Jurassic World Evolution 2 review: Fixing the past

The dinosaurs should’ve just stayed dead.

That’s what I thought to myself — or shouted aloud in my office — during the toughest moments of Jurassic World Evolution II. These prehistoric creatures have no business being on our earth anymore, and I’m not sure I have any business pushing back against nature with my well-placed pond, guest pathing, attractions, and boba shop “Life, uh, finds a way,” as Dr. Ian Malcom famously said in Jurassic Park. In Jurassic World Evolution IIMy dinosaur zoo construction felt like a victory over millions of years in history.

Jurassic World Evolution II is the follow-up to 2018’s fantastic park simulator. The dinosaur expansion pack is available for those who have already played it. Zoo Tycoon back in the day, you already know what I’m talking about. However, for those who are not familiar with the subject: Jurassic World Evolution IILet’s you create your Jurassic Park, or Jurassic Worlds, as you like the sequels. It’s an engrossing simulator game: Turn fossils into living creatures, keep your workers happy so you don’t get Dennis Nedry’d, and place that T-shirt shop in your preferred spot next to the velociraptors. Though punishing, and perhaps a little fickle, the game shines by letting players take over the movie parks and see how they’d run things differently.

While Jurassic World Evolution II’s campaign is clunky and mostly feels like a glorified tutorial, the game’s real action is in the new Chaos Theory mode. You are required to fix the mistakes made in the past. You’re in charge of building Jurassic Park in its Spielberg location and time period — without Gyrospheres or other post ’90s tech that other play modes allow. But where park creator John Hammond failed in the movie, you’ll need to succeed. You’ll get quests, but you’re mostly free to achieve that objective how you see fit, while laying out your park according to your own designs. Each of the Jurassic Park or World films has Chaos Theory mode. These modes take you from Isla Nublar, San Diego, and then back to Isla Nublar.

A pen from Jurassic Park San Diego in Jurassic World Evolution 2

This is what I discovered Jurassic World Evolution IIMy park was very complex and required lots of micromanagement. Like the original game, I need to create pens and cater to each dinosaur’s environmental needs. To allow two species of dinosaurs to live together in one pen, I must use magic. I need to heal them when they’re sick, carry them away when they’re dead, create replacement dinosaurs, research new ones, excavate fossils, manage the power grid, place bathrooms around the park, and it all just goes on and on from there. You can find it overwhelming when the natural world is against you.

It doesn’t matter if you think it sounds complicated. Just wait for things to get out of control. A new exhibit in Jurassic World Evolution IIThis aquarium is designed for aquatic dinosaurs. I had to overcome many problems while creating it. First my scientists weren’t smart enough to research a water dinosaur, then they weren’t proficient enough to dig up the fossils. Building the dinosaur turned out to be too costly, so I had my park make more cash in order to afford this thrilling new venture. When I hit my cash limit, a severe storm forced me into evacuation and required that hundreds of thousands be spent on repairs.

These painful setbacks only made my success more satisfying. When I’d finally created my perfect lagoon and observed the giant, prehistoric shark leap out of the water to eat a modern shark off a hook, I felt satisfied. It was difficult and frustrating to get there, but it was worth the effort. It was a great experience for my guests.

That’s what Jurassic World Evolution IIThis is a great thing. True, things can go wrong and everything just seems to collapse together. Unlucky events seem to happen when you’re the most vulnerable — like when all of my original dinosaurs started dying of old age just as I was saving for the Indominus Rex, the park’s star attraction. The park can seem like spinning plates that draw families back in. But my park’s evolution from a two-star park into a five-star was purposeful. I could see the hard work — my hard work — in every store and exhibit.

A pen, aviary exhibit, and lagoon exhibit in Jurassic World Evolution 2

If you don’t want to see your hard work ruined or deal with balancing a checkbook, you can always build your park in the sandbox mode. To me that would be a loss of what I loved about the park. Jurassic World Evolution IIThis is a. This game demonstrates why every Jurassic Park in fiction has failed since 1993. It’s because these dinosaurs are unreasonable, man. They’re hard to deal with — they’re from a completely different time and what may as well be a different planet. These parks were destroyed in all movies by one small error, one poor hire. And the same thing can happen to yours, if you’re not careful.

The message of the movies is that you can’t control nature, but Jurassic World Evolution II hits back by saying, “We’ll let you try anyway.” And I succeeded numerous times over nearly 20 hours with this park builder. Jurassic World Evolution IILet me make amends for the mistakes of the past. I will be rescuing dinosaurs from their graves and creating one of the most iconic movie sets in history. And it let me do it my way while also making me feel like I’d succeeded where others failed.

Jurassic World Evolution II On Nov. 9, the following information will be available PlayStation 4 PlayStation 5 WindowsPC Xbox OneAnd Xbox Series XThe game is available in English. Frontier provided a prerelease code for the game. The review was done on Windows PC. Vox Media also has affiliate relationships. Although these partnerships do not impact editorial content, Vox Media could earn commissions for products sold via affiliate links. Here are some links to help you find. additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here