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LeftSideCut (3778 KP) rated the PlayStation 4 version of The Park in Video Games

Jul 7, 2019  
The Park
The Park
2015 | Horror
Not the worst way to spend a couple of hours
In The Park, you play as a mother searching for your son inside an abandoned amusement park - a pretty straightforward plot for a horror game.
Being more of a psychological horror game, things are of course not actually that simple....

You play The Park from a first person perspective, whilst you (so very slowly) explore the park, uncovering the backstory of both your character, and the park itself , through notes and clues found littered throughout.
There is zero combat in this, so the focus is solely on the narrative, and the exploration element.
There's a subtle sense of unease throughout the games short runtime, and it does a pretty good job of creating a creepy atmosphere, and uses some pretty trippy and sometimes disturbing imagery to put you on edge.

The Park is low on actual scares (I recall jumping once throughout) and the plotline never makes it clear what is real and what is in your head - which wouldn't usually be an issue, however the ending is left open to discussion and interpretation, to the point that it ends on a rather unsatisfying note.

Overall, certainly worth a play through if you enjoy anything remotely horror related, but I'm glad I picked it up dirt cheap in a PlayStation Store sale!
  
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Lizzi Lewins (73 KP) rated the PlayStation 4 version of Jurassic World Evolution in Video Games

Jan 9, 2019  
Jurassic World Evolution
Jurassic World Evolution
2018 | Simulation
I remember enjoying operation genesis for countless hours way back and so I love that we finally have another jurassic park game. The graphics are great and whilst achieving goals can be challenging and sometimes frustrating overall I have really enjoyed the game so far. The developers have done a great job and have listened to the players when it comes to updates. The only negative for me is lack of space on Isla Nublar.
  
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)
2018 | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
Great Sfx (1 more)
Cool set designs
Slightly different but still fun
After seeing some of the trailers I wasn't sure how this would pan out. The whole weaponising Dinosaurs from the first Jurassic World seemed like a thin plot line. At the end of the day it still boils down to escaping more Dinos on the run.
The Sfx are very good and there is plenty of tension as the characters get in various states of peril. Overall maybe not quite as good as the first one but if you are a fan of Jurassic Park, you'll happily sink your teeth into this!
  
Jurassic World: Dominion (2022)
Jurassic World: Dominion (2022)
2022 | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
7
6.5 (15 Ratings)
Movie Rating
Jurassic Park cast (2 more)
Nostalgia in various ways
New Dinosaurs
Covering old ground (1 more)
Plot isn't the best
Fun for fans
Potentially bringing the Jurassic World series to a close. This is one fans will appreciate more than others. After the Dinosaurs escape and mix in the real world, life has to find a way to adapt. There are still shady companies and characters around who are up to no good.
It's good to see a new real world setting for the dinosaurs and there is plenty of actions scenes. Good to see some totally different species and some old favourites. Towards the end it does start to all feel a bit familiar and like a reboot of some previous plot elements from the Jurassic Park films. Fun to see all the main cast back together along with some easter egg type nods to the other films. Overall maybe not the grand finale most would have hoped for but still a fun film to enjoy.
  
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Purple Phoenix Games (2266 KP) rated Steam Park in Tabletop Games

Aug 15, 2019 (Updated Aug 19, 2021)  
Steam Park
Steam Park
2013 | City Building, Dice Game, Real-time, Science Fiction
Who couldn’t go for a nice week or weekend at a fancy theme park these days? I think even our Alexas and Googles would like to catch some rays in their robot bodies, if they had them. Welcome to Steam Park, where all your robots can enjoy themselves on roller coasters, visit vendor stands, and also create metric tons of dirt. You ready?


Steam Park is a real-time dice rolling, theme park building, negative VP mitigating game for two to four players. In it players are theme park owners who are attempting to build the greatest park in the land hoping to attract many robots and keep their parks squeaky clean. The game spans six rounds of four phases and the player with the most VP at the game end will be the winner!
To setup, separate all the different components by type and color and shuffle the cards into a face-down deck. Deal each player six dice, one large starting tile to build upon, six cards from which they will choose to keep three, and one pig board. The game may now begin!

The four phases of each round are Roll, Dirt, Actions, and Income. During the Roll phase players will simultaneously be rolling their dice until they get a result they like. The first player to finish will quickly grab the First Player token in the middle of the table. Each other player may continue rolling as much as they like, but the turn order tokens will be taken one by one until they are all gone. Bonuses exist for the First and Second Player tokens and a negative bonus for the last player (more Dirt).

The Dirt phase causes each player to add Dirt tokens to their park according to the number of Dirt symbols rolled on their dice as well as the number of visitors currently in their park. The player who nabbed the First Player token can now discard four Dirt tokens from the bonus while the last player will add two more Dirt tokens to their park.

Actions that can be taken during the next phase include: Building Rides, Building Vendor Stands, Attracting Visitors, Cleaning Dirt, Playing Bonus Cards, and Expanding the Park. Each of these actions cost symbols rolled on the dice. To build a ride of capacity three, then three Build symbols would need to be spent from those rolled, et al. The only Action that requires no specific symbol is the Expand the Park. Use any symbol to add on a small square tile to the existing park layout.

Players will collect $3 (not USD, just the game money) for every visitor enjoying their park amenities during this Income phase. If a player has less than three Bonus Cards they may draw two from the deck and choose one to take in hand.


The game continues in this fashion over the course of six rounds total and once the final Income phase has been completed players will consult the Final Dirt Track to see how much will need to be paid in Dirt fees. Whomever ends the game with the most money wins!
Components. This game has a LOT of cardboard components. Nearly everything in the box is medium-quality cardboard and generally fine. The art is quirky, whimsical, and endearing. The insert leaves much to be desired so I made my own out of foam board. I have no complaints about the components except that I wish I could visit some of the rides, and I am still not super sure why the dice locking area is a metal pig token.

I originally played Josh’s copy he brought over to my house. I fell in love with it right away, and I still very much enjoy it. It will never make my Top 10 Games of All Time, but I will cherish my copy. I have yet to add in the Play Dirty expansion for it, as I like the base game so well, but I plan to sometime soon.

What I like most about it is the real-time rolling of the dice coupled with the grabbing of the turn order tokens when satisfied. This means that I could just go with what I roll after one roll, or I can take my time and just accept the Dirt coming my way. Sometimes being last and taking that extra Dirt is worth having all the dice read what you really want.

I also like having a lot of vendor stands in my park. Finding room for them is a different story, but I end up usually having just a few rides and mostly stands. They each provide some different benefit or way to change up the game a little that I just love to take advantage of them.

I adore games with real-time dice rolling, so I was predisposed to being attracted to Steam Park. Coupled with the great overall theme, this is an easy win for me, and a prized entry in my collection. In fact, I’m not the only one of us who thinks this as Purple Phoenix Games gives Steam Park a monotone-robot-thrill-seeker-scream 14 / 18. If you are tiring of Escape: The Curse of the Temple (which is possible), then pick up a copy of Steam Park. It will spark your joy of frantic dice rolling once more!
  
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Gareth von Kallenbach (971 KP) rated the PlayStation 4 version of Jurassic World Evolution in Video Games

Aug 14, 2019  
Jurassic World Evolution
Jurassic World Evolution
2018 | Simulation
People are fickle creatures by nature. They say they want to experience a time when dinosaurs roamed the earth and then they suddenly abandon you when they decide your park is too dangerous. So what if a few people got eaten when my cash flow dried up and my Ceratosaurus had no choice but to break free of its enclosure and snack on a few visitors. Is that really a reason to decide my park isn’t worth visiting any longer? I think not. That is just how things are when you are trying to build a combination of zoo and theme park in Frontier Developments’ latest park simulator game Jurassic World Evolution.

As a kid I used to spend time with my older sister playing dinosaur hunter with my old View-Master and some 3D slides of dinosaurs. We’d pretend that we had gone back in time to an age where dinosaurs walked the earth. As I got older, and technology improved dramatically, I had the opportunity to experience Jurassic Park when it was first released on the big screen and my simple exploration dream turned into a dream of what it would be like to experience this in real life. While dinosaur cloning hasn’t become an actual thing…yet, Jurassic World Evolution introduces you to a world of fossil digging, dinosaur incubating and park managing.

At it’s core, Jurassic World Evolution is a theme park management sim. It’s much less complex than Frontier’s other theme park sim, Planet Coaster, and of course brings with it the main draw of “living” dinosaurs. There are three major departments that you are trying to appease as you bring your park to life, Entertainment, Science and Security. As you play through the initial campaign, you will be given tasks from each department who are all trying to further their own agendas. Entertainment is focused on adding attractions, bringing people into your parks, and ensuring your profit margin is as high as possible. Science is focused on furthering the study of the dinosaurs, ensuring their survivability and tracking down and bringing to life numerous other species from around the globe. Finally, Security is trying to ensure that should a disaster strike, the proper fail-safes are in place to minimize the impact to the visitors and the park. While satisfying all three of these factions is the best way to make money and make your park a success, the tasks you do will impact your reputation with one department as you satisfy the requests of the others. It becomes a balancing act between ensuring each faction is as loyal and happy as possible (to avoid sabotage and espionage) and making enough money to ensure your park continues to function.

You begin the game with a sizable amount of money that you use to build your park and send teams on archeological digs around the world to unearth dinosaur fossils. The teams then bring back the fossils for you to practice your dinosaur cloning skills. Successful dinosaur cloning will result in absolutely breath-takingly detailed dinosaurs being added to your park. It’s up to you to ensure that the dinosaur enclosures are well suited and comfortable for the individual species of dinosaurs that will live in them. Each dinosaur has a specific set of traits that determine its’ comfort level. Some dinosaurs need grassland to run around in, while others are social creatures that don’t do well in solitary confinement. If your dinosaur’s comfort decreases below 50% they will attempt to break free of their enclosures and find what makes them happy and sometimes snacking on fear-stricken patrons is what they seek. So, keeping their comfort levels high is one key to avoiding major catastrophes in your park. After all, a happy dinosaur is one that is less likely to attempt an escape and snack on your paying patrons.

Ensuring your guest are happy and spending money is another key to running a successful park. Adding buildings and attractions for your guests to spend money on increases the rating of your park and adds additional cash flow. You will need all the cash you can get to keep things running smoothly and to prevent “accidents” from occurring. You will also need cash flow to research building improvements, finance other archeological digs, and ultimately continue to grow your park into what you had always envisioned it could be.

Graphically Jurassic World Evolution is absolutely stunning. The dinosaur models are gorgeous, and the weather effects (particularly when it’s raining) take on a near photo-realistic quality. This is easily one of the best-looking games available in this genre. When you aren’t busy managing the park, you’ll have the opportunity to pilot a helicopter and chase down escaped dinosaurs with your handy tranquilizer gun. You will also be given tasks where you will drive a Jeep through your park to do things such as replenish feeders or take pictures of your creations. The ability to traverse your park and get up close and personal with everything you have created is a real joy. As you progress, you can also unlock additional islands for you to create parks on and each island has its own unique challenges and adventures.

No game is perfect however, and Jurassic World Evolution certainly has a few issues. One of the more annoying issues I encountered is that some quests you are given are ones that you had already completed. Instead of the game recognizing I had already completed the quest, I had to redo what had already been done for the quest to continue. In the early stages of the game when you are asked to incubate a specific expensive breed of dinosaur when you have already done so (and it will cost you more than you can really afford to spend) it can get annoying fast. Some folks might also get tired of some of the more monotonous areas of the game, as flying a helicopter to tranquilize an escaped dinosaur the first dozen times you do it is exhilarating, but after that it can start to get a little stale. Additionally, there are some tasks that simply take time to complete such as waiting for a specific type of dinosaur to finish incubating before moving on to the next phase of the mission. As stated above there are ways to help pass the time (drive a Jeep and take some pictures for example), but an option to speed up the time just a bit would have been a real benefit. All-in-all though, these are pretty minor issues I had with an overall amazing game.

The developer Frontier is known for regularly updating their other games, including free (and paid) releases. While I think this game launches with an already incredible amount of variety, I suspect that Frontier will continue to add additional content and dinosaurs to the game. Considering the game launched without mod support (and whether mods will be supported in the future is still unclear) it’s important to have a developer who will continue to update the game and keep things fresh. This is an area that I believe Frontier will do an amazing job.

Jurassic World Evolution isn’t the perfect theme park simulation, but it’s pretty darn close. If you enjoy theme park simulators but have been intimidated by others on the market, you certainly should give this game a try. If you love dinosaurs or ever dreamed of owning your own Jurassic Park someday then this game is an absolute no brainer purchase. I was excited when I got my hands on it at E3, and the final release lived up to all my expectations and more. It’s truly an incredible game in one of this generations most beloved franchises. So, jump in the Jeep and “Welcome to Jurassic Park” (cue the Jurassic Park theme song).

What I liked: Stunning graphics, Accessible theme park management, Huge variety of dinosaurs

What I liked less: Some missions needing to be repeated for no reason
  
The Nut Job (2014)
The Nut Job (2014)
2014 | Animation, Comedy
6
8.1 (8 Ratings)
Movie Rating
The Nut Job, starring Will Arnett playing Surly the squirrel, and Liam Neeson playing Racoon, is a kids movie, but has political undertones that won’t be missed by the adults. It does send a good message to kids in that it portrays Surly starting out caring only for himself and then growing to learn to help his friends and take care of others.

My 5 year old son says “it was funny, and it made me laugh”. He says he would see it again.

Down at its core, this movie really is about politics. Raccoon rules the park with the outward appearance of benevolence and coordinating all the animals to “work for the good of the park” while Surly is out for only himself, and refuses to conform. He is the cause of an accident that causes their food-storage tree to be burned to the ground, taking all their food with it, and is subsequently banished from the park without a trial, even though Andie, a lady squirrel (voiced by Katherine Heigl), begs her friends to not banish him without a trial. She is almost instantly voted down by the angry residents of Liberty Park.

Surly leaves Liberty Park and has to try and make it on his own. He finds his way to a HUGE stash of nuts, and devises a plan to get them to hold him through the winter. Andie finds him, and wants “in” on the stash to help the animals in the oark, and makes a deal with him to split them if they work together to collect the haul.

After the point in the movie where it is revealed that Racoon is not so benevolent after all and that his goal is to “control the food to control the animals”, some of the animals antics might be a bit troubling for younger viewers, but overall I thought it was a decent movie that kids will likely enjoy & parents can tolerate as well.
  
Eleanor & Park
Eleanor & Park
Rainbow Rowell | 2016 | Young Adult (YA)
"Heartwarming, romantic and great fun." - Closer

I very much agree with this statement. The storyline is very heartwarming and credible, I believed every word. It is a really great, quirky story of which is incredibly easy to fall in love with.

I really like the way in which the themes are introduced, it's obvious yet subtle at the same time. The more serious of the themes like abuse and poverty are handled beautifully and delicately, the concept of family is important to the novel itself of which I really admire and like and the relationships between the family members are a part of what makes the novel so warm. The slow but blooming relationship between Eleanor and Park is lovely, it made me smile, feel happy and content. The novel itself is definitely relatable due to secondary school being a big part of the novel as well as the love story between the two teens.

The characters Eleanor and Park are definitely likable and admirable due to their love and how they develop throughout the novel. I think that the fact that Eleanor is so defensive and loyal to her family is kind of heartbreaking considering her situation and I really sympathised for her and was angry for her too. I really liked how Park was the key to open Eleanor up to make her feel like a normal human being again, the thing about Park that fascinated me the most was that he was convinced she was being different on purpose, it made me realise that too much time is spent on trying to be different and trying to be unique when all that really matters is that you are yourself and stay true to that - a very clear message of the story as a whole. I found all characters credible and I really sympathised with them.

I loved the book overall however I did find that it lacked a hook in the beginning, therefore, it was quite a slow start although once you got further into the book that is when the story unraveled a little more and encouraged my further reading and enjoyment.

Overall, a brilliant novel of which I thoroughly enjoyed.
  
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)
2018 | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
Good secondary characters (0 more)
Ridiculous plot (0 more)
Well....
This is the second worst Jurassic Park movie in the franchise. The plot was ludicrous. I get that you can only do so much with dinosaurs being alive in the modern world, but seriously, this movie was ridiculous. There was a tragic scene that pulled at the heartstrings, and two new characters that brought some good comedy, but overall this movie should have gone straight to Netflix. The plot "twist" (who didn't see it coming?) was so unnecessary and added nothing to the movie except to explain a single moment of decision at the end. I pray that this is the last in the franchise because honestly, they have run out of ideas.
  
Jurassic World: Dominion (2022)
Jurassic World: Dominion (2022)
2022 | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
8
6.5 (15 Ratings)
Movie Rating
Chris Pratt (3 more)
Bryce Dallas howard
The legacy cast
Bike verses raptor
Watched today liked the movie not as much as I liked the second Jurassic world which is my favourite of the three on to the movie there are many things I liked about the movie the returning Pratt and Howard plus the return of the legacy trio from the first Jurassic park slightly older but it’s good to have them could done with more Ian Malcolm. But in my opinion the real stars of the movie are the dinosaurs themselves all the old ones are back the raptors and of course T. rex and with this one there are some new dinos as well overall good afternoon out