At its core, Jurassic Park was about how capitalism enables obviously terrible and dangerous ideas to go forward as long as there's enough money behind them. The way that franchise has been allowed to descend into mediocrity over the past 25 years because it's profitable is a little on the nose, though.
This is evident in all four movie sequels as well as the latest video game spin-off, Jurassic World Aftermath. On the surface, this US$25 Oculus Quest exclusive looks like an impressive effort, with a star-studded voice cast including Laura Bailey, B.D. Wong, and Jeff Goldblum, as well as a distinctive comic book art style. However, spending any time in its dinosaur-infested world tells a different story.
Stuck in the past
Image: oculus
In Jurassic World Aftermath, you play as Sam, a silent protagonist tasked with recovering some valuable data from the former site of the Jurassic World theme park following its abandonment and subsequent takeover by prehistoric predators. Your plane crashes on Isla Nublar sometime between both Jurassic World movies, meaning it's devoid of humans but not yet destroyed by a volcanic eruption.
The entire experience at launch is set inside a run-down research facility where, and stop me if you've heard this before, humans tried to play God and it went very poorly. From a first-person perspective, you'll guide Sam through a few different wings of the facility, playing hide-and-seek with hungry velociraptors as you try to get what you're after and get the hell off the island.
A former researcher named Mia (voiced by Bailey) guides you along the way with verbal instructions. You can also call up a virtual GPS-style arrow by lifting your left hand if you're not sure where she's directing you to go. But "where" is not a concern in this entirely linear game as much as "how," as those raptors patrol most of the facility and they won't just let you stroll by without a struggle.
You'll spend the meat of Aftermath trying to get from one end of a room to another without alerting velociraptors to your presence. Walking upright and sprinting makes noise, so you're mostly stuck crouch-walking at a painfully slow speed. You can hide underneath desks and inside lockers, though slamming locker doors shut too quickly also makes noise. Occasionally you'll need to unlock computer terminals using basic motion-controlled minigames (like turning a dial until a red line turns green or playing digital Simon Says). These minigames open doors or get you access codes, but again, this can give away your position thanks to noise.
Aftermath gives you nearly no recourse against the raptors beyond evasion, which is my primary source of frustration with the game. You can use a tool on your right hand to aim at and activate distant objects like wall-mounted screens and loudspeakers, providing a momentary distraction, but that's it. Once you're spotted, the screen turns red and you're almost certainly finished.
Image: oculus
I say "almost" because you can technically escape at that point by breaking line of sight and hiding, but I didn't find that to be a viable strategy. I made that work literally once in the three to four hours it took me to finish the story. Aftermath harkens back to an archaic era of stealth game design where detection means failure, and considering how far the genre has progressed in the past two decades, there's no going back as far as I'm concerned.
Frustrating dinosaur AI only increases the punishing nature of Aftermath. Some of these raptor encounters span several interconnected rooms, but because it's a video game about ratcheting up tension, the raptors have a knack for always being near you even when they have no way of knowing where you are. There were multiple instances where it felt like I was being punished for the crime of being near an objective, as the raptor would drop its patrol in another room and run at full speed into the room I was in even though I'd done nothing to give away my location.
This is annoying because it's not consistent. Sometimes they will go hunt in another room, giving you time to do whatever you need to do. Other times, you'll hide under a desk as a raptor slowly and robotically walks around it for five minutes, not realizing it's allowed to hunt elsewhere. The only reason this is tense at all is an iffy checkpoint system. I lost 15 to 20 minutes of progress more than once in my playthrough because I was spotted and taken back to the beginning of an area. That doesn't sound like much, but in a game this slow and with this little of a margin for error, it feels like forever. That's only made worse by the fact that VR isn't as friendly for long sessions as sitting in front of a TV.
Aside from one short sequence where you have to aim a flashlight at dilophosauri hiding in vents to stop them from spraying poison gunk at you, sneaking around raptors is all you do in Aftermath. It's irritating and tedious, and putting it in VR doesn't change that. I asked myself while playing it if I would tolerate these mechanics in a traditional video game, and the answer was a resounding no.
That said, the story isn't done, meaning there is a possibility, however slight, that Aftermath has better things in store going forward.
Only halfway there
Image: oculus
Aftermath's three to five hour campaign has an abrupt cliffhanger ending, with the main menu promising an extra chapter that will finish the story in 2021. I don't know what that will look like (and the price hasn't been confirmed yet), but the best thing it could do is introduce any other dinosaur species to mix up the gameplay.
For example, pteranodons and a Tyrannosaurus rex only appear briefly in the game's opening, but never again. Sequences where you have to contend with either of those dinosaurs would add some variety, if nothing else. I just know I never want to crouch-walk through molasses past a briefly distracted velociraptor ever again.
Regardless of where the next chapter does or doesn't go, my frustrations with Aftermath's mechanics are extra disappointing because the look and sound are both excellent. Everything is rendered with flat textures and hard black outlines to give it a comic book feel. Think Borderlands but with dinosaurs. It's a great look that's assisted by atmospheric sound design featuring plenty of creaky metal, mechanic doors, and classic dinosaur sound effects from the Jurassic Park movies.
It's just too bad about the rest of it. I was genuinely glad to be done with Aftermath when I hit the cliffhanger ending because I'd had so little fun actually playing it. The scene in the first film where the kids are hiding from raptors in the kitchen is a classic, to be sure, but it doesn't work as the basis for an entire video game. Only the most devoted Jurassic Park-heads should go anywhere near this game.
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