Bytes & Flops 1.12.12: Jurassic: The Hunted

Posted by Vince Osorio on 01.12.2012

The budget dinosaur first person shooter that no one was waiting for bombed in its 2009 release to the surprise of no one. What the foxtrot is Jurassic: The Hunted, and is it a better game than it's credited for?

Sometimes there are moments that you'll encounter throughout your life that'll just stick with you, no matter what. Maybe it's the delicious and overpriced roast beef sandwich you had at the deli near the airport. Maybe it's the red dress your ex-girlfriend wore days before you broke up. It could be the first time you wished upon a shooting star, even.



For Vince Osorio, Jurassic: The Hunted has one of those moments. There's little to no build-up, and it comes in mere minutes after the opening cutscene, but it is a brief interval of time that will forever haunt me for the rest of my eternity.

Unlike nonsensical, silly catchphrases like "Where's the beef" and "Dy-no-mite!", the phrase introduced in Jurassic: The Hunted stands the test of time. It's glorious, egnmatic and truly one-of-a-kind. It has forever etched its presence into my lexicon, and for this reason, and one reason only, I have designated Jurassic: The Hunted as one of the most important games I have ever played.

Without further ado, I give you..."What the Foxtrot?" (starts at 2:48 into the video)





What the foxtrot.

WHAT.
THE.
FOXTROT.

Somebody over at Cauldron HQ (the developers of Jurassic: The Hunted as well as other budget first-person-shooters like Secret Service and The History Channel: Civil War) came up with this genius algmation of "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot" and "What the "...you know. What the foxtrot. It's nothing short of genius, and I'm most certainly not making fun of the budget, sub SyFy original movie writing or horrendous voice acting present in Jurassic. Definitely not.



Ok, I totally am. But that's really half the charm of this budget-ass budget retail game. Jurassic: The Hunted is a truly dumb B-movie that someone made into a video game instead. Someone just said: "Let's make a game where you can shoot or punch dinosaurs in the face", and thus, Jurassic: The Hunted was created.

Apparently there's a plot in Jurassic: The Hunted.
No, seriously, there's a story for this game.

I honestly couldn't be bothered to pay attention to it while playing the game, but there's set-up as to why you're shooting dinosaurs (and thank you Wikipedia for providing such thorough info). The main protagonist, Navy Seal Craig Dylan (or Dylan, for short) travels with his buddy "Rock" and a young scientist named Sabrina Sayrus above the Bermuda Triangle in search for a Dr. James Sayrus (I'm pretty sure the fact that the name "Sayrus" and the word "Saurus" aren't unintentional and coincidental, but you never know), who disappeared weeks early. After being sucked into an interdimensional portal, the team is separated on a secluded island thousands of years in the past, when dinosaurs existed. The team must regroup, find James and travel back to the present before impeding death consumes them. Also, did I mention dinosaurs?


HAHAHAHAHA nerd!


At least they tried to give you a reason to kill dinosaurs in a video game, so that should be commended, surely. And Dylan isn't a bad protagonist so much as he's just poorly written, poorly acted and all-around unintentionally hilarious to look at and listen to. But again, that's the charm of Jurassic: The Hunted. It's stupid, and doesn't really know how stupid it is, and that's just totally amusing to me.



The game itself plays exactly like Call of Duty, which isn't surprising considering that Jurassic was published by Activision a mere week before Modern Warfare 2 shipped to store shelves. You gotta beat the competition to the punch, even when the competition is released by the same company. But seriously, the game is basically Call of Dinos: right trigger to shoot, left to use ironsights, click in the left thumbstick to sprint, etc. Only differences are that the dinosaurs don't shoot back (There exists a wholly different game where the dinos DO shoot back, and I'll cover that next week), the right thumbstick provides a melee attack that doesn't count as an automatic kill, and you have an "adrenaline" meter. Basically, the "adrenaline" meter slows down time and gives you a chance to focus your attacks more accordingly, even giving you x-ray vision and allowing you to shoot the dinosaurs (and scorpions and other deadly creatures on the island) in the heart, the brain, or other internal glands. It's novel, but ultimately pointless because your actions are slowed down as well, defeating the purpose of the slow-mo. It'd be as if Max Payne shot as fast in "Bullet Time" as his opponents did- the game would be half as fun.



With that said, the shooting is totally solid. It's significantly satisfying to take down multiple dinosaurs with a shotgun. But that's really all you end up doing in the super short campaign. Shoot shoot shoot through visually striking but cramped pathways and jungles, sometimes hole up in a turret, sometimes hole up in a camp and play a watered down, simplified version of the "Zombies" mode in the Call of Duty games but with raptors and pterodactyls, and sometimes grab a bazooka and fire unlimited rockets in a Spinosaurus' eyeball. And then the characters walk into a portal and the game ends! I, quite literally, said "what the foxtrot" at the end of the maybe 4 hour campaign while seeing the credits roll after an amusingly abrupt and open-ended conclusion. But again, that's totally all a part of Jurassic's charm. Yeah, the framerate is often terrible. Sure, you're asked to do the same things over and over again throughout the single-player missions. Absolutely, the campaign length is insultingly short and only stretched out because of some poor hit detection, bad checkpoints and some truly heinous and unskippable "arena" style battles where enemies keep pouring in for an inordinate amount of time until you die or the game just transports you to another area. (That was a mouthful.)

But Jurassic: The Hunted is supposed to be dumb, probably. I think. That's why I enjoyed it, anyway.

And this game failed because?

This game was never going to succeed, ever. Jurassic: The Hunted was announced in a press release by Activision and was sent to retail shelves a few weeks after said press release made the rounds on the internet. Considering Activision was gearing up for the launch of Modern Warfare 2 which ended up having the biggest entertainment launch of all time (whose record was broken when Black Ops came out, then whose record was broken again when Modern Warfare 3 was released), I feel as if Activision made a wise decision in dumping this one unceremoniously.
Can't expect much from the guys who brought us Soldier of Fortune: Payback anyway.

(Also, for some reason, Jurassic: The Hunted was not only an Xbox 360 and PS3 game, but it also saw simultaneous release on the Wii and the PS2. The PS2! Seriously!)

Jurassic: The Hunted is uninspired, unoriginal, sometimes tedious, short, looks pretty busted and has some of the worst voice acting and writing I've heard in a video game. But I think that's why I love it. It's one of the few games out there that strikes a balance of being "so bad it's good". I will heartily recommend this game for years to come. Whether that's an ironic recommendation or not, I can't necessarily confirm, but sometimes you just gotta bite the bullet and say "What the foxtrot?".

Play it or Skip it?- Play it!