If you’re a fan of dinosaurs, or at least the Jurassic Park film franchise, Jurassic World Aftermath Collection might stand out among the PSVR 2 launch line up.
As its name suggests, Jurassic World Aftermath Collection bundles up the original Meta Quest game with its DLC, giving PSVR 2 owners the complete experience. It’s just a shame that, beyond its visuals, which are noticeably better on PSVR 2, there’s not much here to thrill dinosaur-loving gamers.
Set between Jurassic World and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Jurassic World Aftermath Collection finds you stranded on Isla Nublar after your plane crash lands. Of course, you’re not alone on the island, and so as you try to navigate your way around an abandoned research facility you need to keep your wits about you, otherwise you’ll simply prove to be a tasty snack for a prehistoric beast.
The trouble is, Jurassic World Aftermath Collection isn’t anywhere near as tense or exciting as it ought to be. For one, despite the wealth of dinosaurs on the island, for the most part you’ll only be worried about the Velociraptor. You’ll have many Velociraptor encounters, and as you’re not equipped to combat them, you’ll instead have to employ stealth to sneak by them.
It perhaps wouldn’t be so bad, sneaking by Velociraptors time and time again, if there was some freedom to it, but it all feels very scripted. You climb into things like lockers and hide under desks, waiting for them to pass by or look the other way; Jurassic World Aftermath Collection is not a game where you get creative, picking up items to throw to create a distraction. In fact, with so little in the game’s environments to interact with, it feels very sterile on the whole.
Stick with it and things do pick up, with more complex puzzles and some thrilling dinosaur encounters of the non-Velociraptor variety, but you’ve got many hours of surprisingly dull gameplay before you get there. Even the story is likely to fail to grab you.
Related: The Best Dinosaur Games You Can Play Right Now
Ultimately, Jurassic World Aftermath Collection is akin to a theme park ride. It’s fun seeing dinosaurs brought to life, even if it is with cel-shaded visuals. But there’s limited interactivity here, making you feel more like a passenger than a protagonist. If you’re happy with that, you might get some fun out of it.
It has to be said that PSVR 2 is perhaps the best way to enjoy Jurassic World Aftermath Collection, at least, thanks to its sharper visuals and feedback via both the headset and Sense controllers. It’s just a shame that it could have been so much more. We hope some day that there’s a tense and thrilling Jurassic Park experience that feels dynamic, immersive, exciting and sometimes scary. But for now, this isn’t it.
Jurassic World Aftermath Collection is available on PS4, PS5, Switch (non-VR only) and Oculus Quest
