Next up is a quickie:
Jurassic Park Part 2: The Chaos Continues (Game Boy)
Ah...THERE'S the completely phoned-in, generic 2D licensed platforming action I was expecting from the 1st Game Boy game!
There are 8 fairly large open levels, and Grant must wander them collecting dozens of key cards that literally fall from the sky at times in order to open a big magnetic gate at the end of the stage. You shoot, you jump, and you swim to victory. Completely harmless and enjoyable enough for what it is, with the possible exception of the 2 auto-scrolling T-Rex chase levels where the level design can sometimes **** you over by goading you to take a wrong turn that turns out to be an unavoidable dead end. There are 4 boss fights as well, all with very clear patterns and obvious telegraphs.
A very competently-made generic licensed game. Not much to say about it. Ironically, it may be the best game in the collection by default.
Which leaves our last entry,
Jurassic Park Part 2: The Chaos Continues (SNES)
So...this one's a weird one. Like Ocean's other Jurassic Park SNES game, this one is fairly ambitious for its time, but in different ways. It foregoes a linear structure and the open world of the previous SNES JP game for something akin to a Mega Man game. You pick from a list of missions, after which you run through gigantic open mazes killing enemies and completing objectives. After completing a given level, you're assigned an "emergency" mission where you have to run through another maze under extremely strict time limits. Wash, rinse, repeat for 6 sets of levels, plus another 2 for the game's true ending.
Like the other JP sequels, this game has absolutely nothing to do with either the Lost World book or the movie that'd later be loosely based on it. Instead, Biosin (Lewis Dodgson's company. You know them? We have Dodgson's company here! See? No one cares) has deployed an absolute army to Isla Nublar to take over the park, and John Hammond responds by deploying Rambo...err..."Grant" to kill them all and protect the dinosaurs.
The main problem with Chaos Continues on SNES is that the game is really goddamn hard, and the collection requires you to play the game on Hard since that's the only way to access those 2 final levels and the final fights with the T-Rex and the Biosin chopper. Despite having video evidence saying otherwise, I refuse to believe anyone beat this game legit back in the day. Enemies respawn almost immediately upon death, decent ammo is very limited, and Grant dies in seconds under sustained fire (literally, in the case of the frequent flamethrower troopers). It's a Contra game with the sensibilities of Super Ghouls and Ghosts. It's absurd. And if you don't know EXACTLY where to go during the timed emergency missions, you WILL run out of time because the time limits allotted give the player barely any wiggle room, even if they're mainly just jumping over enemies.
On top of that, the developers decided to get cute and give the player 2 sets of weapons: lethal weapons triggered by the L button and non-lethal weapons triggered by the R button. The former is meant to be used on humans, and the latter is meant to be used on dinosaurs. Non-lethal weapons will do barely any damage to humans, and killing dinosaurs with lethal weapons incurs a penalty. For some...bizarre reason, the devs decided to give the dinosaurs a lives counter. When you kill one with a lethal weapon, the counter drops by 1. Over time, that number will slowly tick back up as the dinosaurs repopulate, but if you're not careful you can deplete that meter extremely quickly.
It's worth noting that raptor deaths, thankfully, do not contribute to the dino death counter, as raptors are not dinosaurs. That's just hard science right there.
This is just a bizarre game. It's quite polished for what it is, it still looks good, and if for some reason you really wanted to play a Jurassic Park-themed Contra game, well...there you are. But it's beyond unfair that the developers constructed these massive & extremely similar mazes, give the player NO indication of where to do and little idea of what to do, provide very rare health and ammo pickups, and then often slap a strict time limit on top of it. It's just needlessly frustrating.
And with that, that's the collection. If I had to rank the games in order of quality, I'd probably have them as such from best to worst:
1. Jurassic Park Part 2: The Chaos Continues (Game Boy) - It's nothing special, but it also doesn't have any serious issues.
2. Jurassic Park Part 2: The Chaos Continues (SNES) - It's hard as hell, but there's a solid idea in here for a decent game.
3. Jurassic Park (SNES) - It can be tedious and boring at times, but with a guide nudging you in the right direction there's a unique experience here, especially since you can save your game now.
4. Jurassic Park: Rampage Edition - Terrible level design and frustrating combat encounters, but it's playable enough.
5. Jurassic Park (Game Boy) - The terrible Game Boy hardware ironically sands down some of the edges of the NES version.
6. Jurassic Park (NES) - Boring, tedious, and absolutely unfair in its design.
7. Jurassic Park (Genesis) - What the actual ****?
And now...it's your turn.
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