than your first copies, which may get sick a bit more easily. This is also not new, and it continues to play a role in Jurassic World Evolution 2.

Track down dangerous dinosaurs

In other places too, Jurassic World Evolution 2 promises to demand a ‘hands-on’ approach from players. For example, as part of a campaign mission, we had to go on an adventure ourselves with a Jeep, in search of some dangerous dinosaurs. One of the ideas behind the setting is that the player is responsible for building parks so that the most dangerous dinos can be taken from the wild for shelter in a safe environment. Finding those dinos is part of the game. This means that you sometimes drive around in your Jeep or fly around in your helicopter, looking for the dinos that you can then stun yourself. This all feels a bit gimmicky. It doesn’t work badly, but also not so smooth that it’s really fun to run.

Building and developing your park remains more fun and challenging in that regard. During our play session, part of that challenge was caused by the technology not cooperating. Game companies nowadays often let journalists play via a streaming service so that you never have the optimal audiovisual experience on the client side. That’s not so bad, but when the connection is poor and the session comes to a halt a number of times, it becomes difficult to really appreciate the game’s value. Our experience at that moment is no longer entirely positive, but that is not the fault of the game itself. Anyway, we had to deal with a faltering connection, so we sometimes missed a bit of explanation and the game became more difficult than it was intended.

The latter is difficult, because Jurassic World Evolution 2 asks quite a bit of player. It takes a while before you are familiar with all the menus and know how to use all the extra tasks that this game entails. For example, there is a whole new system for managing scientists that you can develop through a training center. In addition, the scientists have various properties that make them more or less suitable for tasks such as expeditions or developing genomes that should lead to new dinosaur eggs. That alone is a nice job to keep busy with, especially since your scientists get tired and need to get some rest. It’s almost impossible to prevent scientists from doing nothing because you haven’t had a chance to put them back to work yet.

The base remains the same

In that respect, building your park is of course the most fun and it is also the core of the game. Its basis has not changed. You build fenced enclosures for your dinos and depending on how dangerous the dinos in question are, you make those enclosures stronger. You ensure that all buildings are connected to the path network through your park and ensure that there is enough power to make all buildings function. Outside the well-known buildings, there are some new facilities, especially in the field of services for your guests. Players also get more options to visually adjust the park to their liking, but we haven’t been able to play with this ourselves yet. It remains to be seen how deep those options will be.

Another thing we haven’t been able to try yet but that sounds fun is a new mode called Chaos Theory. In this, players are confronted with all kinds of familiar moments from movies, only they are now in charge of the failing park and therefore also charged with the task of solving the problems. Recognition is good and eventually most gamers will play this game because they have ever seen one of the Jurassic movies. In retrospect, you could even say that the first Jurassic World Evolution made relatively little use of its connection to the movies. That part two that will do more seems to be a good thing in advance.

Preliminary conclusion

The presence of such an extra mode is nice and the changes in environments will also be good for the game, as will the range of new dinos and other new elements in the gameplay. Still, the two parks we set up during the game looked pretty much exactly like our parks in the previous game. New features such as the search for and safety of dangerous dinosaurs in the wild are a nice extra, but the question is whether that is enough to disguise that the basis of the gameplay has largely remained the same. Carrying out expeditions to discover genomes, develop eggs and spawn dinosaurs in your enclosures: we’ve done it countless times and will have to do it again in part two. So Jurassic World Evolution 2 still has plenty to prove,