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

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Reviews

Critics

Average score: 59% (based on 32 ratings)

Players

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

There's no other game like this.

The Good
Imagine a virtual game-world where you can explore kilometer-sized levels where every stone, every crate, every piece of wood lying around has a detailed physics model applied to it. Imagine dinosaurs that try to attack you as a group, sneak up behind you and bite the gun out of your hand before you even get to shoot.

You play Anne, a woman stranded on a mysterious island after a terrible plane accident. Soon you find out that this island is "Site B" where InGen built their dinosaur-breeding facilities. Your only mission is to get away from this raptor-contaminated island as soon as possible.

Trespasser was the only game ever created that features exploration gameplay in a detailed, physically correct environment. No HUD, no stats only your right arm which you have to use to pick up, throw and push things. And, well, your left breast with a little heart-shaped tattoo on it that acts as a "health-indicator". Because everything in Trespasser is part of the game-world you can even see your own body in first person view.

Trespassers graphics were quite remarkable by the time it was released. Huge outdoor environments, unusual special effects like bump-mapping, real-time shadows and realistic water created an incredibly realistic-looking world.

But the most interesting part of course was the physics-engine. I first realized how powerful it was when I came to a small cliff with a pack of velociraptors approaching me. I only had a few shots in my gun and there were at least two of them left. I thought I'm already as good as dead when I looked up and saw the rusted wreck of a jeep lying on the edge of the cliff just above the raptors. So I aimed high and shot the wreck. Slowly it started moving, then it rolled down the cliff hitting both of the raptors with full speed and just smashed them. It looked just amazing like a scene from a movie. Later on I read that this particular scene in the game was the idea of Steven Spielberg himself, who visited the Dreamworks Interactive studios from time to time. Well it looks like making movies isn't his only talent. :)

It's quite surprising that an official movie-licensed game has such an unique gameplay concept. Trespasser features the voices of Minnie Driver (Anne) and Richard Attenbourgh (John Hammond) who is reading from a fictitious book he wrote which Anne seemed to have read and remembers during her trip. The game however doesn't have many connections with the story of The Lost World which is probably a good thing. The Music is very good, it sounds like a real movie score and adds a lot to the feeling of playing an interactive movie.

The Bad
There is a reason why big gaming companies avoid making original games. It's much easier to make a game that just copies the gameplay of an existing genere than inventing and balancing a totally new gaming concept. Few things in Trespasser have ever been there before. Even the first person shooter elements are different as your gun is just a physical object like any other. This brings a lot of problems.

First controlling your virtual hand using your mouse is a nearly impossible task for someone who never played the game before and a lot of gamers already give up at this point, calling the game unplayable. The next thing is the physics-engine itself. Though its very impressive and well-working most times it has dozens of annoying bugs, like objects falling through walls, raptors falling through walls and you getting stuck IN a wall.

The system requirements are a bit extreme too. I have an Athlon XP 1800 with 512MB ram and a geforce2MX and the game still runs quite slowly at some spots for a six-years old game! I remember not being able to play it by the time it came out although I had a pretty high-end system then.

The Bottom Line
Maybe this game could have been a big hit if the developers had the time to actually finish it... Many people see it as a good example for "unused potentials". The physics engine, the huge outdoor environments, the incredible atmosphere, Trespasser has many elements of a gaming masterpiece but lacks of true perfection. Despite all it's flaws Trespasser is an incredible game and one of my all-time favorites because there's simply no other game like this. Once you've mastered the funny controls (which requires you to play it through at least once) Trespasser is a truly wonderful game with an awesome atmosphere.

Windows · by Lumpi (189) · 2004

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

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

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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.