A promising license. Re-incarnated dinosaurs. Danger.
How can you go wrong? Jurassic Park: The DNA Factor lets you know. It's a
complete and total disaster, a massive step down from the other Jurassic Park
games on the Game Boy Advance. DNA Factor has unlucky players who are actually playing this game chasing after DNA that was dropped from a plane, which crashed during a storm. Now, you need to be enlightened on a few things... first, DNA consists of pretty little blinking dots that you must collect in order to complete a strand. Unbroken glowing green jars, which are found to exit the levels, look like they've been take right out of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II the movie. It seems that's all you need to know to become a forensic scientists these days.
This DNA is collected during side-scrolling stages in which you take control of an Alan Grant look-alike who must collect these blinking dots. "Hey, it's like Pac-Man!" you say. Well, no, not quite. See, you're allowed to move in and out of the screen on 3 levels to collect the DNA. Problem being that there are no shadows to tell you exactly WHERE these dots are, so a dot, err, DNA piece on the lowest level looks just like one on the highest. Also, why would you venture into a carnivorous dinosaur-filled jungle without a gun?? This idiot can't even punch! Oh, but he can jump kick. Yeah, the jump kick. Just what everyone would do when facing down a raptor.
Once you've found the complete vial of DNA, it's off to the lab to complete the strand. It seems that all you need to do to identify DNA is play Space Invaders! . Your little ship at the bottom of the screen fires off different colored pieces of the strand and it's up to you to fill in the missing spots by "shooting" them into the proper place. But beware, there are some bigger dots that can attack your ship and end you game with one hit.
If there is one thing going for this game, it's the sound. Our beloved Konami licensed the MusyX sound system for this one and it sounds amazing. The music harkens back to the SNES days gone by, but it doesn't make up for the rest of this junk.
Even a 4-year old will know this entire thing is a farce. If you want to hear it, maybe you can talk one of your friends into wasting their money on it. Try saying this: "I read this really awesomely written review on Digital Press by this really cool Matt guy, and he said that this is the best sounding GBA game ever! You should buy it!" Of course, make sure you really don't like this person THAT much. They may never speak to you again.
