Jurassic Fairview Park

JURASSIC FAIRVIEW PARK: 87%

SHOULD I READ THIS?
Yes, but only if you have lots of time to kill. And if you know where the hint guide is.
Preview: A suburban mall cult has summoned dinosaurs through a portal, and only you can stop them!

=SPOILERS BELOW=

RATINGS:

Basic Plot & Coherence: 5/5
This game gets a 6, not because cult-summoned dinosaurs dominating a suburban mall is a brilliant and subtle concept, but because it’s executed so well. The game maintains a light humorous atmosphere, and treats the dinosaurs with tongue-in-cheek narration. I wouldn’t quite call this a “lol random” game, as it does have a definate plot and logically foreshadowed puzzles, but it does have elements of lol random games, particularly with the narration style and the way the various characters act. It’s executed very well, however, unlike a lot of bad lol random type games, the jokes make sense, and don’t shove themselves at the reader. The plot itself is pretty simple: You have to close the dinosaur-summoning portal using a neutron bomb found in a dumpster behind the mall.

Characters & Development: 3/4 (usually /5)
All the characters serve their purpose (this isn't a story about characterization), which is why it's rated as high as it is, but it doesn’t go the extra mile.

Grammar: 5/5
I didn’t see any mistakes.
Mastery of Language: 1.5/3
At times the language can be quite humorous.

Mechanics & Coding: 5/5
Probably the game’s biggest strength. For one thing, the size of the game and the amount of places you can go is staggaring. Even just the starting mall is enormous, and there are three or four other hubbubs of activity that you can find. The coding makes sense, I didn’t find any glitches, at least, not any unintentional ones. The use of items is very clever, and, unlike most item-heavy games, I found that if you were paying attention, which item to use in a specific situation became clear. The coding for the trigger of the climax is clever as well.

Branching: 2/2 (usually /3)
It’s clearly a linear puzzle game, but there’s still several different endings (I haven’t found all of them).

Player Options/fair choice: 2/3
There are a couple places where you couldn’t reasonably expect to get the answer to the puzzle without trying just about everything.

Comments: The amount of easter eggs in here is ridiculous. It’s a simply enormous game.

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE:
I played through on my own for a while, then cracked, and took the walkthrough. I’ve found endings 1 and 2, but am still missing 3 and 4. As a die-hard completionist, this grates on me. I must return once I have free time.

CONCLUSION: 23.5/27 = 87.04%

Jurassic Fairview Park is one of my favorite story games on this site! I got Ending 1 on this run, but I've played this game a ton of times in the past and have gotten all the endings before, so I will look at this game from a larger lens.

Before that, a bit of advice: Use the guide. The guide is essential to this game, you can't win or make any progress without it because there's just so many random encounters, locations, people, and things to do that you will get easily frustrated without a concrete plan.

Now on to the review itself.

I've always been partial to the puzzles and games category of chooseyourstory.com. After all, it was my first exposure to interactive fiction and this site. I remember not really wanting to read that much so I would play these games in this category, for the element of fun and escapism. And boy is Jurassic Fairview Park a shining example of this. Although I've eventually ventured out to read stories from other categories, and then create my own account, the Puzzles and Games section will always be my favorite, and this is due to games like Jurassic Fairview Park, the Walmart Game, and Finals week.

The game is almost a relic of a past, a time when chooseyourstory.com was known as myadventuregames.com. Naturally, a different type of story game was created, with less emphasis on the story and more emphasis on the game. Of course, the site itself has morphed under the leadership of several different moderators, before reaching its current form, but Jurassic Fairview Park is still just as fun and entertaining. It has a unique charm of being from a bygone era that simply can't be replicated now.

The game operates under a remarkably absurd premise. Dinosaurs have taken over the Fairview Shopping Complex because they were summoned from an alternate dimension by an evil cult, and only you can stop the cult, send back the dinosaurs, and save the day.

Although the premise can be summed up in one sentence, the world that ChocoBot and Red45 created is remarkably detailed and complex. You have the freedom to do anything you like, with the caveat that a lot of things instantly kill you. The good news though, in a remarkably retro fashion, you can be brought back simply by paying 50 cents. Considering that there are quite a few actions you can do to get money in this game repeatedly, the 50 cents are almost nothing, so you essentially get to keep on trying until you win.

Which is really good because this game is remarkably difficult. This is due to the fact that there is no inherent logic behind anything. Usually in choose your own stories, there's a certain logic behind what's a good choice and what's a bad choice. You can usually figure it out, admittedly some games attempt to subvert that expectation by intentionally making the wrong choice the right one, and the right one the wrong choice. But here, the open world format combined with some really wacky choices introduces a lot of confusion and randomness. You're essentially on your own, stumbling through a hostile world where one minute you can be eaten by a Tyrannosaurus rex while the next minute you get caught by Big Brother for stealing a pair of khakis and the world suddenly becomes 1984-esque replete with Big Brother. Since you can die at any moment, you have to keep on replaying and getting the initial amount of money you can before visiting each of the stories in the mall. At some point, you'll finally stumble onto something that can help you.

The lolrandom humor accompanies the inconsistent logic and world building in this game, ultimately being the very ingredient that provides Jurassic Fairview Park its charm. Somehow in the same world, you and your friends can go to Pakistan to catch Osama bin Laden(another reminder that this game was set in 2001), shoot Dinos with laser guns, get killed by robots in a high school(reference to another old school classic myadventuregame called "Fairview Cult"), and go on a crazy intense drug trip with a shady midget that ultimately kills you with visions of pure chaos and anarchy. Somehow none of these encounters drag the story, on the contrary you laugh even as you die and then you keep on blundering through this strangely designed world. It's almost as if the authors took everything they thought was cool and assembled it into this strange Frankenstein-esque creation of gargantuan proportions that shouldn't work according to all the rules of story games, yet somehow does because of its inherent charm.

And that brings me to the use of 4th wall breaking in this story game. It is wickedly funny how you essentially beat the game by finding a guidebook to the game inside game, while this may have become somewhat of a trope now, I imagine back in 2001 this idea was a lot less widespread, so props to the authors. It is really interesting how you essentially wander around finding items while following a guidebook given to you by the authors. You will use two guidebooks to win, one which you get immediate access to in the start, and a more advanced one which you have to place a buy-order for in the beginning and you only get access to once you reach the final stage of the game.

The authors, chocobot and Red45 did a good job of not making the items too easy to find. They spread them out, creating multiple different locations for you to explore, laugh at, and die at. There's the main mall, the shopping center, the high school, the Town center and each of these places may or may not hold the things you're looking for.

Essentially to beat this game, you need the neutron bomb, AM/FM tape player, the corresponding tapes, and something that can transport an object through space(either the archaeotropyx cause that's what I used after befriending the flying Dino with chocolate or a grinch car). Once you find these items, you have to also swing by the laser tag center since you basically get to where the cult is by shooting the Dinos in your way with lasers.

The items in this game, including the laser guns are well designed and numerous, scattered all throughout. The items aren't merely cosmetic, and depending on how you use the items, you can change the course of the story and even unlock secret endings. For instance, you could get the phone numbers of the cute girl working at the Gap cash register, or all the numbers of the Swedish Bikini Team(Yeah, this game is seriously dated but funny as hell) as long as you're willing to buy a camera costing 500 dollars, which naturally forces you to die over and over in a Groundhog Day-esque fashion until you get the requisite money. Items can also be used to ease your way through difficult story moments, for instance I think there's like smart pills that allow you to skip past some obstacles in the final level, but I haven't done that yet, I beat the game grinding through it. You also get a laser-pack to help you with the final stage of the game, but the authors cleverly gave you only 7 good shots, and sometimes the gun doesn't work so you can't overuse the gun and you have to think a little out of the box.

There are some elements of the game that are very well-designed in that seemingly inconsequential details such as the radio frequency later come up. You have to be a very exploratory person who's content to immerse themselves and simply enjoy the world, absorbing things as you wander around. In addition to items, you also have to interact with as many people as possible(Hint: The Amish Dude for starters, there's so many others of course) because people will reveal valuable information through dialogue. This is part of the fun, so this isn't a game you can just try and get over with as fast as possible. If you're simply trying to get this over with, you will not have a good time because you will get lost, and quickly frustrated. At the same time, other elements of the game are simply extremely lucky instances of deus-ex-machina, but the game is really silly, so that doesn't take away from the experience.

The map of this game is quite expansive, and you'll spend a lot of time blundering here and there until you get a sense of where things are. You'll have to return to places quite a bit, you don't just go somewhere once and then you're done with it, and there are a lot of red herrings, so by the end of it, you might spend 15 minutes to 30 minutes just wandering the streets of this world. The game would be massively improved if there was a map of locations where you click on a location and get rerouted there, but that possible addition ultimately takes away from the old school charm of blundering here and there until you figure it out. I'd highly recommend constructing a hand-drawn map so you can actually go from place to place in a timely manner.

There are a quite a few bugs and mistakes in this game, that at times, can distract and detract from gameplay. For instance, during a fight sequence, the game will immediately prompt you as dead, but you can still use your item to kill the dinos. But the game thinks you're dead until you use the item and if you click the link, you're immediately rerouted. There is also a link that simply says "Go back to Robin Hood and hope George will finish these links later." This is a testament to a time when this site was still a casual game-site created by college friends to goof off and have fun with stories, before it became a little less forgiving with mistakes like these.

Overall this story game is a masterclass in item-usage, lol random humor, extensive world building, and Macguffin-finding(there's 3 or 4 main macguffins to find). I had a million laughs and now feel like a million bucks after this round, so I'm going to give this game an 8/8 for a job well done(which is making you laugh and have fun). Freakin brilliant.

Some of the comments seemed exaggerated or unrealistic. I think this would benefit from a once over and a outward perspective.

Couldn’t really get anywhere

This was super fun! It was a bit frustrating at times where I felt like I was at a dead-end so I did take a peek or two at the walkthrough. I managed to get endings 1, 2, and 3. I wish I got all of them, but maybe another time. There were many many mistakes, but I think the humor and sheer length and complexity of it makes up for the slip ups.

Well, I usually hate the "LOL! Totes so random!" games, but then, I guess this is the original "LOL" Totes so random!" game, and I can respect that.

I did actually enjoy this game. Not sure why, but I just found exploring the weird world and gathering a vast collection of pointless crap to be a load of fun (until I got bored and used the guide.)

I appreciate this game has a lot to be explored, and since so few people have completed it, I do wonder if everything in this game has actually been discovered. I found endings 1, 2 and 4, but not ending 3. It makes me wonder how many endings this game actually has. I should explore it again someday.

So, to sum up... I generally prefer puzzle and exploration games where every puzzle has a set answer, every item has a set use, and you're not just gathering a bunch of random crap with no idea whether or not the shit you pick up will actually ever be useful... But I liked this game anyway! Lots of fun. ^_^

This was amazing, found endings 1, 2 and 3.

This is a very extensive puzzle game and I loved it! It was obvious there was a lot of effort put into this. Only 41 people have finished this game (as of the time of writing), so I felt pretty accomplished once I had completed the game.
There were a few spelling and grammar mistakes, but nothing that made the story unreadable.
Overall, I'd say that it's not the greatest piece of literature, but it is one of the best games on this site.

Ball bustingly hard game. Read Alexp's walkthrough here, for those of you who can't beat it: http://chooseyourstory.com/forums/the-parlor-room/message/2945

Now I got ending 2 (I'm only making these comments because supposedly not many people have beaten the game