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
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Lead Porgrammers
Designer
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Shell & Setup Programming
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[ 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

It's different and a bit frustrating, but I actually enjoyed it.

The Good
The game's realistic physics model was certainly interesting. Pretty much every object in the game ranging from crates, paint cans, chairs, and rocks could be picked up, thrown, pushed, knock each other over in a domino effect, and would generally be movable in a manner that you'd expect from real life. At first this was novel, but at times it could be annoying as crates you were trying to stand on fell over, or a gun you were trying to pick up rolls off a cliff because you accidentally nudged it. Not to mention the fact many of the game's "puzzles" relied heavily on the physics engine, resulting in the aforementioned crates falling over problem.

The physics engine also resulted in interesting interaction with the dinosaurs. Because the gun you hold in your hand exists as real objects in the game world, if a raptor got too close to you, it could push your gun aside with its snout as it bites you (thus messing up your aim), or even knock the gun out of your hand with its tail. Depending on how you felt about this, this could either be viewed as realistic, annoying, or both. I must admit I personally found this added some excitement to close quarter battles as you desperated groped at your feet for your gun while the raptor lunges at you. However since nine times out of ten this resulted in your death I found myself loading from saved games and killing the raptors from a distance. You could also lose your gun if you bumped your handed against something. This made moving through enclosed areas somewhat annoying.

Combat with the dinosaurs was pretty interesting. Since your character moves at a "realistic" (ie slow) speed, it is almost impossible to outrun the raptors even though they also appear somewhat sluggish. Thus combat is the only way to dissuade them from eating you. There are variety of ways to do this, the most common of which are the guns.

The game provides you with a wide variety of real-life manufactured guns, ranging from magnums, submachine guns, and even AK-47s. Guns have a fixed amount of ammo and cannot be reloaded, and so must be discarded after use (leaving you vulnerable). In some areas guns are so plentiful this really isn't a problem and you can pretty much go around wasting raptors like Turok, while in other areas (especially the last three levels) they are rather rare forcing you to make every shot count and occasionally find alternative ways to kill and/or escape the carnivores. I found this effective rather than annoying as the feeling of nakedness you get from being unarmed is quite interesting and isn't found in most other FPS. Also, there are no crosshairs and no auto-aiming, so you really need to work on using the guns to get accurate shots. I found that the guns gave a very satifying "kick" when fired, and the fact you move the gun-arm itself in combat rather than the body attached to the gun (like in most other FPS)somehow made shooting them off more satisfying. The dinosaurs spurt blood and go down quite nicely (especially if you shoot them in the head or go full auto with an AK-47), however for some reason they tend to die in a silly looking belly down pose.

Besides the guns, there are variety of fun ways to kill the dinosaurs based on the physics engine. You can drop heavy crates on them, hit them with close combat weapons such as baseball bats or two-by-fours, or even smash them over the head with a rock. It is even possible to kill a raptor by stabbing them in the head with a rifle, and while not entirely realistic it does save ammo. However the game isn't very consistant, sometimes this works and sometimes no matter how much you whack a dinosaur on the head nothing happens. And heavy objects (such as smallers crates, chairs, rocks, and barrels) have no effect if you throw them at the raptors, even if you hit them right in the head. There are a variety of places where large structures such as jeeps and trailers could be knocked over and dropped on a dinosaur, and you could also lure raptors to the edge of a cliff, dodge them as they lunge, and laugh as they roll over the edge.

The dinosaurs themselves are certainly well animated, with cool skins and skeletal animation which give them fluid movement. However there isn't much variety in the dinosaurs(seven species in total, including the ever-present raptors), and except for the raptors there are only two or three per level. It's odd how the total number of non-raptors on the island can be counted on two hands, but the raptors are everywhere. The raptors are scary enough at first, but the real show stealers are the larger carnivores which show up later on in the game, such as the Allosaurs and the seven massive (and nigh-invincible) Tyrannosaurus Rexs. Still, I would have enjoyed the game more if there were more non-hostile dinosaurs just wandering around. Also, more interaction between the dinosaurs would have been nice (occasionally a predator will attack a heribivore or another predator instead of you, but this almost never happens even when herbivores are present).

The levels are a mixed bag. Some areas are really badly designed, such as large empty outdoor areas, and a monorail where you have to leap from one unfinished section of track to the next like a Mario Brother. However other areas look quite good, such as the abandoned town and lab areas, and even some old Mayan ruins. These areas look quite decrepit and creepy, like a scene from a post-apocalyptic movie. The various ravenous raptors and occasional T-Rex patrolling the abandoned buildings also adds to the effect. Being stalked by the raptors through the gutted-out town ruins is very effective and chilling.

Finally, the sound in the game is great. The sounds the dinosaurs make, ranging from the raptor's hostile growls to the T-Rex's booming roar, are very nice and atmospheric. The carnivores also make cool crunching and slurping sounds when they dine on the corpse of a fresh kill (which more often than not is you). When hit, different objects in the game make different sounds depending on what they're made of (wood, steel, plaster, etc). If you try to pat a dead dino with you hands you hear a realistic leathery sound. The game stars the voices of Sir Richard Attenbourgh (who played John Hammond in the Jurassic Park movies and in the game) and Minnie Driver (who voices Anne), two reputable actors. They don't have much to work with, but they do their best. Finally, there's the game's CD music, which is terrific. The CD tunes range from pounding actions tunes when you run across a large carnivore, to slow ominous music when you shift through Ingen's decaying ruins. Unfortunately the CD tracks are very short (about 20-40 seconds each) and only play at specific points in the game.

The Bad
The graphics in the game are grainy in software mode, but do smooth out and look pretty good on a graphics card. Environments are lush and objects and creatures look great close up. However there are several annoying quirks such as disappearing objects (certain signs and even the ceiling can vanish if you look at them at certain angles) and the fact everything outside of a six foot radius becomes blurred and unfocused.

Although I personally found the arm/hand interface to be novel and interesting, at times it could be fairly annoying, such as when trying to pick up large objects or stack crates. Also there are a very large number of buttons which need to be used to use the arm successfully (3 to 5 keys as well as the mouse) which results in some minor hand-twisting which becomes almost impossible on top of trying to manuever in combat. Anne's arm also occasionally twists and convolutes in disturbing ways and becomes difficult to control, especially when acting upon heavy or fixed objects (such as large crates or sentry guns).

Anne's slow speed of movement also results in a good degree of tedium as you sluggishly tredge through the levels. This is especially true of levels which involve a lot of backtracking, such as the abandoned town, where you've already killed the raptors and there's nothing left to do but slowly move from one place to another.

Two particular parts of the game I found incredibly annoying. In one area, you had to climb a cliff wall by jumping from one outcropping to another. What was annoying was that it was impossible to know in which order you needed to jump to reach the top, and if you didn't jump on the rocks in the exact order the designers intended the game wouldn't let you progress even if it looked like you could climb up. Throughout the game, it is impossible to tell which sloped surfaces can be climbed and which are impassible. Another type of interaction I found annoying was inputing passwords. There are three numerical keypads in the game where you have to enter a password to progress. Unlike many other adventure games figuring out the passwords is easy, but inputing them is nearly impossible. This is because you have to use the hand to push the individual buttons, just like real life. unlike real life, Anne's hand has no nerve endings since it's just a mesh of polygons, and as a result you can't feel the buttons and end up numbly mashing them inaccurately.

The final problem is with the AI. The game brags that the dinosaurs are living, breathing entities, but in the game you can actually see the dinosaurs standing around doing nothing until you get close enough, at which point they "activate" and start moving around. Also, instead of wandering around the levels raptors are spawned out of thin air to attack you (most of the time this is done out of your sight, but sometimes you can actually see the raptors drop out of the sky like a hungry gift from God). This really detracts from the illusion of a living world promised by the game. Also, there are times when the AI will react illogically. A T-Rex will stand in a clearing with two tasty velociraptors and yet do nothing, but will chase you down once you get close enough. A velociraptor will chase you into a building and then walk headfirst into a wall because they haven't been programmed for indoor movement. A T-Rex will become imbedded in a tree and start rotating in circles.

One particularly embarrassing error involved the final boss. Now, normally the game's last battle is quite thrilling. When you reach the Summit, a pounding action variation of the Jurrasic Park theme starts playing and all of a sudden the mother of all raptors comes out from behind a building and charges right at you. However, I found that if you ran quickly and managed to jump back to the metal catwalk over the summit, the Alpha raptor would just stand there and not move since you were out of her range. Finally after I shot at it a couple times, the "super raptor" started moving, only to make an abrupt turn, ram her head against a building, bounce off, and go flailing down the mountain. I admit this was funny as hell, but it kind of detracted from the suspense. After loading a saved game and trying it again, I found I was unable to get her to bump her head again, but it was relatively easy to lure her over the edge from the safety of the catwalk. Maybe this was deliberately put in as an alternative way to win the game without fighting it out. But it really just seems like something the development team overlooked.

The Bottom Line
This is actually a fun game. There is a continous feeling of tension as the raptors stalk you in a frightening manner (even though they have a fondness for head-on attacks and only ever manage to ambush you by being spawned right next to you), and being chased down by a T-Rex is as exciting as you might expect. Blowing away dinosaurs with the various weapons is fun, and aside from a few annoying puzzles the physics engine is very cool. Some people who were expecting a typical First Person Shooter will probably be baffled and annoyed by the interface, but personally I found it interesting. The game does create an interesting constant feeling of suspense and vulnerability that you don't usually find in most First Person Shooters (except perhaps Aliens vs. Predator). However, the game is bogged down by the numerous errors and problems mentioned above, and really takes an effort to like.

Windows · by Alan Chan (3610) · 2000

Much Underrated Game, a real sense of fear

The Good
This game was ambitious, very ambitious, and that shows through. The concept of controlling an arm and picking objects up really does add to a sense of presence in the world. One that counts. The physics, when they work properly, add a great deal to the gameplay, after all there's nothing like pushing a car onto a dinosaur to kill it. The stereo sound is fantasic, sometimes the first hint you have of the dinosaur, is the sound of its breathing. Then you run, and without health packs to run to, it can get hairy, which is fantastic. Later games have ignored this, that in real life you don't get health packs, and this game reminds you.

This is backed upby the dinosaur AI, yes it has problems. However when it works, it really does, giving the feeling that the dinosaurs are indeed after your blood.

The Bad
Of course there are many faults with the game. I could list them, the funny AI (nothing like seeing a dinosaur run off a cliff in an act of sheer stupidity), the poor level design (really poor). These all add to create the effect of a game that began with high concepts, but did not get the time to realise them. Which is a shame, as the public looks at the game for the aesthetics first of all, which is where the game falls down on. Once you get past the poor elements, that game does have some magical moments, which cannot be recreated, due to the emergent nature of the dinosuars.

The most telling fault is the level design, really. There are sections are fiendishly complex, and the town level left me wandering backwards and forwards, only to be confronted with buildings which were out of scale with themselves and me. All problems which stem from an apparent rush job, which with more time the solid engine could overcome.

The most obvious flaw is the manipulation system, guns that can't reload, and which drop from the hand at the slightest touch, but hey, the game is an experiment in my view.

The Bottom Line
This game has to be used as a design example for the future. Only now (2003) are we seeing games truely looking to real physics engines again, this game was five years ahead of the pack. The sheer reality which the game gives is warrant of play, and many people gripe about it, but the game is an experiment in my view, and one that partially worked. It's a shame the engine was never used again (to my knowledge). So much work let down by last minute rushes, possibly due to the franchise nature of it being a Jurassic Park game. Which, it has almost nothing to do with, but never mind.

Play this game, for the experience, you may not be dissapointed. A classic game in my view for the sheer attempt of what it was trying to achieve.

Windows · by RussS (807) · 2003

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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.