Dinosaur Gaming is . . . horrible

It's my opinion, but Im curious if others think the same thing, that dinosaur gaming sucks over all. Its mostly indie developers who flop or throw their game on steam before development is even close to complete. Lets take a look.

The Isle: Released in 1 December 2015, that is 2.5 years ago. Since its been released, very little additional content has be released. Models have been updated, maps reworked again and again, and some micro adjustments to night vision and "scent". Its still basically a walk around aimlessly simulator or huddle in an area and chat "game"

Mesozoica: Failed. It seems the developers took the kick starter and/or early purchase money and ran for the hills

Prehistoric Kingdom: Seems to be slowly trudging along but  . . .  I dont have a lot of faith in it being anything spectacular simply because no one else can pull it of either, even major studios

Saurian: Its just the Isle stuck on single player. Its clunky and not really very fun. "Its scientifically accurate," yeah, great but its boring.

Jurassic World Evolution: Well, it seemed great, it looked great, it was decently fun  . . . for 30 to 40 hours for most players. Its really polished graphically and mostly enjoyable until you realize that once you've basically beaten it, there isnt anything left to do. We're going to have to wait for more DLC, which I'm sure we'll pay for, just to add anything to the game. However, the first DLC just added 6 new dinosaurs that didnt require anything new or exciting to obtain, adding roughly 6 hours more of the same ol' thing to unlock them all in my case.

Primal Carnage: Pretty fun game but its just more of the same old running around and shooting stuff. Its very arcade like, which is fun, but it gets old as well. Probably one of the better games to play though, if its still kicking because I havent played in almost a year.

Collision Course: Seems pretty legit from videos on YouTube. I do own it but havent bothered to play it as I'm trying to save it for later. Seems like it still needs work, as its early release. I do have some hope for the open world survival type aspect of it. We'll see but until its done, can you really count on it?

Beasts of Prey: Open world, crafting, survival game with dinosaurs? Sounds awesome huh? Failed, stopped development

The Stomping Land: Open world, crafting, survival game with dinosaurs? This sounds familiar but awesome just the same. Also failed, stopped development, even though this one looked great! It was a lot of fun, but its done now too.

Ark: Pretty cool! Open world, crafting, survival game with dinosaurs, yet again. However, it gets into weird scifi and fantasy stuff, so if you're looking for an emersive, real experience you wont find it here. A decent game though, but for me I was settling to play it because its just not realistic enough for me and doesnt feel like I'm really surviving.

Jurassic Park: The Game: A really interesting storyline in which you occasionally tap some buttons. It was "fun" in a way to play through, mostly because of the story and some cool scenes but its not really a gaming experience, more like an interactive movie. Still cool but not something you're going to play through a million times unless you're memorizing the story.

Operation Genesis: A classic and still has some dedicated modders, but its still the same old game, literally an "old game" . Its ok but once you get through it a few times, its rather redundant until you havent played it in a very long time. Plus Jurassic World: Evolution is just basically and updated version plus or minus a few features.

So what else is there? I know there are more indie games out there but I've pretty much given up on getting into them. There are some really neat games like "Trex Breakout" but its tiny and short. I'm sure it'll satisify people for an hour or less but thats about it.

I've come to the conclusion that dinosaur gaming just kind of sucks. Its really unfortunate but there arent any games I find captivating. I may enjoy them for a time but overall, they dont make me want to keep playing though I may revisit them after enough time has passed that playing them again feels "new".

Anyway, what does everyone else think? What are your thoughts?

Probably the only really successful dinosaur game in terms of penetrating the general public's mind was Turok.

There has not been a real powerhouse dinosaur brand outside of Jurassic Park and JP games have been hit and miss, but mostly not good enough for the general public to get interested. TLW PS1 game was good and Warpath was fun, but I feel like only JP fans know about them; same with JPOG. The JP3 era games weren't good at all. JWE kind of got the general public's interest a bit, but it's too stripped of content for me to give it a positive nod. Plus, if us hardcore JP fans are bored of it, the general public must have put it down in a few hours.

There just doesn't seem to be enough effort put into dinosaur games.

I thought the Dino Crisis games were somewhat popular back in the day, at least the first two. I know people have been clamoring for a fourth game for several years now.

If they could make like a dinosaur game with the gameplay of Alien: Isolation or Resident Evil VII, that'd be awesome.

I like Turok (the 2008 one), and I bought the Turok: Dinosaur Hunter and Turok 2 when they released on the Xbox One. They're fun if you like playing retro games.

I also rather enjoyed Jurassic: The Hunted, (actually I enjoyed quite a few of Cauldron's games, though as there hasn't been any sort of Cabela's game in over three years, don't know what has become of that particular license).

The majority of this games are early access open-world type survival games though, and unless it gains an audience and takes off on Steam, they'll all fade away

I think what annoys me is the JP games that might've been truly successful are always canned. Remember that survival game announced back around JP3? There were screenshots in Game Informer, looked to be third person. And there was another supposedly announced for Jurassic World in a similar vein, maybe first person though, and it of course died too.

Far Cry at one point was also considered to be a JP game, but they couldn't obtain the rights, so the clsoest we ever got was the Primal spin-off, and the dragons in Blood Dragon.

Dead2009 wrote:

The majority of this games are early access open-world type survival games though, and unless it gains an audience and takes off on Steam, they'll all fade away

True. I got burned on The Dead Lingers, lost twenty bucks supporting that.

I'll never buy a game early access (especially if it is an indie dev), because as much as I want to support indie devs, too many times they are way to ambitious, and end up realizing they don't have the manpower/time/money to do what they wanted, and end up scrapping the game.

Though I did back the Friday the 13th game back in the day, and that has a controversy now with the Victor Miller lawsuit. And we're not even sure if the single-player aspect of the game will even be playable offline when servers get shut off. And the devs are keeping quiet about that.

I've been hearing a lot of interesting things about Subnautica, but I'm waiting for the full release before I buy that.

I am looking forward to Prehistoric Kingdom, if it ever sees the light of day. Mesozoica was controversial since day one, as was The Stomping Lands, and Saurian seems really niche to begin with.

Ark is fun, to be honest, even if it is sci-fi fantasy. I bought the collector's edition, and the cloth map, and the leather-bound book were pretty cool. I wear the necklace on the daily.

For fangames, Jurassic Life is dead, and that was wrought with internal problems within the development team, Jurassic Park: Aftermath is vaporware, and the fan-remake of Trespasser seems to have gone off the radar as well.

Megaspino2 wrote:

Probably the only really successful dinosaur game in terms of penetrating the general public's mind was Turok.

There has not been a real powerhouse dinosaur brand outside of Jurassic Park and JP games have been hit and miss, but mostly not good enough for the general public to get interested. TLW PS1 game was good and Warpath was fun, but I feel like only JP fans know about them; same with JPOG.

Primal Rage says hold my beer. Yes, it was Mortal Kombat with dinosaurs, 2 giant gorillas, and a dinosaur/cobra hybrid, but at least it was fun.

As for the PS1 TLW game, it took EA to make a special edition version, the one where you can play as the T. rex and play in added levels for it to get good.


Just curious, since Godzilla is technically a dinosaur and has some other prehistoric kaiju-Rodan is a giant Pteranodon, Angerius and Titanosaurus are both dinosaurs as well, and Gigan is an alien dinosaur (I saw that in a Godzilla group I was in once.), would Godzilla games count as dinosaur games?

Rhedosaurus wrote:

Megaspino2 wrote:

Probably the only really successful dinosaur game in terms of penetrating the general public's mind was Turok.

There has not been a real powerhouse dinosaur brand outside of Jurassic Park and JP games have been hit and miss, but mostly not good enough for the general public to get interested. TLW PS1 game was good and Warpath was fun, but I feel like only JP fans know about them; same with JPOG.

Primal Rage says hold my beer. Yes, it was Mortal Kombat with dinosaurs, 2 giant gorillas, and a dinosaur/cobra hybrid, but at least it was fun.

As for the PS1 TLW game, it took EA to make a special edition version, the one where you can play as the T. rex and play in added levels for it to get good.


Just curious, since Godzilla is technically a dinosaur and has some other prehistoric kaiju-Rodan is a giant Pteranodon, Angerius and Titanosaurus are both dinosaurs as well, and Gigan is an alien dinosaur (I saw that in a Godzilla group I was in once.), would Godzilla games count as dinosaur games?

Theoretically, yes.

Wikipedia classes Godzilla films as dinosaur films (it even has its own subcategory for Godzilla films). Even Frankenstein vs. Baragon is classified as a dinosaur film.

Ark is Pretty good, and jW: Evolution is looking good from what I've seen.

TheRexMan22 wrote:

Ark is Pretty good, and jW: Evolution is looking good from what I've seen.

Dont get me wrong, they're both good games but they just dont satisfy me like I'd hoped. Ark is fun but it's very unrealistic in its portrayal of dinosaurs. I also dont enjoy how it expanded into dinosaur armored power suits with lasers. I still enjoy it and see why others do it's just not my full cup of tea. Still, an enjoyable game but to each their own.

JW:E is beautiful and sort of fun. It's just that overall, it lacks content in my opinion. I got 40 hours of game play out of it but once I had basically completed everything I've found no reason to keep playing. Like I said, it's fun and absolutely stunning but I feel it really lacks anything to make you want to come back and play it unless you come up with your own personal challenges. Of course, new DLC might change that but then you come into the realm of "is this game worth that much money"

Aye, the Mesozoica scam is pretty despicable. Proof though, that a hyped up person will pay for anything.

And slightly off topic but, I was into the hype for JW:E and Fallen Kingdom and was somewhat dissapointed by both. So am not hype train-ing anything again, thanks Jurassic Park franchise! Well ok, maybe death stranding, red dead 2 and fallout 76... but not Universal backed things, they can take a hike.

Furthermore, the JP franchise (and dinosaurs) used to be about "awe" and "wonder", now it's about "corporate gains and greed". Sign of the times really...

Oh, and douchey kids that press buttons and deliver cringey lines like "they are alive like me". Okay that's all, just wanted to agree about the Mesozoica mess but went a bit off the rails JPOG is still king...*sigh*

markymint wrote:

Oh, and douchey kids that press buttons and deliver cringey lines like "they are alive like me". Okay that's all, just wanted to agree about the Mesozoica mess but went a bit off the rails JPOG is still king...*sigh*

Might want to put this in one of the many FK threads

Haha, don't really want to waste my breath But forgot to say, Fallen Kingdom is probably amazing for kids. And if JW:E (and other dino games) is amazing for kids, that's also great. Because many of us (myself certainly) were kids when JP first appealed. So if the franchise, games and movies, are appealing to kids that's great, and I made the mistake of perhaps expecting them to continue to appeal as an approaching-middle-age man.

Point being, I do agree to an extent that "dino gaming is horrible", but I think a big part of the essence in that is that - at least in my own position - am just not a kid anymore. And the heart and spirit of JP was always for kids really, wasn't it? They don't need to make it entertaining for someone my age, and I'm now trying to accept that if it is, then that's simply a bonus, cos it's ultimately a kids franchise (and nothing wrong with that) ... mind you, themes of corporate greed delivered in gritty tones can't be that exciting even for kids lol.

What is the first spoken line in JW:E? Malcolm reminding you many people have died. It's just a bit weird really, and about as far off the mark from the "awe" and "wonder" of the early days as it possibly can be. But sure, I feel a bit disenfranchised myself, but will leave it at that, and any other comments for other threads

Even my childhood self would be disappointed with JWE.

What about Dino Defender, Danger Zone and Scan Command? Those were pretty wizard.

markymint wrote:

Haha, don't really want to waste my breath But forgot to say, Fallen Kingdom is probably amazing for kids. And if JW:E (and other dino games) is amazing for kids, that's also great. Because many of us (myself certainly) were kids when JP first appealed. So if the franchise, games and movies, are appealing to kids that's great, and I made the mistake of perhaps expecting them to continue to appeal as an approaching-middle-age man.

Point being, I do agree to an extent that "dino gaming is horrible", but I think a big part of the essence in that is that - at least in my own position - am just not a kid anymore. And the heart and spirit of JP was always for kids really, wasn't it? They don't need to make it entertaining for someone my age, and I'm now trying to accept that if it is, then that's simply a bonus, cos it's ultimately a kids franchise (and nothing wrong with that) ... mind you, themes of corporate greed delivered in gritty tones can't be that exciting even for kids lol.

What is the first spoken line in JW:E? Malcolm reminding you many people have died. It's just a bit weird really, and about as far off the mark from the "awe" and "wonder" of the early days as it possibly can be. But sure, I feel a bit disenfranchised myself, but will leave it at that, and any other comments for other threads

A fair point. My only counter argument would be that there are still games that appeal to adults and children alike. I see more incentive to reaching across generational borders to sell more games.