Lego Jurassic World is an interesting game. While it is called Jurassic World, the name is a bit of a misnomer as the game adapts the preceding three Jurassic Park films as well as at the time new Jurassic World film. This means TT Fusion sticks to the usual formula that Traveller’s Tales took towards turning popular franchises into Lego between 2005 and 2022, which is turning a trilogy or more of films into interconnected video game. The only exception to this rule was 2016’s Lego Star Wars The Force Awakens, also developed TT Fusion. This game only adapted the first film of Star War’s sequel trilogy which were separated the film into ten levels. The game also included several levels adapting tie in comics or events mentioned in the film.

The Lego structure did not really change throughout this entire period. The structure was as following, light and simple non-challenging combat – which was made slightly deeper as time went on but remained at its core simple. Another element was puzzle solving through solving simple light puzzles through finding the right items or following a pattern. The third element was collecting Lego studs which could then in-between levels be used to purchase Lego Characters and modifications. The fourth element was in levels finding hidden mini kits which if all were collected in a level would unlock a Lego model alongside hidden mini kits, players could find and unlock gold Lego bricks and in some games, in the open world. These elements melded well with any franchise that was thrown at it as these franchises could be adapted to fit the formula.

This formula is present and correct in the Lego Jurassic World with small open worlds for each film. These worlds are initially linear when completing the story levels. Once the corresponding levels are completed, these open worlds open up, allowing for exploration to find and unlock gold bricks, new characters, red bricks etc. Jurassic World also allows the player to play as a range of different dinosaurs in both the levels and in the semi open world. There is also the option to design your own custom dinosaur much like the traditional returning custom character creator.

In adapting the Jurassic Park franchise into Lego, TT Fusion adapted the films very closely however there were some differences compared to other games. So what makes Jurassic Park different? Because unlike Star Wars, Marvel, DC or others, which are much lighter in tone means these films are much more ready to be adapted into the Lego format. Jurassic Park is darker in tone and has more horror elements, with no clear antagonists, other than the dinosaurs. The Jurassic Park films also don’t contain any action sequences such as those in Star Wars or Marvel films. Which are then replicated and expanded upon in Lego form. The Jurassic Park films also have much smaller casts, which TT Fusion sort to remedy by include a larger number of more generic Lego characters to fill out its character roster.

These differences are pretty clear in how the films are adapted. The levels compared to other Lego games are more on puzzle solving and some platforming. In adapting Jurassic Park, there is not one single combat encounter, with combat being introduced as a concept in the first level of The Lost World. The combat encounters in The Lost World are a mixture of traditional types of encounters and more inconsistent combat encounters with dinosaurs such as Compy Goons, Dilophosaurus or Compsognathus. The dinosaur encounters are inconsistent compared to normal Lego combat encounters due to some of the dinosaurs being smaller than regular Lego minfigs, making the, harder to defeat which does lead to these encounters being a tiny bit annoying.

These changes to the Lego formula doesn’t make the game less enjoyable however it does shows the some of the changes TT Fusion felt were required to adapt films which contained less focus on big budget action set pieces. Though on change which is a bit of a negative is overuse of one game play concept, which TT Fusion does use repeatedly, which is a semi on rails sequence where the player is being chased by dinosaurs. This sequence is usually used at the start or the end of a level.

In adapting the four films, TT Fusion splits each film into five levels apiece. This gives the game a total of twenty levels in total. This means that the storylines are cut down and simplified. This produce a situations where are characters are introduced before disappearing without explanation. This also affects story beats as central events are not being mentioned, which leads to their outcomes appearing a bit of the blue. But this is to be expected with the cut down of Lego adaptations. Each set of levels do introduce new game play mechanics which does freshen up the game play loop at the start of each group of levels.

Lego Jurassic World has a few reoccurring audio issues. When there is a lot going on screen, the audio can at points gets really crunchy as too much audio is being triggered all at once as sound effects, soundtrack or voice lines are layered on top of one another resulting in a very unpleasant audio mix at times. Like other games released after 2011’s Lego Lords of the Rings, the game uses cleaned up film audio. The audio lifted from the films is often muffled and starts and ends in a stop start manner. Which means the audio doesn’t mix well with when it is being used and clashes with original dialogue recorded by other actors for the game.

This makes the audio of the main cast quite difficult to listen to and the gap in quality is at its deepest for Jurassic Park between film audio and the original dialogue recorded for Lego Jurassic World. This is somewhat lessened for Jurassic World as the actual cast of the film do return to record new lines for the game. This allows for better cohesion of the film dialogue with comedic bits throughout. While the soundtrack is fairly limited using only a handful of tracks from the films, as well as few original tracks composed for the game, though there is an understandable heavy use of the Jurassic Park theme.

Despite this, Lego Jurassic World is still a very enjoyable comfort game and pretty short in length at about ten hours in total. But when it comes to comparing Jurassic World to other Lego adaptations, it is definitely a more middling entry, but still maintains the underlying Lego formula which has the Lego games consistently fun and enjoyable experiences Even if the ever so slight changes in game design within Lego Jurassic World brought about the films don’t bring the Lego formula to new heights.