Game review - Jurassic: The Hunted

It’s been a while since I’ve reviewed an entertainingly bad movie, so here’s an entertainingly bad game instead. So what do we have here today? Jurassic: The Hunted? What the foxtrot?

Jurassic: The Hunted has a simple premise – three people, Armando, Sabrina and Craig (playable character) are searching for Sabrina’s father, James, in the Bermuda triangle. They are sucked into some temporal vortex and into the past and have to get out. On the way, you hear quotes like “What the foxtrot,” and "Hey Spike! Come here you big overgrown...uh." Sounds like a B-movie, right? Well yeah, this is what you could call a B-game, or budget title.

The gameplay is simple and rarely deviates from its style. You find various weapons around the jungle and shoot your way through carnivorous dinosaurs like veloceraptors and their smaller cousins. Sometimes a dinosaur will jump on top of you and you’ll have to punch it in a quick-time event. Normally I hate quick-time events, but this game makes them relatively harmless. You’ll fight the occasional giant dinosaur “boss”, like a T-rex or spinosaurus, and you’ll sometimes defend a camp as it’s bombarded by raptors and their smaller cousin, but for the most part you’re just trekking through the jungle. The game’s also short, only about two or three hours long. The length works in the game's favor though, as it is a bit repetitive. If it were much longer the game would overstay its charm.

Of course the game’s main attraction is its cheesy dialogue. The lines are B-movie quality like “this is definitely a SEAL campfire if I’ve ever seen one!” The voice acting is equally cheesy, which makes the game all the more hilarious. You have to give the developers props – they knew their game was low-budget crap, so they played with it. It’s a game that knows what it is, a budget title about shooting dinosaurs, and it’s the perfect B-game. Another thing worth noting is that it released the same day as Modern Warfare 2, and both games were published by Activision.

Jurassic: The Hunted certainly isn’t for everyone, but it’s a short and harmless game that’s far more fun than it should be. If you're only into blockbuster titles or really good games, you'd be better off skipping this one. If you’re into shooting a spinosaurus in the mouth with a rocket launcher or sniping dilophosaurus with overpowered crossbows while hearing “It’s a…dinosaur,” this is the game for you.

Two Word Review – Mindless fun