The Sega screen features a T-Rex that actually recognizably growls the word "Sega"! The character select screen showcases some pretty slick animation for both Dr Grant and the Raptor, and Grant's opening scene (the T-rex attack) is honestly pretty terrifying, adeptly using flickering to simulate lightning in the darkness. Then it all goes downhill from there.
Early in Dr Grant's campaign, there's a sequence where you need to operate a control panel to open a door, stun and run past the T-Rex, and escape through the door you opened. Except, the control panel is so drably colored that it blends right into the background so it's easy to miss, and so is the door that it opens, so the player is likely to evade the T-Rex and run straight into a wall with no clue how to progress. Even if you think to backtrack and manage to find and operate the control panel, there's no 'click' or 'door opening' sound or any indication that you did anything... and the door it opens is just offscreen.
This sequence is a microcosm of the game as a whole - your worst enemy is not going to be dinosaurs or armed guards but the hilariously bad conveyance of what you're supposed to do. Platforms that you can step on are the same color as platforms you will fall through, ladders and ropes critical to progress are colored so darkly as to sometimes be nearly invisible, and there's a rapids level littered with streams that lead to instant death that don't look any different at all from other streams.
The odd control scheme doesn't help either; it's terribly unintuitive (down+attack to do a flying kick? up+direction to run?!), awfully slippery, and uses momentum so inscrutably as to render some platforming segments a test of pure luck. It's buggy too - twice in Dr Grant's campaign he softlocked me when he inexplicably started tapdancing in place with no way to break out of the animation (luckily I had a password!)
I remember playing this as a kid and not being very impressed, and it's definitely worse than I remember. Ah well, the hunt for a good Jurassic Park game continues...
Early in Dr Grant's campaign, there's a sequence where you need to operate a control panel to open a door, stun and run past the T-Rex, and escape through the door you opened. Except, the control panel is so drably colored that it blends right into the background so it's easy to miss, and so is the door that it opens, so the player is likely to evade the T-Rex and run straight into a wall with no clue how to progress. Even if you think to backtrack and manage to find and operate the control panel, there's no 'click' or 'door opening' sound or any indication that you did anything... and the door it opens is just offscreen.
This sequence is a microcosm of the game as a whole - your worst enemy is not going to be dinosaurs or armed guards but the hilariously bad conveyance of what you're supposed to do. Platforms that you can step on are the same color as platforms you will fall through, ladders and ropes critical to progress are colored so darkly as to sometimes be nearly invisible, and there's a rapids level littered with streams that lead to instant death that don't look any different at all from other streams.
The odd control scheme doesn't help either; it's terribly unintuitive (down+attack to do a flying kick? up+direction to run?!), awfully slippery, and uses momentum so inscrutably as to render some platforming segments a test of pure luck. It's buggy too - twice in Dr Grant's campaign he softlocked me when he inexplicably started tapdancing in place with no way to break out of the animation (luckily I had a password!)
I remember playing this as a kid and not being very impressed, and it's definitely worse than I remember. Ah well, the hunt for a good Jurassic Park game continues...