It’s a quiet summer day in 2018. There are only ten days left until the highly-anticipated “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom” releases, but today marks another important event for the franchise. Today is the day when the new movie’s video game accompaniment comes out: Jurassic World Evolution. 

    The game is a construction and management simulator that fuses together the sci-fi elements of the dinosaur film franchise, the realistic aspect of coordinating a park and the entertainment factor of designing said park any way you want.

     This title soon became the Jurassic Park franchise’s best-selling game, having sold 3 million copies as of March 2020. 

     Now, eight years later, Frontier Developments has released their third game in the Evolution series, cleverly named Jurassic World Evolution 3 (JWE3). Comparing the first and most recent title, JWE3 is a drastic improvement, yet whether the game “evolves” enough from the second is a more divided argument amongst fans. While JWE3 has several recognizable additions, there are also particular features fans have asked to be changed or altered to remain the same as they were. 

     The most notable new addition has to be the introduction of baby and male dinosaurs. In the previous Evolution games, all dinosaurs were adult and female with no variations to their models or the capability of natural reproduction, making habitats sometimes feel artificial. While enthusiasts of realism didn’t particularly enjoy this fact, the existence of only female dinosaurs did coincide with the story at the time. Since Evolution 3, however, takes place between the two most recent films, “Jurassic World: Dominion” and “Jurassic World: Rebirth,” male dinosaurs now exist in the franchise. 

     JWE3 did a spectacular job designing these new variants, adding unique details of dimorphism — visual differences — to some species that most people would have never thought of. An instance of this is the Psitaccosaurus, where infants are quadrupedal — walk on four legs — while their parents are bipedal — walk on two legs — aligning with real-world fossil evidence of the species. The designs are more impressive than ever with the immense detail and paleo-accuracy, or resemblance to real-world counterparts.

    Apart from dinosaurs, the game gives us modular building, or the ability to create our own structures from nothing, without just using those given to us by the game. Modular building opens a whole world of creative possibilities, with players having already constructed extravagant and detailed structures that would have never existed in the game otherwise. This feature existed in other Frontier Developments, such as Planet Zoo and Planet Coaster, and I am more than glad to see it finally be included in Evolution. 

     But as with every game, even one of good quality like JWE3, there’s still room for improvement. A grievance shared among many players for the game is that DLC dinosaurs from the previous title are supposedly locked behind a paywall once again. 

     “We’ll continue to reintroduce Jurassic World Evolution 2 base game species as complete family units…We won’t charge you for these species,” JWE3 developer Frontier Developments said in a post on X.

     This need for Frontier to clarify “base game species” and not simply “species” seems to many as a sign that paid DLC dinosaurs from JWE2 will either not be included, which is highly unlikely, or be placed in a DLC for a second time. 

     “I remember they removed some of the dinosaurs, and I just think that’s silly, why cut content that you already have?” senior Ryan Richards said. While I very much hope this is not the case, I cannot say I would be surprised if it were.

    Excluding the one major issue and a few minor areas of improvement, JWE3 looks to be a very promising addition to the world of creative gaming. I would wholly recommend the game to anyone who is a fan of dinosaurs, creative simulators or both. As it stands, the game is a solid 8.5 out of ten for me, but this rating is definitely subject to change as JWE3 continues development.