Ark Park PSVR Review

Yes, yes it's a cliche, but ever since I was little I've wanted to see real-life dinosaurs.

Born in the mid-90s, I was blessed with being exposed to a golden age of dinosaur presence in pop culture. I digested more dinosaur books than my tiny brain could comprehend, my eyes were glued to the screen watching Walking With Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Park. I was obsessed with watching my Jurassic Park boxset over and over again. Fascinated with how special effects groups reproduced these extinct lifeforms I'd pour over behind the scenes featurettes of Jurassic Park and Walking With Dinosaurs. It was the Walking With Dinosaurs specials with Nigel Marven, however, that really fuelled my passion at a young age. I'd use to pack a little dinosaur-themed backpack and trek off to the local museum pretending that I was Nigel Marven studying for a trip back in time and walk around my living room pretending to fend off a herd of Protoceratops and hide from a Tarbosaurus. Throughout my life I have taken every given opportunity to "walk with dinosaurs", from going to dinosaur adventure parks to going to live experiences like Dinosaurs in the Wild.

So when this came out it was really a no-brainer.

A kid's dream come true.

I looked through the reviews and I looked at the price, and logically, being in the financial situation I am, it was a mad idea but... I could walk with dinosaurs whenever I wanted! The man-child I am couldn't resist.

What does Ark Park have that this doesn't?

So onto reviewing the game. Now I'm taking this review from the standpoint of the price. The game is horrendously priced. It's currently a whopping £44.99 on the PlayStation store. So, coming from this angle, we best get our money's worth. To be fair, I am who that lawyer dude in Jurassic Park was talking about when he said they could charge any price for people to see dinosaurs and they would come but for how high the price is I really have to address the content and worth of the game in this review. Let's have a gander at a comparable game on the PlayStation store and see how much that is. So going from a completely "ooh ahh, looking at dinosaurs" perspective, you can get Time Machine VR for £23.99, which begs the question, what does Ark Park have that this game doesn't?

"Must go faster!" There's definitely a Jurassic influence in this game.

Let's look at the features then. The game is built around a theme park built on some random planet that comprises of several islands full of dinosaurs and prehistoric creatures. Now to say that it doesn't resemble Jurassic World would be a lie. You can clearly see the influence from the monorail ride in over the water, confronted by a giant Mosasaur that backflips over the waves. The influence continues later in the game when you see a big gate, in fact I even said "What do you think they keep in there? King Kong?" to myself when I first saw it. There's even a cheeky "hold onto your butts" line thrown in by one of the guides, so the game definitely knows what its inspiration is. What you do in the game is wander around a handful of paths in this park, looking at prehistoric animals and gathering materials so you can craft weapons for the second part of the game, which is an optional wave shooter under the guise of the park going wrong (again you can see the Jurassic influence). You can also grow your own dinosaurs from eggs and ride them which is pretty cool, albeit riding them consists of a pre-determined cutscene that you have no control over.

Unlike the Maglev when you go into the park, locomotion is... difficult in the game.

It's not much more than Time Machine VR, where you go to prehistoric oceans and wander about in search for clues. Taking this into consideration, the justification for its nearly doubling in price must be the variety of content to offer and the gameplay mechanics? Well even though you can decide what you want to do, there are only a handful of tracks, and there are no places where you can really just chill with dinosaurs. They're all claustrophobic pathways with dinosaurs and other creatures wandering off the path as soon as you approach them. Don't get me wrong it's an absolutely fantastic experience and even though the scripting is repetitive and predictable it never gets old to be chased by a Giganotosaurus or sit in awe as you drive under a Sauropod, so despite its flaws I really do love this game. You can also try the wave shooter if you so desire but I'm not a violent person and there's a multiplayer option which I haven't tried yet, so you can do a lot but it doesn't completely lend itself to replayability, unless you love dinosaurs like me and don't mind if they're doing exactly the same thing as they did a few hours ago. To be fair, neither does Time Machine VR but everything in this game happens once and then happens exactly the same way every time afterwards, It's like being stuck in a time loop whenever you boot it up. How about the gameplay mechanics? Well it's not great there either. There's no fluid locomotion option and you have to look where you want to go and then turn the motion controller in the direction you want to face (if you're using Move), which I never really bother with as it's a faff. You can turn around in 30-degree sections using the circle button instead on either controller to go left or right respectively but the sudden movement is quite jarring and you never really get the precision you want when you want to, say, look at a crafting menu in a precise direction.

I'm doing it, I'm banging the "feathered" stick again.

It must also be noted that Time Machine VR strived for an educational experience and, while there are educational aspects to this game, it doesn't display a perfect representation of dinosaurs according to the current findings of palaeontology. Theropods, for example, aren't feathered, just having a few quills here or there and the Giganotosaurus was actually called a "Gigantosaurus" by the tour guide.

The final verdict, then. Ark Park is fantastic. It's a revelation in modern technology. If you could tell 10 year-old me that in the future he could ride a Triceratops whenever he wanted and chill out with Dodos in his own living room he'd go ballistic, but for what Ark Park is offering the price doesn't match in my opinion. Maybe it's because I'm low on money and maybe it's because the game had a lot of delays in coming out so a lot of hype was built but it just feels like it's promoting itself above its weight. If the game added some better gameplay mechanics and areas where you can just sit and watch dinosaurs in large open spaces then it'd easily bump itself up a couple of marks, but as it is now it looks like some expense has been spared.

I give it a 6/10.