Description:
An earthquake has destroyed all the stored dinosaur DNA at Jurassic Park. Hop in your SUV, find living dinosaur specimens on the island, collect their DNA, and bring it back to the Command Center to make sure that future generations of dinosaurs thrive on the island. That's the concept behind Jurassic Park III: Danger Zone, a Jurassic Park-themed board game for your computer. Designed for one or two players, ages 7 and older, the board game style will be familiar to nearly anyone who has ever played Monopoly or Sorry! (or more recently, Mario Party). Kids under age 10 will probably enjoy the variety of challenges and obstacles in the game. Challenges generally involve either tests of dinosaur knowledge or arcade-style mini-games like sneaking past a Tyrannosaurus, battling with raptors, or shooting dinosaurs with DNA darts on a firing range. Unfortunately, older kids and adults might not be as keen on it. After a couple of games many of the challenges get repetitive, and the sheer randomness of some parts of the game will bore adults far faster than kids. Younger kids probably won't be put off by this, but parents playing along will have to appreciate the quality time with their children more than the game itself. Even though our test computer was beyond recommended minimums, lag times reigned before and after each mini-game. The intro animations were fun the first few times, but long. You can click to skip them, but then the screen freezes while the game loads from the CD. This amounts to spending a lot of time clicking through repetitive screens, then waiting a few seconds--click, wait, click, wait. This gets old by the third or fourth time you play a particular mini-game. Still, if your kid is between ages 7 and 10 and crazy about Jurassic Park, he or she will probably want to spend a lot of time with this game. Parents might be less entranced after a couple of times around, but the single-player version will keep your dino-nut busy for hours. --Jeff Quick
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