[Note: For whatever reason, I can't seem to find an entry on Brickset for the PC version of this game, which is the one that I played. I can't imagine that there would be too many salient differences but I honestly wouldn't know. Anyway, this review concerns the PC version of this game.]

It's practically a cliche to open with something along the lines of not having nearly as much time to play video games as in the past, but I imagine that it remains a truism for we who are pretending to be adults and having to divide our time among various real-world responsibilities and our plastic toys; once you throw video games into that mix, the whole thing can spiral out of orbit. In spite of this, I always try and see if I can squeeze in a LEGO game every now and then, simply because I have such comfortable expectations of them and am rarely disappointed.

LEGO Jurassic World is the next entry in a long line of licensed theme-related video games from Travellers' Tales, and they have the entire enterprise down to a science. In this one, you play through the plots of the four movies in the Jurassic Park franchise - the titular Jurassic Park, its eyebrow-raising sequel, The Lost World, the highly forgettable Jurassic Park III, and its shiniest newcomer, Jurassic World itself. A mild variation here is that you have the option of starting either with the first Jurassic Park movie or with the latest one, but of course the end result is the same: you play through the story, unlock a whole bunch of characters, then wile away the hours hunting down Gold Bricks and Red Bricks and all manner of collectibles that the vast worlds are littered with. In this regard, the completion of the story mode accounts for maybe about 25% of the time that you'll spend with this game, assuming that you're interested enough to go look for arbitrary things hidden by the designers throughout the islands.

The story modes are nothing terribly unusual, and all four follow the story of their respective movies quite faithfully. Of course, the entire charm is seeing iconic locations and scenes made out of LEGO, and the plotting itself is frequently interspersed with brief visual gags which are actually cute enough to be funny as opposed to being annoying. A particular running joke in this game is that characters often meet rather violent ends in the Jurassic Park franchise, which of course is a dogmatic no-no as far as LEGO is concerned; thus, the writers for the game went to some lengths to show that, hey, this-and-that minifig wasn't actually brutally torn apart by raptors or devoured by a Mosasaur - see? She's alright! Even if you are familiar with all of the movies, the story mode does have some surprises that play on your expectations, which makes it fresh.

The bulk of the game, then, is the Free Play mode. Again, as is typical of all LEGO games, there are a number of special abilities that only certain characters have, including highly specific ones that are only unlocked at the very end of the story mode. What then happens is that you are granted access to the entire overworld map, as well as the ability to replay any of the story chapters but with the character(s) of your choice. There are various puzzles and hidden things scattered throughout each level and the overworld, though none of these is particularly hard to get to owing to the ostensible target audience that the game is going for. By and large, these collectibles are Gold Bricks, as well as Red Bricks - which unlock cheats - and other characters who can be "bought" and then utilised in the game.

In short, there is a vast number of things to find, and none of them have any real "purpose" since they are mostly endpoints in and of themselves. There are some things that require a certain number of Gold Bricks, but beyond that, you don't really get anything tangible beyond increasing your total percentage of the game's completion. In this way, it's sort of reminiscent of Banjo-Kazooie and other early 3D platformers that were less goal oriented and more about exploring and collecting stuff, and given that that genre is nearly dead now, it is kind of nice to see that the LEGO games carry it on in a very casual way. However, if this isn't your idea of a good time in a video game, the Free Play mode will offer you very little, and thus you'll find that most of the game isn't really worth your while.

The one gimmick that is unique to LEGO Jurassic World is, of course, the presence of dinosaurs - and not just them being there, either, but being able to use them. If you're interested in Jurassic Park, it means you're interested in dinosaurs, and if you're interested in dinosaurs, it means that you want to BE a dinosaur (maybe). This game lets you do that, and I was very pleased to see that it lets you play as a dinosaur nearly everywhere in Free Play, which is awesome. Now, of course, the largest dinosaurs (T-Rex) can only be used in confined areas, but smaller ones like raptors are able to explore the various levels and even have actual uses as opposed to being props or gimmicks. Traveller's Tales was very conscientious about its inclusion of playable dinosaurs and I salute them for that, because running things down as a Triceratops feels great.

Nearly every LEGO video game review will say that each new LEGO game is more or less the same as the last, and, well, that's true. But that's not a helpful statement if you've never played a LEGO video game before, and I think that this is a good a game as any to start with if you're a fan of Jurassic Park and/or dinosaurs. It's good for playing in short bursts and is the opposite of taxing, and the ability to explore everything once you've been the story is very fun. However, if the idea of running around and collecting things for no real narrative purpose doesn't appeal to you, then neither will this game.

Finally: this game will make you wish that physical LEGO brachiosauri and ankylosauri were a real thing.