Jurassic World Aftermath: Collection
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Critic Reviews for Jurassic World Aftermath: Collection
Jurassic World Aftermath Collection brings the tense experience to Switch mostly intact, but the Quest version - and the upcoming PSVR2 port - remains the best way to play.
While Jurassic World Aftermath Collection has some strong points, it doesn't quite do the game justice like it did in VR.
While younger folks might still get a kick from its occasional scares and familiar locations, Jurassic World Aftermath Collection is a desperately linear adventure that struggles to break free of its humble technical origins and fails to both do proper justice to the setting of its source material and the PSVR2 hardware itself.
Jurassic World Aftermath's VR heritage looms large in this Switch port. Sections that no doubt feel thrilling in the confined space of a VR headset feel repetitive and dull on a flat screen. As a result, Jurassic World Aftermath feels like a walking-sim with some survival horror sections. The lack of enemy variety, the overly simplistic puzzles, and some frustrating stealth sections prevent Aftermath from staking its claim as the apex predator of its genre.
We love the first Jurassic Park film, and the other five to varying degrees. Luckily for us, then, that despite its name, Jurassic World Aftermath generally takes after the original rather than any of the sequels, although the Switch version simply isn't the best way to play it. If you have an Oculus headset, do yourself a favour and play the way it was meant to be – fully immersed in the soundscape of a ruined Jurassic World theme park while velociraptors stalk you. If you don't have one, Aftermath on Switch certainly does enough for fans of the series to take a look, but the short experience grows a little too tedious by the time the credits roll without the immersion of VR to keep you on your toes.
Jurassic World: Aftermath Collection is a decent experience for those looking for a horror-like game of cat and mouse set in the Jurassic Park universe. It does a decent job building tension with its gameplay, its surprisingly competent raptor AI, and its unique ability to switch up the puzzles. That said, deaths can feel quite cheap, especially when the game has you die for reasons you can't understand (I'm telling you, I was completely under that desk before that raptor came in!). It also drags on a bit too long and doesn't change things up nearly enough, making the experience become quite predictable. Jurassic World: Aftermath Collection provides you with some fun but ultimately a mixed time.
Despite having to adapt to Switch, as it comes from VR devices, Aftermath Collection is a short but interesting experience and we wish that the developers may have the chance to work further on this idea in a new episode, in the coming future.
Review in Italian | Read full review
VR really makes the Jurassic World: Aftermath Collection experience enjoyable, and while the move to the Switch isn't terrible, it still loses something in the process. The slow walk and run speeds make for a sluggish-feeling experience, while the controls feel awkward when compared to other first-person games on the system. The stealth experience shines at first, but the repetition makes it dull by the halfway mark. The story is fine but doesn't have the chops to keep you glued from beginning to end. The effort is admirable, but unless you're a big "Jurassic World" fan, you're better off waiting for a VR headset before experiencing this one.
