New, Free, Jurassic World Game Available With Questionable Quality
Jurassic World: Rebirth A New Era isn’t just a really clunky phrase, but also the name of a new, browser-based Jurassic World game. It uses a pseudo-16 bit aesthetic and straightforward endless-runner style gameplay across three distinct levels, all featuring characters and scenarios from the forthcoming Jurassic World: Rebirth movie.
Players can take control of movie characters Duncan, Dr. Henry Loomis, and Zora as they navigate a river, mountain, and valley, respectively. Noted Jurassic Park/World YouTuber, TheGamingBeaver, recently conducted a playthrough of the game but was less than impressed.
“Okay, so this game is randomly generated, these aren’t like made levels,” he said, “but they obviously haven’t done the code right cuz the code just throws out whatever. There isn’t like, if it sees there’s no way for the player to get past, don’t put it in.”
Join The Hunt, or Don’t
Every level involves moving from left-to-right and vice versa, while collecting items and dodging dinosaurs/obstacles. The first level sees players control a boat as they chase an escaping mosasaurus. The second level requires abseiling down a mountain to collect first aid kits, while avoiding pteranodons. The last level involves driving a jeep through a valley of titanosaurs and roaming dilophosaurs.
Although on the surface it evokes 16-bit games, a closer look shows messy graphics, such as ugly black blocks that give the impression of a digitized image rather than actual pixel art. There is also no y-sorting; this is when images are coded so they overlap correctly, such as when a character in a top-down RPG goes behind a tree the tree obscures them, rather than the player appearing on top of it.
Gamers who want to try it out can at least try and get a low time on each level, but the randomized nature contradicts even this; the whole point of speedrunning and time trials in video games is finding ways to beat an apparent path, not rely on the whims of RNG.
Cash-In: A New Era
Cheap and lazy movie tie-in games are nothing new, and Jurassic World: Rebirth A New Era at least has a sibling in the previously released free browser game, Jurassic World: Dominion Dinosaur Escape. Plus, as with that title, there is zero info as to which studio actually made it.
There’s a possibility it was made by Canadian studio Ludia, as its listed franchise games include mobile-focused titles such as Jurassic Park: Builder and Jurassic World: The Game. However, as is happening with a lot of mobile games, some titles have now been delisted.
As the series’ Ian Malcolm famously said, “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” Just because it’s easy to make an endless runner game and slap some dinosaurs in it, doesn’t mean it needed to be made. But, at least it’s free so the only thing it costs is players’ time.
