Jurassic: The Hunted? This was a title that pretty much begged my attention. I can't remember when I saw it for the first time, although it was probably in a Wal-Mart or Gamespot, but the minute I did, I knew I would probably enjoy it, being a fan of Jurassic Park, the Turok game, and any first-person shooters involving dinosaurs. Eventually, I got it one afternoon in July of 2011 when I was in a Gamespot and had some money to burn. It was just twenty bucks so I figured, "What the heck?" I got the version for the Nintendo Wii. Having not played it before, I wasn't sure what to expect. I wasn't looking for anything groundbreaking. I just wanted a fun shooter with dinosaurs, nothing special. It's a good thing I didn't have sights set too high because this game may be enjoyable but it's very run-of-the-mill and brings nothing new to the first-person shooter genre. Bottom line, it's a fun game but not original at all.
The story is as basic as you can get. You play former Navy Seal Craig Dylan, your typical wise-cracking, sarcastic, gruff-voiced action hero who's accompanying a war buddy of his on a mission to find a young lady scientist's father, who disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle. The opening animation shows the plan sucked into a time vortex, with the group being separated. You wind up in the age of dinosaurs, tasked with marching through the dinosaur-infested jungles to find your party, including the scientist you were originally sent to search for, and also find a machine that can transport you back to your own time. Even the plot of this game isn't noteworthy. Granted, I usually don't look for deep stories in games but they could have at least tried to do something different.
The gameplay is your typical first-person shooter: you walk around the jungle, following the path you must take (it's usually clear where you need to go), killing whatever dinosaurs and other nasty creatures that attack you until you advance to the next level. Simple. There are other situations that you run into along the way but most of the time, that's what the game consists of. It's fun for the first few levels but after a while, it kind of gets monotonous. You really wish the developers would have done anything to make this game somewhat unique after a while. The levels are well designed, with the lush jungle, the volcanic areas, and the caves but after a while, they all run together. The levels, which are actually just chapters in the story, all look the same and sometimes, it's hard to know exactly where the boundaries are. As I said, most of the time it's clear where you need to go but there are times, especially in the dense jungle, where you're not exactly sure where the path is. Except for the opening and closing animation scenes, the character animation in the cut-scenes are very poor, with exaggerated gestures and little to no facial movements. The voice acting could also be better. I liked the guy who voices your character, Dylan. He tries his best to be a funny, tough smart-ass and for the most part, he's quite enjoyable, if cliche. The other voice actors are very stale and typical but it's not like they had much to work with anyway.
The guns you come across in the game are what you expect in a game like this. You've got pistols, which are great for small enemies but don't do much damage to the larger one; machine pistols, which can fire a lot of bullets at a time and are useful; magnum pistols which do more damage than a standard pistol; shotguns, which do a lot of damage but the reload time on them is dreadful; a variety of assault rifles, the one you find in the later levels being the most useful to me; small versions of mini-guns which are useful but also have a bad reload time; and rocket launchers, which are great on gigantic dinosaurs but kill you instantly if you're too close. There are also grenades that you can throw and while they do a lot damage, I always find them clumsy to aim. As you may have noticed, there are a lot of bad reload times on many of these weapons. I don't know if I've ever mentioned this or not but I hate long reload times because that's usually what gets me killed in shooter games. The absolute worst weapon in the game in my opinion are these old fashioned musket rifles that you have to load with gunpowder. The reload time is particularly dreadful with them and you only get one shot each, which doubly sucks. Just avoid those guns. You're also not likely to run out of ammunition. Not is there spare ammunition all over the place but there are also these ammo boxes which completely restocks your ammunition (unfortunately, you actually have to reload the guns, another thing that often got me killed). You're also only allowed to carry four weapons at a time. You have to be careful which weapons you want to leave behind because when you pick a fifth weapon, you'll automatically drop whatever weapon you happen to be holding at the time. Believe me, if you don't know what you're doing, that can seal your doom.
Like the game version of Peter Jackson's King Kong, you don't have a lifebar in this game. Instead, you're told how damaged you are by the darker the screen gets the more you're damaged and you slowly heal after you've killed your enemies. It's inconvenient, sure, but I think it's better than the red, slow-motion that happens to you in the King Kong game. There is, however, a mode like that in this game called adrenaline mode which you can activate yourself by pressing a button on the controller. Everything goes into slow motion and you can see the attacking dinosaurs' weak points so you know where to shoot. Unfortunately, your movements are also in slow motion but you can turn the mode off by pressing the button again (it doesn't last long anyway). Sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn't. Granted, I could just be a poor shot but there were times where I swear I was aiming at one of the weak points and I still didn't score a killing shot. There also instances where a dinosaur will jump on you and Dylan grabs hold of its jaws. You're then signaled to repeatedly tap a certain button (it's random each time) in order to punch the dinosaur away. This happens to you at the very beginning of the game and the first time, it surprised and I didn't know what I was supposed to do, which ended up with me being killed. I couldn't believe that I'd only been playing the game for about five minutes and had already gotten killed! It was very demoralizing.
When you encounter the enemy dinosaurs in the game, that's when you can tell that they took a lot of inspiration from Jurassic Park because 90% of the dinosaurs you face are of the raptor family. There are several types of raptors. There's the actual small type of Velociraptor, which are the very first enemies you come across and later on, you usually encounter them in caves. They attack in large packs and while they're little more than a nuisance individually, they can kill you in large numbers, especially if they get you cornered. There are two types of raptors that are your size: red and green. The red raptors take only a couple of shots to kill but can be dangerous, again, if you get cornered. The green raptors, however, are bigger threats because they can take a lot of punishment. It's best to use your highest damaging weapons on these guys, especially if you're faced with more than one. The worst type of raptors are big gray ones called Utahraptors (this is a real species of dinosaur, by the way). These guys take a LOT of shots to put down, they're quick, and while their individual attacks don't do much damage, they can easily massacre you if you don't put them down quickly. The best advice when facing them is just shoot like crazy and hope you kill them before you run out of ammo. Thankfully, you don't run into them that often.
There are other types of dinosaurs that you run into. Taking another cue from Jurassic Park, you sometimes encounter the venom-spitting Dilophosaurus. These guys tend to attack you from a distance, shooting their poison at you. If you get close, they will charge. Best advice is to use one of your long-range weapons to pick them off from a safe distance. They can be difficult to spot because they tend to blend in with their surroundings (as do most of the dinosaurs, for that matter). You often see pterodactyls throughout the game. Most of the time, they don't pose a threat but there are moments where they will swoop down at you to ram you (this happens during a section where you're crossing some high rope-bridges and also during a turret gun section involving a couple of Tyrannosaurs). If it looks like one's going to hit you, shoot it down. They only take a couple of shots at most to put down. Also, taking inspiration from the King Kong game, there are giant scorpions that you run into, mostly in cave levels. You don't have anything to worry about with them, though. They're not hard to kill and usually charge at you in straight lines, even when there's many of them, so you can pick them off easily. You also see some Brachiosaurs but you never have to deal with them. As you can tell, the variety of enemy dinosaurs in this game is also a bit bland. I wish they would have put more stuff like a Triceratops, some plesiosaurs, or giant prehistoric crocodiles or snakes just to change it up.
As I said, there are some different types of gameplay throughout the game. The first type you come across is a turret mode, where you have to use a big turret gun to fend off a swarm of dinosaurs, possibly inspired by the climactic scene of the 2008 Rambo. These are fairly easy. All you have to do is just blast away at the attacking dinosaurs, utterly massacring them before they can get anywhere close to you. Sometimes, there are explosive barrels nearby that you can shoot to blow large numbers of dinosaurs up. Every once in a while, one will get up to you or you'll have to reload but I doubt you'll get killed in these sections. Ones that are trickier are the balancing sections, where you have to cross over a tree or other such object to get on the other side of a large chasm. I died the very first time I had to do one of those. I wasn't sure what to do at first (again, this is the Wii version; I don't know what it's like on the other platforms) but then I realized that you had to keep the Wii-mote balanced while using the numb-chuck stick to move forward. I thought you were moving forward automatically and I also wasn't sure exactly how to position the Wii-mote. Eventually, I got the hang of it and was able to accomplish these sections with little effort. Finally, there's fort defense sections, where you come across a small fort made up of sticks and you have to survive an onslaught of raptors. Usually, there's an ammo box in the middle of the fort so ammo isn't an issue. You have the option to fix windows that the raptors destroy in order to get in but often, another gets through and attacks me from behind while I'm trying to do so. Honestly, just stay by the ammo box and pick off whatever raptors get through. It's the least complicated way to succeed in these challenges. There are some, though, where you have to be a little more creative and actually fix the windows. I've died a couple of times during these but on the whole, they're not too difficult.
There are two big bosses in the game. One is simple. You fight off a couple of Tyrannosaurs with one of the gun turrets. You face each T-Rex one at time and in-between fighting them, you have to hold off a swarm of Pterodactyls. Easy as you can get. I really wish the one challenge in the game involving the T-Rex would have been longer and more challenging. The other boss is far more challenging and you face him twice. It's a big Spinosaurus called Spike. The first battle with him occurs in an open field where you have to run around, reloading your ammo and grabbing other weapons while constantly shooting Spike. This battle is really annoying because it feels like you can't get away from Spike no matter how badly you damage him and sometimes when you're about to get to an ammo box, he knocks you away from it. You also can't run very fast so he's constantly on your tail. DON'T let him corner you because he'll make short work of you. There are also moments where he'll grab you with his mouth and try to carry you off. What you have to do is shoot the wound on his underside that you can see while you're hanging upside down. If you don't deplete the health meter you see in this section, you're dead. That weak spot is also where you need to shoot during the actual battle anyway. Not only does it deal more damage but if you shoot it enough, Spike will recoil in pain and stand still for a few moments, long enough for you to catch your breath or restock on ammo. You don't actually kill Spike, you just fend him off until his health gets very low, activating the beginning of the next level.
The other battle with Spike is your last confrontation in the game and here is where it can be difficult. Spike is trying to smash through the barricade to the camp and you have to hold him off until the scientists can repair the time travel device. Around the base of the barricade are rocket launcher ammo and the most damaging type of assault rifle. Get those first and then climb up to the top of the barricade to attack Spike. Basically, just unload your weapons on his weak spot by peaking across the top of the barricade. Be careful, though, because he'll often stick his head through to get you. Also, when using the rocket launcher, make sure you've got him lined up (the part of his body doesn't matter) because my rockets tended to go right past him or right over his back, wasting one. He also eventually damages the first area that you use to shoot at him so be prepared to change sides after a point. I did fail quite a few times, I'm going to lie, but it's another one of those things where if you keep at it, you'll triumph.
That's basically all there is to say about Jurassic: The Hunted. I'm not going to go into the levels like I usually do with video games because the levels here all run together and aren't that distinct, just every once in a while involving the different types of gameplay I've described. All in all, it's an enjoyable game, if unoriginal. They left it open for a sequel at the end but I doubt if they'll make one since I think this game went unnoticed in the market due to its unoriginality. I have read that the harder difficulty mode has more stuff to it, such as better weapons, reloading is replaced with potentially overheating your weapons, and so on, which makes the harder enemies easy to take down. I haven't played the harder mode yet and I may some day. For now, that's all I have to say on this game. If it sounds like fun to you, then go get it. Just don't expect anything groundbreaking with it.
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