Jurassic World Evolution 3 is a dream come true for park sim gamers and has a strong enough execution to be entertaining even to gamers who usually skip those kinds of titles. The third entry in the series, Jurassic World Evolution 3, takes place after the events of Jurassic World Domination opened up dinosaurs to the wider world. Players are tasked with opening and operating their own nature preserves, helping ensure the dinosaurs fit neatly into the current ecosystem without dying out or becoming too dangerous.
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Taking cues from everything from Roller Coaster Tycoon to Jurassic Park, Jurassic World Evolution 3 is a compelling game that benefits from tight design, expansive options, and gorgeous graphics. Even for gamers who aren’t all that excited by park sims (this reviewer included), Jurassic World Evolution 3 is a deeply impressive title from Frontier Developments.
Score: 4/5
| Pros: | Cons: |
| Gorgeous graphics and intricate depth make players feel like they’re really building their own Jurassic Park. | A deluge of menus and maps can be overwhelming. |
| Letting the player step into the park for repairs or rescue break up the gameplay in exciting little ways. | Challenge mode can be relentlessly punishing, taking away from the game’s more effective Campaign or Sandbox modes. |
| Strong visual and spiritual execution creates a genuine experience few park sims can match. | Not necessarily for gamers who aren’t park sim fans. |
Life Finds A Way
At its core, Jurassic World Evolution 3 is building off a legacy of theme park sims that go back decades. Players are tasked with constructing and maintaining their own personal Jurassic Park, with all the challenges that entails. Proper management creates a park where the dinosaurs are happy and healthy, leading to excited crowds. Poor management — whether through active negligence or bad luck — can leave the dinosaurs sickly or unleashed on the public.
After a Jeff Goldblum-narrated tutorial, the game’s campaign takes you from the outskirts of Montana to various islands and familiar locations like Las Vegas. New elements like breeding play a big part in the game’s mechanics, leaning into the franchise ethos that “life finds a way” even as the park managers may struggle to find room for all the adorable little dinosaurs running around.
As the campaign goes on and the freedom to experiment becomes more palpable, players can find themselves juggling the necessities of the animals in their care as well as the corporate interests they need to maintain to keep the park open. It offers a solid balance of world-building and challenge to keep every expansion engaging.
Players who want a bit more time just playing around can shift to sandbox mode, where it’s very easy to get lost in the simple joy of building out a park. Gamers looking for more of a challenge can dive into the Scenarios mode, which offers timed challenges that can shift from engaging to exhilarating. While the plethora of menu options may be overwhelming for anyone who isn’t that big into park sims in general, Jurassic World Evolution 3 pulls back enough to let the players have the necessary breathing room.
The Majesty Of Nature
The gameplay for Jurassic World Evolution 3 is central to the overall experience, but there’s something to be said for just how well the park sim manages to create a living, breathing world. Thanks to the impressive graphics and consistently solid NPC dinosaurs, there’s a real sense that the park is alive at your fingertips. Zooming in on the dinosaurs showcases absolutely gorgeous graphics and creature design, especially on the PS5.
Every dinosaur has a sense of weight and personality, lending itself well to the overall experience of building your own park. While NPC emergency response facilities are available for players to employ as a means of maintaining their parks, players can also handle the minor catastrophes themselves. This brings the player firmly into their park instead of just keeping them above the action, which is a quietly perfect way to make the entire experience feel more lived in and authentic.
It also gives a much more grounded and human perspective on the parks, further illuminating how pretty the parks can be or how chaotic they can become. The effect is a park that genuinely feels real, something that other park sims can sometimes struggle with. No matter how ridiculous or meticulous the player approaches the task, Jurassic World Evolution 3’s parks look (and more importantly, feel) like they’re real.
A Park Sim For Gamers Who Don’t Usually Play Park Sims
Park Sims aren’t exactly my favorite type of game. I find the overload of menus to be exhausting, and I never really connected with the supposed zen-like enjoyment that other players can find in this style of management. I never much liked The Sims, and only really got into the original Animal Crossing because of all the unlockable NES games that could be uncovered. On a certain level, Jurassic World Evolution 3 wasn’t necessarily for me.
However, I can’t deny the execution and underlying appeal of the title. The game looks absolutely gorgeous, which helps the dinosaurs feel real and that the player’s choices have genuine consequences. Repairing a broken fence or recapturing a runaway dinosaur breaks up the gameplay with a bit of excitement. The visceral feeling of seeing a storm rolling in and scrambling to respond is strong and not something I expected to hit me as hard as it does.
I’d just finished building the Triceratops pen perfectly, and now I’m terrified that it’s going to all fall apart and terrify the poor babies. It’s a level of immersion I never really experienced in park sims, but Jurassic World Evolution 3 achieved it. Even if you’re not a park sims gamer, this one is good enough that it’s worth giving a try — and if you are already a fan of this genre, get ready for a new favorite.
A PS5 review copy of Jurassic World 3 was given to Comicbook.com for the purposes of this review.
