Trespasser: The Lost World - Jurassic Park

Moby ID: 1048

Description official descriptions

Trespasser uses the Jurassic Park license and takes place on "Site B", the Costa Rican Island from the Lost World where Jurassic Park's dinosaurs were originally created and, following the island's abandonment, allowed to breed out of control.

Players take the role of Anne, the sole survivor of an airplane crash who finds herself stranded in the Lost World, and who needs to find a way off the island (or at least avoid becoming a dinosaur meal). Throughout the journey, Anne will be accompanied by the disembodied voice of John Hammond, the founder of Jurassic Park.

Trespasser does not feature some of the typical first-person shooter interface elements. There are no health bars, ammo displays, or power-ups, and players can't pick things up just by walking over them. Instead, interaction with the environment is done using Anne's arm, which can be moved around using the mouse and which can be used to pick up items, throw rocks, push down crates or wield weapons. Anne's voice gives a rough estimate of the amount of ammo left whenever she wield a gun, and Anne has a heart-tattoo that fills with red as she becomes more damaged.

The game also features a 'realistic' physics model where every movable object can be knocked over, roll around, or thrown in a manner related to their size and weight. This also means players can crush some of the smaller dinosaurs with heavy crates, and can even use a rock to bash their heads in. The dinosaurs in the game are only trying to survive instead of existing solely for the purpose of killing Anne in wave after wave. Thus they run away when injured and will often attack other dinosaurs rather than the player.

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Credits (Windows version)

134 People (78 developers, 56 thanks) · View all

Voice Talent
Associate Producer
Executive Producer
Product Marketing Manager
Production Coordinatior
Lead Porgrammers
Designer
Programmers
Shell & Setup Programming
Special Thanks To
Additional Programming
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 59% (based on 32 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.2 out of 5 (based on 45 ratings with 10 reviews)

I wouldn't buy it for 5 dollars...

The Good
Just about the only thing I liked about the game was the novelty of the arm technology which directly correlates to your mouse.

The Bad
The aformentioned "novelty" of the hand-mouse gimmick became all too cumbersome when it was crunchtime and the raptors started running at me, it took me forever to aim my weapon well enough to actually HIT that speeding raptor and by that time he was all over me.

And speaking of weapons... I thought it really stunk that there wasn't such a thing as a RELOAD to the designers of this horrid game. Even if I found the exact same weapon as I was already carrying it would not allow me to transfer ammunition or to carry any in my pocket so i'd drop two good rounds in one revolver for one loaded with six.

Also, it appears dinosaurs are made of soild, bulletproof steel because it will amaze you just how many rounds it can take to down even the smallest Dino and then, you're out of ammo and must proceed to throw rocks at those mean raptors (ooh rocks, aren't you frightened? Didn't think so.) and of course the character you play has the worst hand-eye coordination on earth and has never heard of leaning her arm back to gather more momentum, making your throwing attempts pathetic and futile.

And lastly, probably the thing i hated most about Trespasser was it's ludicrous hardware demands and it's absolutely horrid 3d engine. I was playing on my Pentium 2 333mhz with a Diamond Monster Fusion 3d card (which was high technology at the time.) and my framerate was in the single-digits most of the time, not to mention that it just plain looked bad. And to make things worse 3d acceleration actually LOWERS the image quality when turned on, so the only person who could possibly run this game smoothly was someone with about a 700mhz AMD Processor (because the unusual 3DNow! technology is endorsed with Trespasser) and Dual Voodoo 3 boards set in SLI mode and at the time this game was released neither existed.

I found myself throwing this game away the next week in disgust, DO NOT BUY IT!

The Bottom Line
A really lousy attempt for Dreamworks Entertainment to cash in on The Lost World's financial sucess.

Windows · by Andrew Romig (10) · 2000

The Arm Simulator

The Good
A very novel, and potentially intelligent game idea. The physics at work here can be absolutely astounding, and I spent a large amount of time at the beginning of the game just holding onto a barrel and rolling it around on its base. There were probably Raptors watching from the bushes, wondering where I had gotten the hallucinogens. Also, the graphics are simply astounding with the right hardware.

The Bad
That noted, I DIDN'T have the right hardware. At first the game's graphics only played in a weird kind of negative color scheme, and I had to reinstall. Second, the arm controls are so awkward that by the time I can usually level a gun at a charging dino, I've poked him in the eye with it and I have to resort to slapping him into submission. At one point I gave up on playing the game and just tried to get the girl to slap herself, then spending an hour playing "Jurassic Park: Contortionist" and reducing the once proud Minnie Driver into a twisty circus freak. Another gripe is with layout. Why are there a selection of guns at the beginning of each area that would make Heston proud? Did the guys from "Deer Hunter" get bored with the ten point bucks and decide to find themselves some bigger game and just left their spares lying around? And for such an advanced physics engine, why is it possible to die when you just jump off the back of a pickup truck? Granted, I had one cool moment in this game when I slammed a door on a dino's head, but after that I just started to notice that they all looked a little embarrased to be appearing in this game. And that life meter! "Oh, 'scuse me, I need to check my left boob to see how hurt I am. Just wait a sec' while I pop this baby out..." I felt dirty. The Lara Croft thing no-no me.

The Bottom Line
I didn't have to pay for this game and I still felt raped. Dreamworks is the Extreme Headgames of the adventure genre, and we should wait for somebody competent to pick up this great idea.

Windows · by Vance (94) · 2000

Clumsy lady simulator

The Good
Lots of weapons, cool locations.

The Bad
You ALWAYS drop things. Very bad physics cause some wacky stuff to happen- such as boxes rolling into each other then blasting out into the air. Or trying to pick up a rifle from under a truck only to be thrust several miles up and left to fall to your doom!!! Also you move VERY slow and you can hardly navigate through most areas. Mindless keycard-hunting and really long load times even on newer computers!!

The Bottom Line
A good idea poorly executed... VERY poorly executed. The idea was to give the player total interaction with the environment- allowing them to pick up, move and manipulate almost any object in the game world, from weapons to rocks, 2x4's, sticks, crates, etc. However, your character seems to have a butter finger grip and, therefore, she constantly drops things forcing you to pick them up repeatedly. Combine this with annoying Minnie Driver voice overs and some of the worst physics ever and you have Trespasser. Avoid this game.

Windows · by Ben Fahy (92) · 2001

[ View all 10 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Check out this excellent Let's Play! Mobygamesisreanimated (11069) Sep 17, 2009

Trivia

Basketball

Project leader Seamus Blackley and designers Austin Grossman, Andrew Haydn Grant and Richard Wyckoff had previously worked for Looking Glass studios. Trespasser has an early incarnation of Looking Glass' traditional basketball court, at the beginning of the 'town' level, complete with a ball you can dunk into one of the nets.

Development

A few months after release, Wyckoff gave a revealing interview to Gamasutra, in which he admitted that the game's production had been beset by problems. In particular, flaws in the physics engine made it almost impossible for the player to stack objects without them sliding off each other. As a consequence, although Trespasser was often stereotyped as a game consisting of crate-stacking puzzles, the final product features no crate-stacking at all; you only have to knock crates over, or climb crates which have, conveniently, already been stacked. The complex, processor-heavy mathematics ensured that the physics-based dinosaurs - which had strictly limited AI, and were added only a few months before release - could only be used sparingly, hence the lack of packs.

The game was designed entirely using 3D Studio Max as a level editor. It was designed before 3D graphics cards were ubiquitous, and has some clever tricks to speed up software rendering; specifically, distance objects (and not-so-distant objects!) are rendered as 2D bitmaps, which flick into 3D when you approach.

Probably because they wanted to ship the game together with The Lost World movie many features had to be cut and the game was released unfinished in 1998. This is the reason why it often feels more like a gaming experiment than a finished release. Close to Trespasser's release, some sources said computer technology wasn't advanced enough to run it decently.

Music

The music had to be written from scratch, as the licence only allowed use of the 'Jurassic Park' name and a few story and character elements; no sound effects or music. It remains the only part of the game to be universally admired. Dreamworks Interactive used several music scores from Trespasser in their next game, Undying. This explains the odd fact that Undying's boss battle music is so heavy on jungle drums and elephant trumbones.

Physics

This game proved that technology didn't cause gameplay. The engine had very difficult and never-seen-before features. like every object had its own material and weight and on this way collisions could be calculated very realistic. Also the sounds in this game aren't pre-programmed as some sources say, but they are real-time-calculated based on the speed of collision and the materials of the objects.

You were carrying a body with the camera all the time time which you could see when you looked down, but then you could also see you're actually too close to the ground which means this woman doesn't have legs below her breasts.

User interface

The game has no in-game user interface. But it still uses a traditional health system and presents Anne's health in form of a tattoo on her breasts.

Awards

  • Computer Gaming World
    • April 1999 (Issue #177) – Coaster of the Year

Information also contributed by Alan Chan, Ashley Pomeroy, Erwin Bergevoet, Lumpi and Zack Green

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Alan Chan.

Additional contributors: Kasey Chang, AdminBB, Lumpi, Patrick Bregger, Sun King.

Game added March 15, 2000. Last modified March 3, 2024.