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Jurassic Park (Jurassic Park, #1)
Jurassic Park (Jurassic Park, #1)
Michael Crichton | 1990 | Fiction & Poetry
10
8.3 (34 Ratings)
Book Rating
As most people are aware, the movie Jurassic Park is one of those movies I can watch over and over again without getting tired of. The book that inspired the movie made me feel the same, although there were some parts that were a bit too technical for my liking, but it added a new layer to some understanding of things that occur later that will have you constantly having lightbulb moments of realization. The book and the movie are the same in the fact they are about dinosaurs, but a lot of other details were changed. Now, this is definitely not unheard of when movie adaptations are made due to creative changes, but some things were definitely super different. Without going into spoilers, let's just say some characters died in this book that lived through the movie and vice versa. There were also things left out of the movie that were in the book that definitely could have, in my opinion, made the film better overall. As a book itself, it is a great, fun read. As I said, there are a few technical parts that I wasn't too keen on that the book could have done without, but overall an excellent story. I definitely can't wait to read Lost World and see how that compares to the first book.
  
Encino Man (1992)
Encino Man (1992)
1992 | Comedy, Sci-Fi
Buried 'treasure'. (2 more)
Pauly Shore singing 'shoofly don't bother me.'
RAD MOBILE!!!
If that guy says 'shoosh' one more time..... (0 more)
Why can't all cavemen look like that?
Contains spoilers, click to show
I saw this movie for the first time when I was about ten years old. I was really into dinosaurs at the time and the idea of digging up a caveman in my backyard thrilled me about as much as finding One Eyed Willie. There is something innocently fun about movies made in the 80s and as silly as the plotline for this one is, the movie is still my absolute favorite.

Two nerdy, loner, high school seniors decide to dig a pool in one of their backyards in hopes of throwing a big party after prom and landing the most popular girl in school. What they didn't expect was to come across a caveman frozen inside a solid mass of ice who they thaw out using space heaters in their garage. After coming home to find their house trashed, they come face to face with a very not dead 1,000,000 year old man ... Or teenager. Makeover montage ensues, giving us the newly minted (not so missing) 'Link'. Boys take Link to school, Link wins over everyone, boys remain unpopular.

This movie is worth watching at least once just to see Pauly wheeze the juice and Brendan dance around like a crazy person.
  
Dinosaur Island
Dinosaur Island
2017 | Dice Game, Economic
Fun and dynamic board game. (0 more)
Hard to fit it all back into the box and takes a while to set up (0 more)
Totally worth it!
I bought this game for my fiance after much deliberation due to the price. I got this and the expansion. I was a bit sceptical to start off with as it looked over complicated however once I started playing, it all made sense and now I love this game! It flows brilliantly and the goal is well established.
It has 3 game stages you can choose depending on the amount of time you want to be playing.. short, medium and long game play which is great for when you can't be stuck playing for hours.

The aim of the game is to build a dinosaur island park with different dinosaurs and attractions within it. You gain excitement points for each dinosaur you add which increases the amount of visitors you can have per round. You also gain Victory points for every visitor who you manage not to get eaten!

The game pieces are all really well made and easy to use. It is difficult to fit back into the box but I see it as a mini tetris bonus game each time!

Well worth investing in this game as it can and will bring hours of fun and excitement.
  
Tiny Epic Dinosaurs
Tiny Epic Dinosaurs
2020 | Fantasy, Farming, Science Fiction
Come on, we have all seen the Jurassic Park movies, or at least one of them. And let’s also admit that we think it would be pretty cool to work at a dinosaur theme park. However, when dino droppings hit the fan, we want it to happen on our off day. Welcome to Nondescript Dinosaur Theme Park Ranch, where we grow ’em, breed ’em, and sell them to the highest bidders!

Tiny Epic Dinosaurs (TEDinos) is the latest release in the Tiny Epic line from Gamelyn Games and is a worker placement game of dinosaur enclosure, husbandry, and contract fulfilling for up to four enterprising ranchers. Players will be acquiring dinosaurs and barriers, feeding them, breeding them, and attempting to fulfill public and private contracts for maximum VP gains.


DISCLAIMER: I will be presenting this as a Solo Chronicles, where I will be using the Solo Rules included in the TEDinos rulebook. Also, I will not be covering every rule, as there are just too many to describe, but will give a general flow and feeling of the game to help inform your purchasing decision. -T
To setup TEDinos, follow all setup rules in the rulebook until you have something that looks like the photo above. All of the setup, save a few steps, is exactly like setting up for a multiplayer game, and the solo player will be playing the game exactly as if it were multiplayer.

The game lasts six rounds and each round is comprised of seven phases. The phases contain actions to be taken like Collect Resources (plants, meat, and supply boxes), Assign Ranchers (the meat of the worker placement game where your rancheeples and Lead Tomvaseleeple will be placed on action spaces), Retrieve Ranchers (to use them again next round), Arrange Ranch (to place your dinos in different enclosures), Feed Dinosaurs (obvious), Breed Dinosaurs (every like pair of dinos make a like dino), Refresh for Next Round (resetting card stacks and offers).

Again, I won’t go into detail about these phases, but will detail how the solo game differs a bit from the multiplayer. The Rival Rancher (AI player) will be taking actions in the second phase of every round, Assign Ranchers, but will do it using a card deck specific to the Rival Rancher. Initially the Rival Rancher will be 1st Player, so they will play a card from their deck during Assign Ranchers that will claim all of the action spaces on one of the Action Mats and give them a dineeple. For the player, should they wish to claim a spot on the same Action Mat that the Rival Rancher is sitting on, it will count as a meeple being there, so the player will need to expend their Lead Rancher or two normal Ranchers to claim a space.


This simulates another player claiming a space prior to the player’s turn, and spaces are still available, but with the added challenge of holding the Rival Rancher’s meeple. Play continues in this fashion until the end of the sixth round where player and Rival Rancher alike will add up VP to determine the winner.
Components. Like all Tiny Epic games, there are a TON of components packed into a tiny box. That is both a great thing and a challenging thing. TEDinos takes up about half of my dining table when all setup and played. So it does sprawl a little. However, many of the components are very very small and for big oaf-hands, the pieces can be fragile and cumbersome. It looks great on the table as the color palette used is fantastic (especially against a purple play surface), and the art is superb. All the components are great quality, but the meeples suffer a bit as they are so small; my copy came with several dineeples being damaged or headless or tailless or legless. That doesn’t necessarily bother me too much so I won’t bellyache about it. All in all the components are what we now expect from the Tiny Epic line.

The solo gameplay is really good and really REALLY difficult. I feel that if you don’t go into the game with a strategy ready to go you will flounder and be overwhelmed by the prowess of the AI Rival Rancher. I was the first time and I thought I would never be able to even come close to winning. But, the more I play the more I recognize different tactics to use in-game to help benefit my ranch effectively. Each AI player can use a different mat that offers different AI strategies and those are found on the back of the normal multiplayer mats. This is a phenomenal idea and offers great replayability, even for the solo plays.

Though the solo rules of TEDinos allow the AI player to be super tough, I find this to be one of the best in the Tiny Epic line. Tiny Epic Galaxies may still be my favorite, but I think TEDinos might be right behind. I can’t wait until this dino dropping-like virus is eradicated so I can play with my homies again, because I will certainly be pulling this one out quite a bit. I keep a spreadsheet of all my games in order of preference, and I admit that TEDinos has easily whomped its way into my Top 100, but will it get to Top 10 Games of All Time along with Tiny Epic Galaxies? I don’t know. Want to play and find out where it lands with you? Pick up a copy and have at it!

PS – I’m not one to shout out to other reviewers usually, but if you get a chance, do check out the Watch It Played video of this one. Rodney does a great job (as always) and helped me clear up some questions I had after reading the rule book.