LEGO Jurassic World: PS4 Review

LEGO Jurassic World: PS4 Review

Developer: Travellers Tales
Platform: PS4

The park is now open.

And this time the dino revolution has been all blocky. Nope, it's not a CGI nightmare come to life, but the latest LEGO-isation of the popular series. Following on from Star Wars, Harry Potter, Lord of The Rings, Batman et al, you'd think there wasn't anything Travellers Tales couldn't turn their attention to.

It's off to Isla Nublar once again for the game, which follows the usual LEGO formula - smash bricks up to their basic pieces, collect the studs, do some building and also solving some puzzles in various areas. Following storylines from the three Jurassic Park films and also this latest smash Jurassic World, you get to play as all the characters across 5 levels per film. It's a great choice of characters too, around 100 in all and a series of vehicles to collect too as you venture further into the game.

The best moment though comes when Jurassic World gives you the chance to play as the Raptors. Sure, you can rail against the logic that allows said Raptors to build things (the usual LEGO MO for puzzle solving), but there's something awesomely fun about wandering around as Blue and his chums within the game when it's necessary.

As ever, with the LEGO series, it's purely aimed at kids, with nothing here to trouble adults and the Mr DNA Strand from the movies being on hand to offer hints and ideas as you find trickier bits. Perhaps, that's somewhat of a disappointment as there's little you need to do off your own bat, given a hint is always a click away.

Also, unfortunately, this time around, there doesn't seem to be as much humour in the cut scenes and material taken to its logical extreme. For example, the Jurassic World and Jurassic Park scenes are lifted verbatim from the movie and are quite dry - which seems to be a rare oversight for the game series and could even see the developers being accused of phoning it in.

There's no doubting the commitment to the genre throughout, and the formula rarely strays from what you've come to expect but it's still as fun as it ever was.

It's possible that any future series may have to look a little at what they can do to deviate from the norm to stop the LEGO video game franchise falling into stale territory, but for now, for the big kids in all of us, LEGO Jurassic World is relatively close to younger gaming dino-mite.

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