An image of the game.
Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis is a park-building game that is reminiscent of games like SimCity and Theme Park. The ultimate goal of the game is to "...create the most successful theme park in the history of the world," which pretty much means a five-star park. Your park can earn stars by entertaining visitors, hoping that they will leave with a satisfied attitude. If they do, your park will become more popular and your park will also gain stars. The more stars and popularity, the more visitors. And so on, and so on. Keeping your visitors happy is not as easy as plopping a few dinosaurs in the middle of a field and watching them walk around. Besides having dinosaurs and their enclosures in your park, you also need to make sure your visitors are comfortable by setting up food stands (kiosks), restrooms, and souvenir stands. You can also specify different types of food and gifts to cater to your visitor's tastes. Additionally, you can build attractions which will keep your visitors amused. Attractions such as Viewing Vents, Viewing Platforms and Safari Adventure Rides should prove popular with your visitors. But most importantly, you need to make sure your visitors are safe. No one wants to visit a park where they could be eaten. To assure the safety of your visitors, you need to set up the right types of fences, build ranger stations, and also set up other security measure such as cameras and avoidance beacons. If there is an emergency, you can take charge of a helicopter or car, and rescue visitors or take out ravaging dinosaurs that have broken free of their confines.
The actual building of your park is relatively easy thanks to the streamlined interface Blue Tongue has come up with. You must first determine four characteristics of your island: shape, trees, rivers, and mountains and decide how much of each you would want on your island. Mountains may make the island look more natural, but can take up space used for your park. Having more trees is definitely an advantage.
After creating your island, the building begins. You are given an initial amount of money ($60,000) from investors to build your park with, and you have to make sure you start small so that your resources can handle the park maintenance while you earn money. You can build your park from 35 different pieces, and populate it with an initial selection of 25 dinosaurs. You can eventually earn new dinosaurs by researching fossils and discovering new species.
Dinosaurs
- Acrocanthosaurus - Large Carnivore, 4 Stars
- Albertosaurus - Small Carnivore, 3 Stars
- Allosaurus - Large Carnivore, 4 Stars
- Ankylosaurus - Large Herbivore, 4 Stars
- Brachiosaurus - Large Herbivore, 5 Stars
- Camarasaurus - Large Herbivore, 3 Stars
- Carcharodontosaurus - Large Carnivore, 4 Stars
- Ceratosaurus - Small Carnivore, 2 Stars
- Corythosaurus - Large Herbivore, 3 Stars
- Dilophosaurus - Small Carnivore, 2 Stars
- Dryosaurus - Small Herbivore, 1 Star
- Edmontosaurus - Large Herbivore, 3 Stars
- Gallimimus - Small Herbivore, 3 Stars
- Homalocephale - Small Herbivore, 3 Stars
- Kentrosaurus - Small Herbivore, 2 Stars
- Ouranosaurus - Large Herbivore, 2 Stars
- Pachycephalosaurus - Small Herbivore, 2 Stars
- Parasaurolophus - Large Herbivore, 3 Stars
- Spinosaurus - Large Carnivore, 5 Stars
- Stegosaurus - Large Herbivore, 4 Stars
- Styracosaurus - Small Herbivore, 2 Stars
- Torosaurus - Large Herbivore, 2 Stars
- Triceratops - Large Herbivore, 5 Stars
- Tyrannosaurus - Large Carnivore, 5 Stars
- Velociraptor - Small Carnivore, 5 Stars
Cut Dinosaurs
Several dinosaurs were cut from the game, leaving only their names on a file inside the game's files.
- Alioramus
- Deinonychus
- Baryonyx
- Ornithomimus
- Yangchuanosaurus
- Diplodocus
- Apatosaurus
- Iguanodon
- Maiasaura
- Panoplosaurus
- Thescelosaurus
- Tenontosaurus
- Wuerhosaurus
- Chasmosaurus
Diseases
In the game, the dinosaurs in your park we susceptible to certain dinosaur diseases and thus you have to research cures and vaccines to protect them from harm. Dinosaurs, like all animals in captivity, with sometimes get sick. InGen dinosaurs however are more suceptible to diseases as they are born with immunity-deficiencies as a direct result of they're accelerated growth.
Diseases create serious problems for your park. In best case, your visitors will complain about your lack of care for your dinosaurs. In the worst case, your dinosaurs will die. Rangers are assigned the responsibility to monitor and control disease outbreaks in your park. You must make sure that your rangers have the vaccines they need to be able to control the disease outbreaks
There are six known diseases in Operation Genesis - Those diseases include:
- Bumblefoot - Inflammation of the dinosaur's foot caused when a cut or abrasion becomes infected and heals over. The resulting swollen foot is very painful, causing the dinosaur to limp and reducing the animal's movement, as well as putting it through alot of stress.
- Dino Belly -
- Dino Flu -
- Tick Infestation -
- Gastric Poisoning - This is a very serious condition that can occur in herbivorous dinosaurs. Toxins from the plants that they eat build up and accumulate in the body of the dinosaur, until they reach a level that the dinosaur becomes immobilized and can eventually die from the poisoning if left untreated. (NOTE: this is probably what the sick Triceratops(film)/Stegosaurus(novel) was suffering from with the West Indian Lilac Berries)
- Rabies -
Site B
After all the missions are completed, a Site B option unlocks on the title page which allows the player to build an island without any fences or buildings for people, and no visitors are allowed. In it, the player gets to place eight hatcheries and only sixty dinosaurs. The dinosaurs will be created and live out their lives on your island.
Modding
Due to the PC files of the game, many people have found a way to mod the PC game. For example, they can change the skins, roars, and the terrain. Based on a user on Youtube, an expansion pack is going to be released for the game. It is unknown if this is true though at this time.
One of the most popular JP:OS modding communities so far has been: http://www.jurassicisland.ch/ They can Mod everything from skins, buildings, visitors, models, to even dinosaur behaviour.
Reception
The game was received fairly well on all the platforms it was released on (PS2, PC and XBOX), praising the concept and the variety of dinosaurs and buildings available. It got a positive rating of a 7.0 from Gamespot. IGN gave a negative review for the PS2 version, stating it wasn't as good as the PC version.