Jurassic World Evolution 3 is the best video game based on the Jurassic Park franchise ever made. That might not be the highest bar to clear, but it does so. What’s more surprising is that it’s also one of my favorite management sims I’ve played in a while. If you love dinos, you’ll get a kick out of creating your own massive dinosaur park. But if you love tinkering with buildings, signs, lights, and other details, you’ll likely find just as much to love in Jurassic World Evolution 3 as us dino sickos.
Set after the events of Jurassic World Dominion, but before Jurassic World Rebirth, this latest entry in the dino management series is all about creating parks around the globe and helping dinosaurs integrate into the modern world. For the first time ever in the franchise, you can even create male dinos and provide nests in your enclosures, allowing for natural breeding to occur. Don’t worry about the fact that in Jurassic World Rebirth, it’s revealed that dinosaurs can’t survive on Earth outside a small area near the equator. That’s a real buzzkill and does sort of make everything you are doing in Evolution 3 feel like a waste of time. But that’s not the game’s fault. And wasting time can be fun.
Jurassic World Evolution 3, which is out now on consoles and PC, isn’t a bold new direction for the series, but (*dramatic pause*) an evolution on what came before. And that’s fine by me. The last two games were fantastic dinosaur park builders. This time around, you still visit different locations facing various challenges and try to build big, successful parks. You still plop down fences, buildings, attractions, sidewalks, and more using an interface that feels natural and works well on a controller. And you still send teams off to find dinosaur fossils containing DNA and then synthesize that genetic material so you can start creating your own customizable insults to nature.
The devs at Frontier didn’t need to reinvent the wheel with Evolution 3. Instead, JWE3 builds upon what came before and adds a lot of small and big new features and mechanics to the formula. The biggest of these new features is the smallest, too: baby dinos.
Baby dinosaurs can certainly change up how you manage your park’s prehistoric critters. For example, you might have a large enclosure filled with long-necked brachiosauruses and everything they need to thrive, including trees to eat and water to drink. But then they pop out some eggs, and suddenly the baby brachs are running around and need shorter trees, bushes, and other environmental tweaks to be happy. And you really need to make the babies happy. If they are upset for too long, the parents will get upset. And if the big dino parents get too mad, they’ll break down fences and kill people. That’s not good for business. So, babies, which are incredibly popular with guests and a great way to make money, throw a wrench into every park and make things more challenging, especially in large enclosures with multiple species with different needs.
All of the dinosaurs in Jurassic World Evolution 3, big and small, look better than ever and act more realistically than in previous games. I mean, I guess they act realistically. I’ve never seen a dinosaur, so I’m sort of assuming. Regardless, the creatures in Evolution 3 are some of the most lifelike dinos I’ve seen in a video game. Hopping into the game’s first-person mode, which lets you run around the park on ground level, is a true treat. These cretaceous critters now boast hundreds of animations, behaviors, and sounds, and react to the world around them more than ever before.
But it ain’t just the dinos who get some extra features in JWE3. Outside of the dino pens, you’ll need to build facilities and attractions for humans. And Frontier has gone all out this time around, allowing you to completely customize every little bit of every single building in the game. I spent far too much time moving tiny chairs and planters to just the perfect spot when creating a place for my guests to eat.
You can also ignore all of this customization and just slap down the pre-built facilities, too. Which is nice because I imagine a lot of people don’t want to fiddle with individual rocks, light bulbs, plants, and window panes. But if you do want to mess with that stuff, JWE3 will let you go hog wild. Even better, people can upload their creations to an in-game workshop. So when building a bathroom, I could use the pre-installed designs, make my own, or search around the workshop for something built by another player. This level of customization puts the past games to shame, and I can’t wait to see what people create in the coming weeks and months.
There’s a lot on offer in Jurassic World Evolution 3, including a full campaign, challenge levels, and a sandbox mode. But the one thing you won’t find in Jurassic World Evolution 3 is much of a challenge. Like the past games, if you are even somewhat experienced at playing park builders or tycoon games, you’ll rarely experience any problems.
Money is still really easy to make, and keeping your park under control isn’t tricky. I imagine younger players or people who don’t play these types of games often will deal with more issues, like overworked employees, causing chaos. I also had some tourists get killed by some raptors, and the next day, people were lining up to enter my park again. Some levers to make the game harder could be added in the future.
While it’s not a hard game by any means, Jurassic World Evolution 3 is a damn fine park builder with a plethora of options, tools, and features. Jurassic World Evolution 3 is the kind of game that can easily suck you in for hours and hours, and before you realize it, you’ve wasted your entire Saturday, the best day of the week, playing it. But like I said before, wasting time can be fun, especially when it involves giant dinos and baby raptors.
