Game 18: Jurassic Park 3: Dino Defender

Name:Jurassic Park III: Dino Defender
Number:18
Year:2001
Publisher:Knowledge Adventure
Developer:Funnybone Interactive
Genre:"Survival Horror"
Difficulty:4/5
Time:8 Hours

I don't really know what the audience for this game is. Children are unlikely to play this for long. Fans of cinematic platformers aren't going to like how stiff and unfluid the controls feel. Fans of survival horror, which is what I've been playing this as, aren't going to enjoy how lame the puzzles and fighting are. Someone eager to learn (or make someone else learn) will be disappointed by the lack of education. I guess there's always the three Jurassic Park fans...you know, the oldschool kind, not the new kind that just buy anything with their favorite brand on it. Given that Knowledge Adventure was passed around by many companies I can see that this was really just a cheap cash-in for kids...for some reason.

When starting the game it frequently took minutes to load. I don't know if this is a hardware (my dvd drive) or software. (the game is badly coded) I checked the other reviews (my opinion was set in stone by the first boss battle) and several others mentioned this issue. I think they were just bad at compressing their images, and the backgrounds take an unreasonable amount of space on the disc. This was made in Macromedia Director. An engine you might be familiar with if you enjoy adventure games from the '90s. The Journeyman Project, Cosmology of Kyoto, not Myst though. Director was the bootleg Myst engine*. Director contributes, I think, to most of my liked adventure games. Not my favorites, just the ones I like. Judging by this game, however, it is not a good tool for anything actiony. Hmm, probably could've told you that without having played this again**.

The game feels curiously small. Probably some fifty or so dinosaurs and two levels that are basically a series of boss battles. I don't know, I just don't think what is effectively a giant island zoo is going to have that little in the way of animals. A few reasons the game is so short, low development costs, relatively high level costs and a strict timetable. Knowledge Adventure wasn't exactly flush with cash and Funnybone wasn't exactly a group with the best graphical talent. Add in a movie you have to be released before and you have a recipe for eh.

Weapons:
Because this is a children's game, we can't really use effective weapons against our targets. Instead we get nets, sleeping gas, call boxes and flares. Effectively nets and sleeping gas. At no point, despite knowing that programming it would be to much work, do I ever feel like I have actually trapped the dinosaurs. 1/10

Enemies:
Every dino has a unique way of dealing, and while I wasn't always happy to deal with them, this was the best designed aspect of the game. I can see someone really into dinosaurs liking this aspect. 5/10

Non-Enemies:
...I don't know if there is or isn't any non-enemies. Eh, might as well assume not. 0/10

Levels:
Somehow I find myself disliking most of what is there and wishing there was more of it. I don't mind sections of each level, but each level also has sections that are just annoying. 3/10

Player Agency:
To recap, this controls like a cinematic platformer. Ledges are a key element. You climb up them, you climb down them, you sometimes grab unto them at the end of a jump. I find the controls lack the fluidity of a typical cinematic platformer, they're just wrong. I also dislike how your environment prevents you from performing some actions. 3/10

Interactivity:
It exists. You don't really do much. You push maybe one boulder, flip some switches. There's some lame puzzles too, I guess. 1/10

Atmosphere:
There's definitely that good educational children's game feel here, but once you get past the tutorial level things feel...disconnected. The combination of the way the backgrounds and the characters in the foreground clash. Not graphically per say, but in the sense that they don't belong together. I don't associate this in a good way. It feels not unlike like an alien world. I guess, for a dinosaur game that isn't a bad option. 4/10

Graphics:
The graphics in Dino Defender are two layers, foreground and background. Each are prerendered, and a few times they interact. It is not always easy to see what can be climbed or pushed. That's one problem. Another is, well, let's compare this to the most famous example, Myst. Myst is basically a topography map with some 3D models thrown on top. Water was carefully done so it wouldn't reveal the limitations of 3D at the time. There was a waterfall, but I don't think it was too bad. Now, Dino Defender, in comparison, looks worse in most respects. Certainly, the dinosaurs look good, as do the death cutscenes, but the rest feels really bland. Lifeless. Lower quality than the absolute best 1993 had to offer. There are several glaring graphical issues, that as soon as I spot them, make me cringe. I don't cringe often, even at old 3D. 3/10

Story:
A raging typhoon destroyed the electric fences around Jurassic Park. Isn't that just the plot to every Jurassic film? There's nothing outside of a guy who tries to sound very important person in the opening menu. I guess you could say the protagonist's journey resembles a plot, but its not a very good one. According to places I read after the fact, the protagonist's suit is supposed to be some kind of bio-mechanical thing. Nothing mentioned this, but I could have missed it. 0/10

Sound/Music:
While on the surface we have everything we need for an ideal sound system, all elements are bad in some way. Dinosaur sounds all feel off. The footsteps always sound like grass. The music is generic movie background music, in midi form. Slightly more...disconcerting however. 2/10

That's...20 out of 100. You might say this is because it should have never been placed in a shooter environment. I say bull. Give me a tranq rifle, competent level design, an engine that isn't Macromedia and a good music composer and this game shoots up to the forties.
Contemporary reviews seem to have been mostly positive. One positive from KidZone, apparently written by someone with less grasp on the English language than myself, refering to it as a 2D Tomb Raider. He's generally positive, calling the death scenes "just plane cool", but taking issue with the game's apparent massive sound requirements, saying he has "all-knew hardware" and that this isn't Max Payne. He refers to the game repeatedly as an arcade action game. Hints that maybe his high praise isn't entirely legitimate peaks through in places, as he refers to later levels as irritating. This review seems to have been taken from somewhere else, making Max Payne a reasonable reference.
I couldn't access the other positive review on Mobygames, so I only have the blurb. Which sounds like it was also written as a promotional aid. "Testers would play again, but not for several months."
There were two Russian reviews I couldn't read. I suspect they're probably more even-handed.
Meanwhile, Wikipedia had a few more.
USA Today, for some reason, had a review of it. The reviewer didn't seem to understand how video games work, referring to six levels of difficulty. My sentiments regarding the game's age range and the difficulty are echoed here. "It works well because it requires an agile mind in addition to good hand-eye coordination." Which, when you get down to it, that's a lot of video games from this era.
Elecplay, some website I've never heard of, probably because of a severe lack of quality control. The publisher is referred to as Sierra and the game is compared to Oddworld. No real opinion on it one way or another from the author, however.
We have contemporary reviews for this one. First up, Kotaku, in a curiously not bad article, states nothing much about the quality but calls the game very weird, and mentions that without dinosaurs on-screen this feels nothing like Jurassic Park.
Meanwhile, The Gaming Beaver, some LPer I've never heard of before, seems to like this. I can't really tell, he's the kind of LPer that annoys me so I can't stomach him.
There's also a very quick speed run for this, meaning someone must have liked this enough to get their time down to just under 17 minutes. Meaning, if I cared, I could probably get my time under an hour. Would that be like Resident Evil and grant me invisible enemies or special weapons? Nah, probably not. And I didn't even care enough to do that with Resident Evil, I'm going to do that with a children's game.
Before I finish, I have one point I'd like to bring up. Non-violence. Several reviews mention the game as being non-violent. Now, I'm not terribly into that sort of thing, as can be evidenced by my fondness of games involving violence. However, if I was a proponent of non-violence, I don't think I'd like a game where I have to use dinosaur bones to knock out a living dinosaur. So, for some reason, if you're looking this game up and want to know about that, its untrue. Come to think of it, even the Myst series, something supposedly non-violent, frequently has violence in its endings, or the story would end much quicker if you were able to resort to violence.

There were no Mobygames user ratings/reviews, but we do have some from GameFAQs. a 3.5/5 about twelve hours and let's say a 3.5 difficulty. Probably fair.
As an aside, almost everyone seems to have finished the game, or gotten somewhere around level 5. That's actually really surprising.

As to the companies...
Funnybone Interactive almost exclusively did educational games. Children's games are a better choice, as if this game was any indication, they're not very educational. Only the other Jurassic Park game they did, Danger Zone, is of any remote interest in this project, and I have no desire to play a computerized board game here.
Knowledge Adventure...well, we're certainly going to see them at least one more time. Maybe two if I decide to break like I broke for this.

As to myself, well, I need something easier. Something that doesn't make me question the game's base design. I'll get one of those things.

*Myst, meanwhile used HyperCard, an engine known for being used by Myst and the rest of Cyan's output. Also some JRPG.
**Now, while there are not any other action game examples I can label off the top of my head, I can tell you about Mortalus, an adventure game with action sequences thrown in. Completely unplayable action sequences.

Jurassic Park: Dino Defender: King Tyrant

Last time, I just managed to escape being eaten by a bunch of...Pteranodons...before finding a T-Rex at the end of the level. I can't remember where I left off precisely...

Ah, well, there we go. Guess we had to have that, I've never seen the movie and I know that's a scene from it. It'd be pretty sweet if this wasn't a platformer coded in Macromedia. I guess its time to run.

I have several questions. As you can surmise, there was a bridge at the bottom of the screen the T-Rex tried to cross. A wooden, rope bridge. With a good chunk of the rungs missing. These questions have nothing to do with the T-Rex himself, he is just as smart as any other dinosaur, and anyway, there's no predator on Earth that size. I know how this game works and not how T-Rexes work. Why does this bridge exist? Why is it broken? Why the vines? Interesting, the game still says there's a T-Rex roaming around. And a pteranodon.

Why does this bridge lead to nothing? Unless this had a bridge too and that's out. Does anything in this park actually function? I'm surprised this suit isn't choking me to death at this point. I guess I can go up across the vines? Maybe I can climb down the bridge...

Oh, that's why he's still roaming around. Just a little bit. You can't see him too well, but trust me, he's there. Because its a fall of about 30 feet. With T-Rexes, you don't really capture them, you just use a flare on them. To distract them. Back up on the plateau of nothing. I climb up across the vines...I can't go across the vines. Am I supposed to jump across the trees? Yes.

Why is it that every game that has dinosaurs and platforming involve climbing on these guys? This game, Bugs Bunny: Lost in Time, Joe & Mac...probably others I don't know the name of.

I find it a good sign when on every screen there's something off about it for me to complain about. For instance, these vines. Why are they here, what are they connected to. Up, the pteranodon. Down? A hole in the ground and...

No. Come on. Must we? Must I do this dance? Ugh...Another power box at least.

You know, if this was good as an adventure* game the puzzles wouldn't be "figure out which background element you can walk on". After that there's a group of velociraptors a few screens off. Thanks to the raptor supply box in-between the tree-eaters, I get two of them. That's all the supplies they had. For two of them. Another trip back and all three here are gone.

What was the intended reaction to this? "Gee, golly, I sure hope I can get past this enemy!" I think most children would be annoyed by this guy. So far these guys have only been obnoxious. There is no reason for them to exist except as a completely obvious reflex test. Is this supposed to be their mating call? Maybe someone should have imparted this knowledge to me. An educational game about dinosaurs. Maybe a title licensed from a major movie. I'm sure somebody will figure that out.

Wow, a sound more annoying than the menu music. What a loud and annoying waterfall. Sounds like a stream someone screwed around with the volume on. Also, Myst's waterfalls look better than this. Myst had waterfalls, right? Been a while. Anyway, another power box, one guarded by a raptor for some reason. Thanks to a slick move I did on purpose, not accidentally at all, he is defeated with a minimum of fuss. Maybe the water's taken from a running faucet...

This puzzle again? Seriously? Oh, man. Fortunately, I don't have to do it twice, all the power boxes are done. Hang, on, the level isn't over?

Well, goodbye strange dinosaur that will probably eat me. Who is in an awkward position. I leave him with another question, what's the deal with this elevator?

Oh, you're kidding me. I have to run away from him? On the trees?

What a necessary sequence. This whole thing could have been done in cutscene. It was three screens of the easiest stuff I've done this entire decade.

If I was excited by dinosaurs fighting, I would've watched Jurassic World. T-Rex wins anyway. Another level escaping the T-Rex...

...A boss level? Please tell me this is one of the six levels. I guess I just hit this lever and...

Oh, good. That's good. Why is this power box different anyway? I ponder this question as the timer counts down. The T-Rex stays. I wait...and wait...and wait. I guess I have to die. That starts me back at the timer. So I reload an earlier save, doing the tree chase over again.

A single flare, a single call box. Must be big flares and call boxes. Beating this level involves a drawn-out series of jumps and tosses that are really quite trial and error but too complex to repeat here. Suffice to say when I actually did make it, I didn't believe it at first.

What is this suit good for if it isn't going to protect against steam? This "puzzle" involves taking the longest possible route across all these steam pipes at least three times, five if you want to leave with some capture pods. This is quickly getting into the unnecessarily tedious categories. Hey, at least we have a new kill screen for getting touched by the raptors.

Sigh...that's like seven. Five if you hit the first two at the same time. Six if you count this level's mess of a pipe system. That pipe of the middle left is tricky to get past. You have to climb up slightly before. Top left? Nah, that's easy, climb up, then across.

Oh...forget me, not this Sierra again. This is what amounts to two screens of some serious bull. I enjoy a challenge. This game doesn't really offer it as I like it. The challenge here is figuring out if I really am supposed to wrestle the controls to do what I want, or if I should try an alternate route. Inevitably, it turns out to be an alternate route. I only noticed the first safety cage. Not the second one. After that, its just a simple matter of doing running and jumping, even when it seems foolish.

Cue level end cutscene. I run out, door closes on dinosaur. It lifts it up and continues to chase me.

I run into the "InGen complex", which I believe is code for museum. InGen complex is what it says on the jewel case in back of a picture here. A picture that has a far too big PC. There's also a picture of the PC in front of a T-Rex on some vines, about to die. With two flares. The third is one with a...Pteranodon on the falling rock bridge. Which might actually happen if you're really lucky.

I climb up, hit the switch and a pteranodon hits the big dino as it falls to the ground. I would stop here, but I foresee the end is nigh. I would show you that happening, but I happen to miss that particular action shot and its too late now.

Another screen that involves the same thing as last time. Joy. Or, no, its supposed to be a series of jumping in front of a switch, Steosaurus (that's the dino) popping out, bones falling down. I assume they're plaster copies. I actually hope they're real.

A final blow, and the game is over. Non-violent my ass.

The end screen shot shows the dinosaurs being airlifted out. To where? I don't know, and I don't think anyone else did either. That would imply thought went into this ending. Afterwards, I get cards I can print out for all the dinosaurs I've captured all of. Not read, print out. It can only be read after printing out said items. Using a physical printer. Man, educational games were obsessed with printing things out. Amazing. Now to deal with all these screenshots. Oh, man.

*Knowledge Adventure, we're not actually either of those things.

Jurassic Park: Dino Defender: The Future is in Your Hands

Nothing like a game you're excited about for the last of one year and the first of another. Finally got Myst IV, so now I can begin the end of that great saga of adventure games...oh, and I guess this thing too. At least I can cross this game off my unfinished list. Its not that I'm dedicated to finishing all games I've ever played, but it is better that way. I'm not doing this because of that, I'm doing it because I figure survival horror games deserve to be with your regular shooters. I have loose standards for survival horror games. Any action game with a tight controlled amount of ammo & health and adventure game puzzles fits. No matter how little that limit is. Its definitely like Alone in the Dark in a lot of respects. You've got combat, much less difficult combat than to be expected. Platforming that no sane person would ever make if they had any talent*. Puzzles that are usually less difficult than perceived.

Right, pteranodon** or whatever knocked me down last time. For some reason there's a path to my right that is blocking me. I hear them. Lovely. The little ones. Now, where are they? Are they up he-

Can you hear that? That's the sound of exactly where I gave up before. This thing is going to get me even if its the last thing it does. And it doesn't seem like there's any escape. Climbing over the spot where he swoops does let me through, but going to the next screen kills me.

After some trickery, it turns out he can't get me on any climb, I reach the "compsognathus" dinosaurs. The little ones. These fear me, which is good, because I fear them more. A choice placement of the supply box and they're gone, but I'm still screwed. I go left, more fun with the pteranodon, if I go right, I fall to my death.

The answer turned out to be up my alley. Mad jumping dash from the top cliff. A few lucky jumps and I'm through. Another mad run into a wall...fortunately outside of the pteran's reach, and into a crawlspace.

Given the flying dinosaur's bloodlust for me, I suspect this is another trap. I won't be able to stop him until I reach the high ground where a supply box lies. Oh, this is going to suck. Lower area, fall to my death. Why is it even there, then?

Is this a trap? I check, carefully. Its not. Is the box a trap? No. You know, how do they even keep the flying dinosaurs? Surely they can fly away now, if not before. Huh. Jurassic Park is unrealistic. I never knew that.

Little ones. So I'm just an intruder here? Great. These prove to not harm me in any way, but their momma is up top, eager to feed her young. Very tricky. You watch her fly past, then enter the next screen, she jumps you. You rush past, she follows you in a way that prevents you from stunning her. That's actually clever now.

Wanna know how I did it? Mad dash, then jump into the wall. The pteranodon just flies right up. That's stupid. It'd never work in real life. You then crouch, so on her next attempt she misses you, then the call box followed by the stunner. I don't feel clever, I feel like I cheated somehow. To get up to the next power box you have to take a running jump off the upper ledge there. Because up takes stuff from supply boxes. Unnecessary.

I guess now we find out if that pteranodon is the same one from the start.

Oh, there's going to be some better ending for getting all the dinosaurs. The area to the right just contained a single "velociraptor" in an easily captured area. This part here can shove right off. If you treat it like some challenging series of falling rocks, you'll likely fail. Its actually really lame. No matter what size the rock is, you get hit in one single location. This location is only where the little stones fall. Meaning, they chose poorly when they made their action game with Macromedia.

Ooo, I smell another pteranodon. Hang on, there's not a big one here. Don't tell me...
A trap? Not even a little bit. I didn't get any shots of it, but on the next screen there's a rock bridge that falls if you walk on it. The developers being clever fellows, thought that making the bridge collapse on the other end too would make a bit of challenge. They're right, but do remember this is superficially a children's educational game. Knowledge Adventure, not actually any knowledge.

You know, if I'm getting this antsy about a pteranodon, I should have gone back and checked. There's only two on this level...Only, the game doesn't always tell you what enemies you'll face. The little pteranodons chase after me as I climb down a series of precarious cliffs. Are there even any baby animals who will chase a bigger animal that's running away from them? Oh, yeah...

T-Rex, now we're cooking with gas. I know what the next level will be about.

Children's educational game for 6/7/8+. Ol' king dino here is very annoying. Any attempt at trying to get past him turns to failure. Waiting, going down, hanging on the left ledge. Almost to the point where I give up, I finally get past him. You see, when you go down, if you go down in the wrong place, the T-Rex gets you. When you think you can go down, you need to go right, then go down. There are six levels here, they sure are trying their best to make them last.

Straight from 2 to four power boxes. Interesting choice. Once you get down there doesn't seem to be an imminent threat.

This guy, of course, isn't imminent. He's just waiting for you. Looking for you. He waits a lot. After a while, I thought he was alerted by sound or something clever. No, just a long timer.

Wow, an hour and a half on what's essentially twenty screens. They really got the most out of these. Not in a good way.

Oh, look, its the entrance to Jurassic Park. Cool.

Oh, no, its a T-Rex. I didn't see that coming. How horrible. Will I survive this unexpected turn of events? Tune in next time.

*I say this as actually liking Lester the Unlikely.
**That's what the game says they are. Who am I to judge?