Jurassic World Evolution 3 preview: baby dinosaurs go global
GameCentral gets a hands-off demonstration of the next Jurassic World Evolution, which is shaping up to be the most in-depth dinosaur sim yet.
The Jurassic Park franchise might be past its glory years in terms of enjoyable blockbuster movies, but it's a different story in video games. Jurassic Park: Survival from Saber Interactive looks pretty promising based on its first trailer, and in 2021 we saw the best interactive adaptation of the series to date in Jurassic World Evolution 2.
Developed by Frontier, the sequel refined and expanded on the original dinosaur park management sim from 2018, with plenty of nods to the movies. If you're unfamiliar, it's essentially RollerCoaster Tycoon spun through a Jurassic Park lens, where you build a park, manage the happiness of both dinosaurs and guests, and try to avoid causing a velociraptor outbreak in the middle of piling up profits.
As revealed earlier this week, Frontier is developing another sequel which will launch across PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC on October 21. Jurassic World Evolution 2 had some drawbacks, most notably in its thin campaign mode, but the improvements in this third entry are more robust and widespread than you might expect.
In a hands-off preview session, Frontier debuted several new features in Jurassic World Evolution 3. The biggest, at least on the adorable scale, is the addition of baby dinosaurs. You can breed these through nests, either by creating a comfortable environment for your adult dinosaurs and hoping for the best or, if you're too impatient to wait for natural horniness to strike, setting up a breeding programme led by some dork scientists.
On the surface, this might seem like a cutesy marketing ploy to hook those susceptible to the sight of a baby Triceratops. However, mechanically, it comes with some surprising depth. There's an entire system based around passing down traits of dinosaurs to their offspring, which you can modify and dictate via the breeding programme route. Each dinosaur also has a fertility scale, which naturally fluctuates with age, so you have to strategise when is the best time to endorse dino bonking season.
Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning.
The benefits of fostering baby dinosaurs will have a long-term impact on your park too. If you can maintain a family lineage of dinosaurs within the park, this will lead to extra bonuses and profits as a valued attraction among guests. In a neat additional detail, you'll have to adapt your enclosure around them too. In the preview, the example highlighted was a baby long-necked Sauropod, which might require a raised platform to munch leaves off the high trees like its parents.
Beyond babies, the other striking improvement is the maps themselves. There's a stronger global focus, with Japan and China among the locations, alongside destinations across Europe and the US. The maps have a greater sense of verticality too, with rock formations and sloping water features you can build around, which all look impressively detailed. More Trending
This plays into the expanded customisation tools for creating parks. At the brush of a cursor, you can alter the terrain on the fly, whether carving out canyons, implementing waterfalls and having the water trickle down sandy slopes, or applying a rocky texture to create an organic quality around your enclosures. It looks intuitively designed, easy to execute, and makes creating actual parks look far more enticing and versatile overall.
In general, Jurassic World Evolution 3 is trying to become a stronger creative sandbox you'll want to mess around with. You can now design buildings right down to the specific angles of tiles, colours, and blocks, or alter presets with personal flourishes, like a T-Rex skeleton looming over the doorway or themes inspired by the movies. Better yet, these creations can be shared with others through the Frontier Workshop, so if you're lazy or creatively stunted, you can apply the designs of others into your park or visit other people's for inspiration.
If you're more into the chaos management side, Frontier teased a new campaign, although it didn't show any footage from it. However, the story will take place after the last film, Jurassic World Dominion, and will task you with trying to integrate dinosaurs at various maps around the world, under the guidance of Jeff Goldblum's Dr Ian Malcolm. The campaigns in previous games have been little more than a glorified tutorial, but this sounds like it will be more substantial in scope.
The developers at Frontier concluded the preview with a spinosaurus swimming out into a bed of water, created using the expanded terrain tools. The confirmation of semi-aquatic dinosaurs might be a small reveal to outsiders, but it's representative of what's promised with Jurassic World Evolution 3 – a sequel where every addition deepens the greater whole. We'll have to play it ourselves to see how the new aspects come together, but based on this early look, this is easily the most promising reason to stay invested in Jurassic Park.
Email gamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter.
To submit Inbox letters and Reader's Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here.
For more stories like this, check our Gaming page.
MORE: Mario Kart World hands-on preview – the Nintendo Switch 2's best game
MORE: Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour hands-on preview – interactive instruction manual
MORE: RoboCop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business preview: 'We created something bigger than we expected'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Metro
14 hours ago
- Metro
The 90s and 2000s were the best time for video game creativity
A reader is frustrated that game publishers are only interested in following trends, rather than embracing the more experimental approach of earlier generations. I don't think many gamers understand that video games change in accordance with our culture, just like many industries do. Games were afforded the autonomy to express themselves however they pleased 20+ years ago and although we're still seeing games that are expressive, many now seem tame and risk averse. Trend chasing and attempting to fit cohesively into our culture makes developers and publishers money if they do it correctly, but when they don't pull it off, the developers of those games tend to close down. Meanwhile, the publisher who likely gave those developers the blueprints to make their failed games get away with it – again, likely because they chase the money and can leverage developers to make as much money as they deem satisfactory. The games industry, to me, is marching in lockstep with all the other giant industries, such as Hollywood film-making, the music industry, and the television industry; they're catching what trends are popular and they follow it in the hopes they can get rich, and then they'll repeat the formula because what we want is secondary in the grand scheme of things. Unfortunately, many of us decide not to think about this because we've got great games to play, or other media to interact with. I'm a 90s and early 00s child, and I think many agree that back then we had it really good, regardless of nostalgia. Games such as Conker's Bad Fur Day turned up to show us what sheer lunacy looks like and in my opinion that's partly what I want games to be: irreverent and hilarious fun. 2008's Saints Row 2 captured this as well, by allowing players to spray excrement onto suburban houses while driving around in a septic tank. If not humour, then I'd love my games to make me really care about what's going on. Games like The Getaway in 2002 has you play as Mark Hammond, and right at the start your wife is murdered and your son is kidnapped – and you spend the game walking through metaphoric fires to save your son. Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning. 2013's Ni No Kuni: Wrath Of The White Witch is another game I love for its story because protagonist Oliver is so endearing, and the story is about his quest to save his mum. These kinds of stories don't seem to happen anymore and thus it's really hard to care about what's going on in them, I feel. Somewhere along the line video game expression became restricted. I blame the start of the eighth generation (the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One) for this change of direction. If you go back and play an assortment of PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 games you should feel how accessible and focused on enjoyment they were. When the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One came about the landscape altered and now it was about huge open worlds, pristine graphics, and continued exploitation of gamers with loot boxes, microtransactions, and pay-to-win schemes. The truly great games these days tend to do things really differently and we celebrate them for it. Last year's Astro Bot is one of the greatest PlayStation games ever made because although it is a nostalgia-fuelled platformer, it reminds us what makes video games such a beautiful hobby. I don't want games like Astro Bot to become flickers and rarities in the grand scheme of modern gaming, I'd rather they were the norm rather than the exception. More Trending Video game expression is very important, and I think we should break the barriers of our culture in order to find a new horizon for video games. There are so many great experiences, as there always have been, but I believe games should be free of the shackles that often bind them. We should see the best of what this industry has to offer without compromise, because otherwise it seems like it's circling the drain – and when that happens is becomes boring. By reader James Davie The reader's features do not necessarily represent the views of GameCentral or Metro. You can submit your own 500 to 600-word reader feature at any time, which if used will be published in the next appropriate weekend slot. Just contact us at gamecentral@ or use our Submit Stuff page and you won't need to send an email. MORE: Unrivalled success has ruined PS5 and the PlayStation brand - Reader's Feature MORE: Playing Gex again is a reminder of a simpler time for gaming - Reader's Feature MORE: Video games are great for my mental and physical wellbeing - Reader's Feature
Daily Mirror
a day ago
- Daily Mirror
Jonathan Bailey 'risked being seconds from death' filming Jurassic World Rebirth
Bridgerton star Jonathan Bailey has opened up about joining the Jurassic Park franchise, with him appearing alongside Scarlett Johansson and Mahershala Ali in the new film Actor Jonathan Bailey has teased that he risked his life whilst working on Jurassic World Rebirth. He's revealed that he filmed alongside potentially lethal snakes for his role but shared his excitement over the experience. Jonathan, 37 - known for his roles in Bridgerton and more recently Wicked - said he was told that the serpents could kill him within seconds on the set of the Jurassic World film, which is set to be released next month. He's shared that he was instructed on safety measures to avoid a fatal encounter. As reported by the Daily Star, Jonathan recalled: "When you're making a movie, you want to feel the world of the movie as much as possible." He went on to say that he worked on scenes in snake-infested waters for the project. He said: "And my gosh, do you feel it when you're up to your waist in snake-infested waters. You have snake wranglers around you who do make you feel safe, but they also say things like 'be careful around this one. If you get bit, you die in 10 seconds'." He expressed excitement over appearing in the franchise through, saying: "That kind of moment speaks to the visceral thrills that Jurassic movies are all about! I had never had that kind of experience on a set before. It was all very exciting and I hope it's matched by the film." Jonathan suggested that he didn't shy away from stunts whilst on location in Thailand. Describing one intense scene from the production, as reported by the outlet, he said that his "inner child" was "screaming with delight". He said: "We had to shoot a scene where my character must pull someone back into a boat because she's falling off the side. I had water cannons blasting me, the boat's flipping around, and my inner child, which isn't all that inner, was just screaming with delight." Jonathan stars as palaeontologist Dr Henry Loomis in Jurassic World Rebirth, which is the seventh instalment in the long-running film franchise that previously starred Chris Pratt. He leads the cast with Scarlett Johansson and Mahershala Ali. Jonathan has shared that he relished the opportunity to play the character. He said about his role in Jurassic World Rebirth: "To play Henry, who embodies the love of nature and our best curiosities about it, was great fun." It's the latest high-profile role in Jonathan's career. In recent years, he's starred as Fiyero Tigelaar in Wicked (2024). He's set to reprise the role in sequel Wicked: For Good (2025), which is scheduled to be released in November. Jonathan is also known for playing Lord Anthony Bridgerton in Netflix series Bridgerton. The show launched on the streaming platform in 2020 and his character was the focus of the second season, which aired in 2022. He's teased that he's been a fan of Jurassic Park for years, having been introduced to the franchise as a child. He said: "I was five when my family took me to Jurassic Park, so a questionable choice by my parents. The characters were so vivid and because it was Spielberg, it was a sumptuous escapist delight."
Metro
2 days ago
- Metro
Playing Gex again is a reminder of a simpler time for gaming - Reader's Feature
A reader welcomes the return of PS1 platformer Gex and reminiscences over both a childhood favourite and an era when video games weren't so demanding. This week, a game trilogy has been re-released which is very dear to me but seemingly very few people have even heard of: Gex – where a gecko is tasked with saving television from the evil robot Rez. This is good news, even if you don't know or care about Gex. Games are notoriously difficult to preserve. Playing old games today, without the hardware they originally ran on, can be a mission that quickly enters a legal grey area. Therefore, I am immensely grateful for companies like Limited Run Games giving some of these old games a new lease of life. Although it feels like only a minimum effort went into this one – note how I call it a re-release and not a remaster or remake. The Switch version, in its current state, looks especially awful. At least they added some quality of life features, like being able to manually save whenever you want to, which can take the frustration out of some of the more challenging levels. Gex was originally created by Crystal Dynamics, who took over the Tomb Raider franchise after Angel Of Darkness. Speaking of which, did you know that until the 2013 reboot, Lara's model was measured in Gexels? This is because the Tomb Raider games were made on a modified engine based on the one developed for Gex 3D: Enter The Gecko, which was heavily inspired by Super Mario 64 and in my opinion definitely doesn't have to stand in that game's shadow. This is the game I played religiously as a child. I loved the tail-whipping gecko from the first moment I laid eyes on him, on my neighbour's PlayStation, and eventually got the game for PC. Once I also got the graphics card necessary to actually play it, I spent every minute of my allotted hour of computer time in the media dimension, where Gex hops into the different levels, which are pastiches of television genres and movies. These range from haunted house horror to Looney Toons, kung fu movies, Star Wars, and many more. They are full of fun nods to their inspirations and Gex usually dresses for the occasion, be that fighting hunters as a bunny during 'Wabbit' season or wearing a hide and a bone although his nose in the Jurassic levels. Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning. The animations and sound design made it so much fun to double jump around on Gex's spring-shaped tail, accompanied by a characteristic 'boioinnng!' And if you happened to land on some unfortunate enemy's head, they got flattened. Similarly, when jumping into a wall, Gex might hit his head and fall flat on his back with a splat, after which stars circle over his head, together with an 'oooww' sound. I'm definitely guilty of giving the poor gecko a few headaches. The game also rewarded my urge to explore and while I failed a timed Indiana Jones style level a lot, because I spent my time marvelling at the snakeheads and skulls adorning the temple walls, imagine my elation when I discovered, in a horror level, that some bookshelves would turn when walking against them, revealing a lever that opened a new part of the level! Of course. I also hunted down all the collectibles to earn all the TV remotes. With enough remotes you would unlock new levels and bosses and one of these has been living rent free in my head for over 20 years now: Gexzilla battling it out with Mecharez – complete with tanks and helicopters trying to defend the city that is getting destroyed in the process – epic! The only thing that doesn't quite hit home for me is Gex's actual personality, especially when it comes to the voice lines, which trigger all the time. While the sound effects and animations are quite endearing, the comedian Dana Gould's quips are old-fashioned and feel weird to hear out of a gecko's mouth. (It seems you were playing the US version. In the UK, Gex was originally voiced by Leslie Philips and then later Danny John-Jules. Their voices weren't in the initial re-release but are being added via a patch – GC) And then there is the fact that a Gecko has implied relations with a human woman… ick. I guess it is a product of its time, much like the older James Bond films which inspired his personality, but I do have to give its makers credit for trying something different than 'Mamma mia.' More Trending I love revisiting Gex because it reminds me of simpler days. Life is busier now and I rarely find the time or motivation anymore, to fully explore and complete today's often vast and complex games. Older games making a comeback shows us that there is a case for more simplicity. Being able to finish a game without it taking dozens of hours and eating up all your spare time is such a relief. By reader Peter Schmid The reader's features do not necessarily represent the views of GameCentral or Metro. You can submit your own 500 to 600-word reader feature at any time, which if used will be published in the next appropriate weekend slot. Just contact us at gamecentral@ or use our Submit Stuff page and you won't need to send an email. MORE: Video games are great for my mental and physical wellbeing - Reader's Feature MORE: I'm going to say it: Mario Kart World is not as good as it should be – Reader's Feature MORE: As a former Xbox 360 owner I don't understand Xbox today - Reader's Feature
