REVIEW / Jurassic World Aftermath Collection (Switch)

If you were one of those Jurassic Park/dinosaur fans that were bummed out because the two-part games of Jurassic World Aftermath were only released via the virtual reality consoles, you can now breathe a sigh of relief. If you own a Nintendo Switch, you can now play the complete series without those fancy virtual goggles or equipment. What’s even better is that you can now play it on the go.

Jurassic Park Aftermath Collection is set between the two newer movies Jurassic World and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. You assume the role of Sam, a security employee who is sent to Isla Nublar to investigate what is going on. He is helped by Dr. Mia Everrett, a geneticist who spent most of her life and career on the island, but she is indisposed and can only assist him by giving him directives. Unfortunately, those directions almost always will lead Sam into encounters with the dinosaurs, specifically, the velociraptors, dilophosaurus, tyrannosaurus as well as the pterodactyls.

Jurassic Park Aftermath is essentially a stealth VR game. As Sam, you will navigate through rooms and areas as well as open up new ones by interacting with the environment. While most of the interactable items are just a button press or hold away, some are little mini-games. There is one that plays like Simon Says and another is a timed-button press. The mini-games interactable items aren’t just there to waste your time, by the way; there are dinosaurs to be wary of as well.

In most of these big-space rooms, the dinosaurs are rampant. Once one catches wind of Sam, it chases after him. It is up to you to lead Sam to safety, by moving slowly and carefully without being caught. If you do get caught, you can try to get into one of the lockers and lock Sam into safety until the raptor gives up.

One of the annoyances in translating the VR version of Jurassic World Aftermath to the Switch is that running is not as easy. Not only do you have to press the control stick down, but you also have a limited amount of energy to run. Granted, I didn’t play the game on VR, but looking up videos of gameplay footage on VR gives me the assumption that you are able to just run freely without limitations. This is especially helpful when you are running away from a chasing raptor to get into a locker quickly. Frustratingly, most of the time, once I got caught by a raptor it was instant game over; I didn’t even have a good chance to run away at all.

The other thing that I can assume from playing the Switch version, is that of course, the experience with Jurassic World Aftermath will be different from playing it on a VR console. The immersion of seeing a velociraptor chasing you around a virtual room versus playing it on a handheld is going to feel different. I think it would be scarier (and ultimately cooler) playing this on VR, to be honest.

However, at least for me, since I don’t have a VR console, I’ll take what I can get. Jurassic World Aftermath Collection is a good option if you are itching to find out most of the Jurassic Park lore and only have a Switch. Also, as a bonus, at least this comes with the DLC (the last two areas of the game) in one package.

This review is based on a retail copy of the game provided by the publisher.