Jurrassic Park: Warpath Official Trailer (1999, Dreamworks Interactive/Electronic Arts)
7Warpath: Jurassic Park is a fighting video game released on the PlayStation console in 1999. It is a spin-off of the films Jurassic Park and The Lost World: Jurassic Park, in turn adapted from bestselling novels written by Michael Crichton. It was developed by DreamWorks Interactive and Black Ops Entertainment. Warpath is backwards compatible with the PlayStation 3.
Warpath is a fighting game. The player can choose a dinosaur to fight with against other dinosaurs. The player starts with eight dinosaurs, including Acrocanthosaurus, Ankylosaurus, Stygimoloch, and Styracosaurus. Six additional dinosaurs can be unlocked in Arcade mode. Each dinosaur has its own array of fighting techniques and style.
Various arenas based on scenes from the films are shown in the game, such as the T.Rex enclosure from Jurassic Park and the S.S. Venture deck from The Lost World. Some arenas feature destructible objects such as boxes, which will hurt the dinosaurs when they break them. Optionally, various edible creatures (goats, humans, dogs, and Compsognathus) will scurry across the arena, partially replenishing lost health when eaten or killed by one of the fighters.
Warpath was met with mixed reception upon release, as GameRankings gave it a score of 57.36%. The game was compared unfavorably to Primal Rage by GameSpot and IGN.
AllGame praised the game's dinosaur animations, and most of its interactive level designs for their resemblance to locations that were featured in the films, but criticized other levels for their "bland building textures and rushed backgrounds." AllGame found the gameplay to be "downright sluggish" and considered the music to be "too low and emotionless," and opined that cutscenes for each dinosaur "would've been a nice extra for the game's overall feel and replay value." GameSpot also praised the dinosaurs, but criticized the levels for glitching: "Surfaces buckle and distortion abounds as the PlayStation struggles to keep all this geometry under control."
Game Informer wrote, "Graphically, it's not a bad game. Unfortunately, the concept leaves much to be desired," noting that the gameplay "gets old rather quickly when you realize that the AI of the game is about the size of a peanut, and you can finish it with two moves." GamePro praised the graphics and sound, but criticized the game's "complex button patterns," writing, "By the time you master the combos, you'll be in the mood to play something else."
IGN criticized the game's dinosaurs for their lack of size disparity: "The T-Rex is a dwarf, while raptors have become mega-raptors of roughly the same size as the beast who bit regular raptors in half in the film." IGN also criticized the game's AI, bad collision detection, and noted that each dinosaur played similarly to one another. However, IGN praised the game's graphics and levels.