I’m not really convinced that we, as a species, are capable of learning from our mistakes. Whether that’s because of real-world events making satire completely redundant, or the fact that people keep building theme parks full of monstrous, toothy reptiles and being surprised when they’re found meandering around with the leg of a guest hanging out of their maw, it’s hard to say. Jurassic World Evolution 3 continues as the digital incarnation of that theme, but there’s more emphasis on the wellbeing of these creatures than ever before, while giving you the most advanced customisation tools the series has ever seen. Don’t worry, though, because the dinosaurs still get out, and Jeff Goldblum will continue to berate you for it.
Most people will use the Campaign to get a foothold on JWE3’s revised park building, and Cabot Finch returns as the slightly bemused head of a new dinosaur conservation organisation, the Dinosaur Integration Network. After the more fast-paced, action-oriented campaign of JWE2, this time out sees you returning to a more traditional park-building campaign setup, with a series of rundown parks and specific scenarios to work your way through. While I definitely enjoyed the change of pace last time out, the Campaign here is a real return to form, with a well-tuned level of difficulty, more longevity and more emphasis placed on the Contract system to drive you forward.
I can see people really digging in for the long haul with it and bringing every park up to 5-star level. As an introduction to the game’s systems, with some enjoyable narrative drive provided by the fully-voiced cast, it’s perfectly weighted, even if it feels like we’re swinging away from the celluloid timeline in the process.
The park-building has had some thoughtful upgrades made to it, with many of the controls and customisation options bringing JWE3 more in line with Frontier’s other, more realistic, park builders. That means that you can now build more organic enclosures, utilising scenery, such as mountains and crevasses, to form walls and barriers, while the new building blocks of scenery can also form part, or whole enclosures, giving everything a more personal and unique feel.
That personality extends to the updated customisation options for all the different building types in the game. There’s a host of building designs for each building type, and you can now change almost every aspect of a building’s appearance, from the colours of individual panels to the type of lights hanging outside. You can also add a vast number of decorations or create new ones, and because buildings are modular, you can construct unique structures.
There’s an incredible number of possibilities, and with a little thought and artistic flair, you can make your park look truly distinctive. If you love to tinker, this is the park builder for you, and once you have, you can share your designs with the community in the Workshop. If you’re less creative, you can already download a bunch of designs created by game reviewers and Jurassic World Evolution streamers, and I can only imagine how quickly the library will blossom once the game is out.
Alongside the islands created for this game, and a selection of legacy islands from its predecessor, Jurassic World Evolution 3 adds a new island generator to the Sandbox mode, allowing you to bring all your borderline-dangerous visions to life. Sliders let you alter the shape of your creation, the amount of water, the number of mountains and the level of trees that grow across it. This framework is then shareable, via a unique DNA code, if you want to try out a friend’s layout, or have a go at your favourite YouTuber’s creation.
Not every island immediately looks perfect. The mountains, in particular, seem a little off if you maximise the number to include, and open spaces can feel a bit barren at first, but this is just a starting point, a blank canvas to help you unleash your inner John Hammond. It’s more than possible to create a great-looking island footprint, and it really helps to give you a true sense of ownership over your lovingly created park when you’ve had a hand in every aspect of it. Alongside the power of terraforming, and being able to create features like waterfalls, JWE3’s islands and parks are more diverse, detailed and deep than ever before. It’s exactly what we wanted from another Jurassic World Evolution sequel.
We’re here for the dinosaurs, of course. Jurassic World Evolution 3’s biggest addition to the formula is juvenile dinos, with younger members of a herd having a different set of needs and accommodations to make, while you’re still balancing all the other desires of a herd of Triceratops. You can help to tailor more positive genes, starting from the parents, and filtering those down to their offspring, and it adds to the sensation that these younger dinosaurs are wholly yours, creating the environment for breeding, and then nurturing and raising them after they’re born.
With differentiated male and female dinos alongside the juveniles, this adds some further variation to your paddocks, and the dinosaurs as a whole look even more realistic and extraordinary than before. One of the greatest joys of Jurassic World Evolution is just zooming in on a single Gallimimus or T-Rex, and watching them go about their business, and that’s better than ever in JWE3, with revised behaviours and dinosaurs that feel more realistic than before.
As a whole, the visuals have seen a mild bump in detail and definition, while performance on PS5 is largely very good, remaining smooth through most situations. You can start to make the occasional hit to the frame rate as your park grows bigger, especially if you play around with water, but the team have found a good balance between dynamic resolution and the pop-in of ground details and scenery as you get closer, to keep things feeling reliable. It does feel as though there should be a choice between fidelity and graphics modes on PS5 – all you’re getting is toggles for Depth of Field and Motion Blur – but I can live without it.