Jurassic World Aftermath Collection review for PS VR2

Disclaimer: I have not played any of the other iterations of Jurassic World Aftermath, so this review for the PS VR2 will not be comparing it to them, I will be reviewing it entirely on its own merit.

Alongside the launch of the PlayStation VR2 came a plethora of releases, both new and old. Jurassic World Aftermath is one of the older titles, ported to the PS VR2 as a day 1 title. Having never played it on the Quest, or the non-VR version on the Switch, I was excited to check it out for the first time.

The first thing to note here is the style in which the game is rendered. It is a cell-shaded, comic-book-style approach to visuals as opposed to a more photorealistic rendering of the dinosaurs. While my guess is that this was done to allow the game to run properly on the Quest, it does leave a good bit to be desired in my opinion. Seeing the cell-shaded dinosaurs definitely lacks the punch that a photorealistic dinosaur does. A good comparison in my mind is the Jurassic World Evolution experience on the Quest. While that is simply a short ?movie? that you experience as opposed to an actual game, it shows just how impressive fully realized VR dinosaurs can be. Aftermath simply fails to live up to that same level of wonder, and I found myself constantly wishing for something more.

The gameplay is a pretty straightforward hide-and-seek mechanic with no combat. You traverse the levels solving minor puzzles and constantly looking out for/hiding from (mostly) velociraptors. The occasional T-Rex encounter spices things up a bit, but the majority of the game sticks with that same cat-and-mouse with the raptors. If you?re spotted, you?re dead. There is really no in-between to be found. This makes for a consistent, if not overly engaging gameplay experience.

While I found the experience to be a fine one, I grew pretty tired of it throughout the course of its six-ish hour runtime. The repetition, lack of environmental interaction outside of scripted objects, and overall environmental design wore out their welcome after the first three hours. By the time the game starts to really pick up (in what I believe was originally labeled ?Part 2? and sold as DLC), I was burnt out.

As for the VR-specific elements, particularly comfort settings, Jurassic World Aftermath has a robust selection of settings and options to make the experience as easy to stomach as possible. As someone who has been playing VR pretty regularly since it became readily available, I typically turn most comfort options off and play with smooth turning, smooth movement, and no peripheral blurring/darkening, for the most ?realistic? experience possible. For review though, I always make sure to check the settings available for folks who need them. Jurassic World Aftermath offers several pre-set options for your comfort, but also allows fine-tuning within those settings as well if you prefer specific things.

None of this is to say that Jurassic World Aftermath Collection is bad, it is simply ?fine?, but at launch when held up against the likes of Horizon: Call of the Mountain and Resident Evil Village, fine is not enough to keep me invested. Aftermath honestly feels like a proof of concept, not a full-fledged game, and that is definitely a disappointment for something I was pretty excited about at first.

Coatsink provided us with a Jurassic World Aftermath Collection PS5 code for review purposes.