Hyrule Warriors: Age Of Imprisonment (Nintendo Switch, £58.99)
Verdict: War, war not jaw, jaw
The Zelda series was born from a desire to recapture lost childhood, that sense of adventure from rootling around caves and forests and riverbanks.
The Dynasty Warriors series was born from a desire to whack hundreds of baddies at once.
What happens when you mix the two?
In truth, we’ve known the answer to that question for a while now. The Hyrule Warriors games, Zelda spin-offs that blend Nintendo’s fairytale kingdom with the relentless button-mashing combat of Dynasty Warriors, launched in 2014. This new one, Age of Imprisonment, is the third.
Princess power: Zelda cuts a swathe through her enemies in Age Of Imprisonment
So it’s no surprise that this cocktail tastes pretty darn good, actually. But it does also taste different.
This isn’t obvious at first. Age Of Imprisonment seems much like the previous Hyrule Warriors release in that it’s a prequel to the most recent mainline Zelda game, 2023’s Tears Of The Kingdom. Here, you’re sent back a thousand years, as Princess Zelda herself, to the Imprisoning War that was really only mentioned in TotK.
And since this is a war, you’ve got to fight — a lot. There are hundreds of monsters on screen at once. Each swing of your weaponry sends dozens flying.
A thousand years of fighting: Princess Zelda with Rauru, the first king of Hyrule
If this sounds like a shallow form of gameplay, it’s not. There’s something terribly satisfying about such freewheeling carnage, especially as you get more characters, abilities and baddies to play with. After a while, it even gets quite strategic.
In fact, the fighting is so good that it far surpasses the story of Age Of Imprisonment. Or perhaps it’s just that the story is weaker in this sequel.
Either way, there’s now an imbalance to what used to feel like two complementary halves. The Dynasty Warriors have won out.
Jurassic World Evolution 3 (PlayStation, Xbox, PC, £49.99)
Verdict: Survival of the fittest
Despite its numerous breaches of health and safety regulations, Jurassic Park has never truly closed down. The seventh film in the series was released just a few months ago — and, even though it wasn’t very good, it made almost a billion dollars at the box office. Its producers must have been roaring all the way to the bank.
Which is why it’s strange that the Jurassic World Evolution games have existed so quietly.
Since the first one was released, in 2018, we’ve had a sequel — and now another; each steadily (and stealthily) building on the last, but without setting the internet alight. This third one isn’t just the best — it’s rather special.
Who let the raptors out? Jurassic World Evolution 3 has plenty of dinosaurs, but it also allows you to build a dino theme park, with enclosures and rides
They’re also the ideal Jurassic Park games, because they allow you to actually build the park.
You place enclosures, nurture dinosaurs, attract the paying public. And then panic when the dino doo-doo inevitably hits the fan.
Perhaps the most significant change in the third game is its greater emphasis on babies. Whereas new dinosaurs used to come into your park through the lab, they can now arrive by more, er, natural means. And this throws up some new challenges: a young T-Rex has, it turns out, very different needs to a fully grown one.
All this is taught in the game’s surprisingly eventful, globetrotting story campaign — but, really, I’m here for the mode that lets me make my own park from scratch. The results are beautiful to look at, even if they don’t always work. I mean, who let that velociraptor out of Enclosure 17?!
