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Jurassic Park: Trespasser - gaming's greatest failure

randomwab

Member
Thnikkaman said:
I urge everyone who has shown an interest in this train wreck to watch this. Research Indicates demonstrates the game and explains just how Dreamworks tried to change gaming but were rushed into the ground. Also the best voice in Let's Play.

I loved watching that a couple months ago. The dude doing the LP knows his stuff.
 

Dan Yo

Banned
I remember going to the store and buying Half Life, Thief, and Trespasser. Tried all of them that day, and while Half Life and Thief are obviously more fondly remembered by most, I will say that despite Trespasser's technical issues it was probably the most immersing experience I've had with a game.

The open world, regenerating health, and 2 gun carrying limit are now standard in just about all shooters. The physics engine was also ridiculously ahead of its time. Many aspects of that game are amazingly still fresh by today's standards.

I never understood the amount of shit this game received from the press. It certainly had a lot of faults, but it was starting to do something no other shooter (or game, period) had done before.

I will always fondly remember this game and long for a sequel or spiritual successor with the Jurassic Park license to be made. At this point I can't imagine a Jurassic Park game or proper survival game involving dinosaurs to be made in any other fashion.
 
Trespasser is the kind of failure we need more of. Usually, games just suck because the developers barely tried to make a good game. Here, they tried to make an amazing game and overreached, which is the kind of mistake you can actually learn from. What's sort of cool, actually, is that some of the modern control schemes (I'm looking at that Razer Hydra, but also Move and Wii Motion Plus) seem far more fitted to the game's concept of interaction than the regular 2D mouse interface.

But anyway, this game terrified me when I came out because of the glitches. I played the demo, saw vertices of medium-sized objects stretching across a hundred feet, got speared on the tail of a dead raptor, and my brain could not compensate for the particular kind of reality distortion going on. So while I don't actually have nightmares (never really do), I went to bed with horrible, scary visions of random objects suddenly spearing around across infinity, and this went on for months.

There you go. Trespasser almost turned me legitimately insane.

I'm tempted to play the fully patched version, though. The concepts they were shooting for were just so awesome.
 

tok

Neo Member
Chiggs said:
Nobody here wants to comment on the blatant lies and misleading interviews that old Seamus was spewing during this game's development? Oh, and how about Trespasser being the first game to really create what we now affectionately refer to as "bullshots."

Trespasser, you suck.

Just me in post #63.
 

Suairyu

Banned
Dan Yo said:
Tried all of them that day, and while Half Life and Thief are obviously being more fondly remembered, I will say that despite Trespasser's technical issues it was probably the most immersing experiences I've had with a game.
Please, internet, don't let 'immersing' be the new 'addicting'.

And in other news, I'm really sad I didn't play this back in the day. I could try it now, but I know for sure you had to be there - and maybe sometimes even that wasn't enough judging by some comments.

EDIT - Nevermind, there's a Let's Play! Problem solved.
 

Zachack

Member
Dan Yo said:
I never understood the amount of shit this game received from the press. It certainly had a lot of faults, but it was starting to do something no other shooter (or game, period) had done before.
Well, to start, unless there was a magic PC that teleported hidden, better visuals into the game then the screenshots on the box were outright lies. The screenshots indicated that the dinos would have some form of early bump-mapping, and that environments would look realistic (for the time) and not like the ones posted earlier.

Second, reaching and failing is still failing, and most of the game wasn't even reaching. The physics engine was rarely used to any interesting degree, with mostly barren, static levels. The hand mechanism made employing the physics far more difficult than necessary. At least a few levels consisted of little more than running on trails, although I will admit one level where you're being chased by a T-Rex turned out awesome when I fell off a slight berm and shot the T-Rex with the Instakill Gun as it ran overhead.

There was little to no story, even for a game where it wasn't necessary. Gunplay was awful. Enemy dinos didn't really do much of anything interesting. The game had a great first level but it was clear that most of the rest of the game was never developed as much as that one level. Later levels would toss velociraptors at you, and since the gun and melee combat was basically broken (and running was theoretically impossible), the game would turn into praying that the models would get hung up on corners/boxes. Bugs abounded. A basic task like stacking two crates to get to another floor could take 30 minutes just due to the engine causing the crates to clip with each other and slip apart; even getting to the upper floor using crates felt like I was breaking the game somehow due to the extensive glitchiness, even though reading about it later indicated that I had done it correctly.

The game deserved savaging by critics.
 

Dan Yo

Banned
Suairyu said:
Please, internet, don't let 'immersing' be the new 'addicting'.

And in other news, I'm really sad I didn't play this back in the day. I could try it now, but I know for sure you had to be there - and maybe sometimes even that wasn't enough judging by some comments.

EDIT - Nevermind, there's a Let's Play! Problem solved.
Immersive isn't an actual word.
 

Dan Yo

Banned
Zachack said:
Well, to start, unless there was a magic PC that teleported hidden, better visuals into the game then the screenshots on the box were outright lies. The screenshots indicated that the dinos would have some form of early bump-mapping, and that environments would look realistic (for the time) and not like the ones posted earlier.

Second, reaching and failing is still failing, and most of the game wasn't even reaching. The physics engine was rarely used to any interesting degree, with mostly barren, static levels. The hand mechanism made employing the physics far more difficult than necessary. At least a few levels consisted of little more than running on trails, although I will admit one level where you're being chased by a T-Rex turned out awesome when I fell off a slight berm and shot the T-Rex with the Instakill Gun as it ran overhead.

There was little to no story, even for a game where it wasn't necessary. Gunplay was awful. Enemy dinos didn't really do much of anything interesting. The game had a great first level but it was clear that most of the rest of the game was never developed as much as that one level. Later levels would toss velociraptors at you, and since the gun and melee combat was basically broken (and running was theoretically impossible), the game would turn into praying that the models would get hung up on corners/boxes. Bugs abounded. A basic task like stacking two crates to get to another floor could take 30 minutes just due to the engine causing the crates to clip with each other and slip apart; even getting to the upper floor using crates felt like I was breaking the game somehow due to the extensive glitchiness, even though reading about it later indicated that I had done it correctly.

The game deserved savaging by critics.
The game deserved to be called out for its glitches and frustrating at times game play, but the experience was unmatched at the time, and didn't deserve to be completely shitted on. It was as close to making you feel like you were stranded on an actual island, or any real, living world as any game had even come close to mustering at that point.

I still want to see another game like it. Which speaks a lot for what they were trying to do. I can't really say that about any other game of the era.
 

Zachack

Member
Dan Yo said:
The game deserved to be called out for its glitches and frustrating at times game play, but the experience was unmatched at the time, and didn't deserve to be completely shitted on.
If the greatest movie in the world could only be viewed in a theater with a broken sound system and a stick poking out one of my eyes I would be justified in declaring it a total failure.

It was as close to making you feel like you were stranded on an actual island, or any real, living world as any game had even come close to mustering at that point.
Thief came out a couple weeks later, and I would argue it did a better job at world building. Possibly Tomb Raider or Cybermage as well. Definitely the first System Shock and Bioforge, although the scale in the latter is obviously reduced. Trespasser wasn't open world at all. By today's standards it would be almost completely linear.
 

truly101

I got grudge sucked!
Not a PC gamer but if I was, this would be one of the games I'd hate because the press it generated perpetuated the "big rig" myth about PC gaming. I remember that the PC needed to run trespasser correctly and fully optimized was like in the thousands. That was probably hyperbole since it didn't look much better than Half-Life or even Jedi Knight Outcast, but thats what I remember sticking. It seems like after that point PC gaming was synonymous with expensive, even though that was probably untrue.
 
Jobiensis said:
I wasn't all that young, but I loved this game too.

You really felt like you were alone on an island with dinosaurs. You also felt like you were physically handicapped with how difficult it was to maneuver objects with your one arm.



I fully disagree. The problem with Trespasser was janky physics and controls. All games have unrealistic realism, grab a health pack, carry infinite weapons, etc. That can all be forgiven, but it was far too difficult to stack some boxes without them sliding off of one another.

I found it to be very entertaining (with a good bit of frustration).
i'm not sure that you read all of my post. standing on a health kit isn't realistic. the problem was it tried to be realistic to the point where it ended up being *less* realistic. CF my examples of the thought process required to open doors and such. the mechanics required to open a door were more realistic than 'press button to open door' but the thought process and control inputs required were very unrealistic.

the things you gave examples of are just unrealstic.

trespasser tried things like 'let's have no hud!' and then had to go ahead and tattoo one on you. a health meter on the screen where you could see it would have been more realistic than a morphing tattoo you have to gaze into cleavage to see. the consessions they made to make the game 'more' realistic, pushed it into LESS realistic.
 

Suairyu

Banned
Dan Yo said:
Immersive isn't an actual word.
Yes it is. It's a critical term used in academic circles when critiquing narrative in literature, film and even, more recently, videogames. It existed long before you read it on videogame websites and in enthusiast press. It goes hand in hand with transference, the act of the audience becoming the protagonist of the narrative, also not a phenomenon unique to videogames.
 

kashwashwa

Neo Member
Dan Yo said:
The game deserved to be called out for its glitches and frustrating at times game play, but the experience was unmatched at the time, and didn't deserve to be completely shitted on. It was as close to making you feel like you were stranded on an actual island, or any real, living world as any game had even come close to mustering at that point.

I still want to see another game like it. Which speaks a lot for what they were trying to do. I can't really say that about any other game of the era.

Precisely.


Thief came out a couple weeks later, and I would argue it did a better job at world building... Trespasser wasn't open world at all. By today's standards it would be almost completely linear.

As far as Trespasser being open world or not - they definitely made you FEEL like you were in an open world in Trespasser. They did way better at that than say valve did with Half Life 2 (as if we were supposed to believe we were driving around on a country road).


truly101 said:
Not a PC gamer but if I was, this would be one of the games I'd hate because the press it generated perpetuated the "big rig" myth about PC gaming. I remember that the PC needed to run trespasser correctly and fully optimized was like in the thousands. That was probably hyperbole since it didn't look much better than Half-Life or even Jedi Knight Outcast, but thats what I remember sticking. It seems like after that point PC gaming was synonymous with expensive, even though that was probably untrue.

haha... Trespasser had nothing to do with making pc gaming synonymous with expensive. That had happened years earlier. for example if you wanted to play Myst (the real version) you'd have to to fork out $600 for a CD drive to run it. And people did. My dad owned the only computer store in town - people bought sound cards for wing commander, joysticks (yes really) for wolfenstein, and CD drives for myst (not strictly obviously, but trespasser wasn't exactly a popular title at the time that made PC gaming 'expensive').
 
i used to walk around with my guns sideways like a thug. then i hit a wall looking at my boobs and the gun fell out my hand. best game is best.
 
out0v0rder said:
i used to walk around with my guns sideways like a thug. then i hit a wall looking at my boobs and the gun fell out my hand. best game is best.
another good example of unrealistic realism. i forgot that you could knock the gun out of your hand. it sounds realistic in theory, but it wasn't because it would happen when your arm was off screen, and there was no clue that you had dropped something.

in the real world you don't have to keep holding your hand up to your face to see if you dropped what you were holding.
 

quetz67

Banned
Zachack said:
Well, to start, unless there was a magic PC that teleported hidden, better visuals into the game then the screenshots on the box were outright lies. The screenshots indicated that the dinos would have some form of early bump-mapping, and that environments would look realistic (for the time) and not like the ones posted earlier.

Second, reaching and failing is still failing, and most of the game wasn't even reaching. The physics engine was rarely used to any interesting degree, with mostly barren, static levels. The hand mechanism made employing the physics far more difficult than necessary. At least a few levels consisted of little more than running on trails, although I will admit one level where you're being chased by a T-Rex turned out awesome when I fell off a slight berm and shot the T-Rex with the Instakill Gun as it ran overhead.

There was little to no story, even for a game where it wasn't necessary. Gunplay was awful. Enemy dinos didn't really do much of anything interesting. The game had a great first level but it was clear that most of the rest of the game was never developed as much as that one level. Later levels would toss velociraptors at you, and since the gun and melee combat was basically broken (and running was theoretically impossible), the game would turn into praying that the models would get hung up on corners/boxes. Bugs abounded. A basic task like stacking two crates to get to another floor could take 30 minutes just due to the engine causing the crates to clip with each other and slip apart; even getting to the upper floor using crates felt like I was breaking the game somehow due to the extensive glitchiness, even though reading about it later indicated that I had done it correctly.

The game deserved savaging by critics.
You can say what you want about the gaphics but some of the dinos had software bump mapping. First level the two huge herbivores in the pond is what I remember.
 

Zenith

Banned
Zachack said:
There was little to no story, even for a game where it wasn't necessary.

Story was more than enough. You crash on an island and have to make your way to the top of the mountain to get a signal out. John Hammond narrating. Picking up notes. Exploring te abandoned InGen labs.

Gunplay was awful.

Gunplay was my favourite part. MP5K was my fav.

The game had a great first level but it was clear that most of the rest of the game was never developed as much as that one level. Later levels would toss velociraptors at you, and since the gun and melee combat was basically broken (and running was theoretically impossible), the game would turn into praying that the models would get hung up on corners/boxes.

The docks, the town and the lab had way more content than the first level. If anything there was too much ammo. I always being presented with guns and having to decide which I'd drop and which I'd pick up.

another good example of unrealistic realism. i forgot that you could knock the gun out of your hand.

I thought that was cool. Catch a gun butt on a wall whilst running 'course you're gonna drop it. Or spin round fast with a long rifle and you'll definitely lose your grip. Guns are heavy.
 

Jobiensis

Member
plagiarize said:
i'm not sure that you read all of my post. standing on a health kit isn't realistic. the problem was it tried to be realistic to the point where it ended up being *less* realistic. CF my examples of the thought process required to open doors and such. the mechanics required to open a door were more realistic than 'press button to open door' but the thought process and control inputs required were very unrealistic.

the things you gave examples of are just unrealstic.

trespasser tried things like 'let's have no hud!' and then had to go ahead and tattoo one on you. a health meter on the screen where you could see it would have been more realistic than a morphing tattoo you have to gaze into cleavage to see. the consessions they made to make the game 'more' realistic, pushed it into LESS realistic.

I read your entire post, maybe I should have only quoted the first sentence. I don't disagree with the things being more unrealistic when they tried to make them more realistic. I disagree with

plagiarize said:
the problem with Trespasser remains its unrealistic realism.

The major problems with the game were controls and physics. Realism only became an issue because of those problems.

The lack of HUD was comparatively a non-issue.
 

Zachack

Member
quetz67 said:
You can say what you want about the gaphics but some of the dinos had software bump mapping. First level the two huge herbivores in the pond is what I remember.
They may have had something but unless someone can show me proof the box shots were completely absent from the game.
Zenith said:
Story was more than enough. You crash on an island and have to make your way to the top of the mountain to get a signal out. John Hammond narrating. Picking up notes. Exploring te abandoned InGen labs.
Maybe not enough wasn't the right word but the method of telling it was terrible. It was like a reduced version of System Shock.
Gunplay was my favourite part. MP5K was my fav.
I am truly baffled at this comment. Gunplay required learning what (completely unrealistic given the way the gun was held) angle was required to shoot straight ahead and then keeping the gun there because actually aiming with the arm was impossible due to circling by the dinosaurs. It was so completely unnatural.
The docks, the town and the lab had way more content than the first level. If anything there was too much ammo. I always being presented with guns and having to decide which I'd drop and which I'd pick up.
I said more developed, nothing about content. The first level was a much tighter, focused experience compared to the later ones, with the exception of the garbage lot or whatever it was (my memory is telling me "level 5" although I have no idea if I'm getting it confused with Short Circuit). Unsurprisingly that level was also one of the most linear ones where the devs were able to place a roughly appropriate amount of content for the level, unlike the more open levels where the same amount of "game" content was just spread to a few locations with little else to interact with.
I thought that was cool. Catch a gun butt on a wall whilst running 'course you're gonna drop it. Or spin round fast with a long rifle and you'll definitely lose your grip. Guns are heavy.
Guns also have handles or other mechanisms to help hold them. Alternatively, rifles aren't meant to be used by holding it in one hand and extending the arm all the way out. Of course, if the game was actually trying to be realistic firing a shotgun that way would dislocate the shoulder and then misfire in the main characters face when she dropped it on the ground.
 

Zachack

Member
Jobiensis said:
The major problems with the game were controls and physics. Realism only became an issue because of those problems.
While it's something of a tautology to say that realism was a problem because of problems with systems designed to mimic realism, there were other realism concepts that were poorly implemented. For instance, the game used a semi-realistic capacity limit by allowing you to carry only two things at a time... but then made a keycard equivalent to a shotgun due to the same restriction. It was an attempt at realism that proved unrealistic because the player only had to look down to realize that there was an extra, perfectly good storage location for keycards. Or not being able to carry any extra ammunition (not even a little), resulting in the game requiring you to find entire guns and then throw them away when they're out of ammo.
 
Zachack said:
While it's something of a tautology to say that realism was a problem because of problems with systems designed to mimic realism, there were other realism concepts that were poorly implemented. For instance, the game used a semi-realistic capacity limit by allowing you to carry only two things at a time... but then made a keycard equivalent to a shotgun due to the same restriction. It was an attempt at realism that proved unrealistic because the player only had to look down to realize that there was an extra, perfectly good storage location for keycards. Or not being able to carry any extra ammunition (not even a little), resulting in the game requiring you to find entire guns and then throw them away when they're out of ammo.

But that could also work to it's advantage... I mean, hitting a Raptor in the face with a shotgun never gets old.
 

Jobiensis

Member
Zachack said:
While it's something of a tautology to say that realism was a problem because of problems with systems designed to mimic realism, there were other realism concepts that were poorly implemented. For instance, the game used a semi-realistic capacity limit by allowing you to carry only two things at a time... but then made a keycard equivalent to a shotgun due to the same restriction. It was an attempt at realism that proved unrealistic because the player only had to look down to realize that there was an extra, perfectly good storage location for keycards. Or not being able to carry any extra ammunition (not even a little), resulting in the game requiring you to find entire guns and then throw them away when they're out of ammo.

Different strokes for different folks I guess.

I never had a problem with
1) Having to toss a gun to pick up another with more ammo
2) Looking down to see my health
3) Having to stack boxes to get over a short fence
4) Opening doors
5) Gunplay with the arm
6) Physics quirks that didn't impact gameplay

I did have a problem with
1) Boxes coming to life when stacked (felt like stacking magnets)
2) Dinosaurs getting caught here and there
3) Dropping the gun at the slightest bump

I felt the game was very close to working well enough to be great.
 
Noisepurge said:
i doubt they will since Turok and Primal Carnage and Jurassic: The Hunted sold SO well ;D

edit: on a second thought, anyone have any thoughts on these three games released this gen?

Jurassic the Hunted is one of my favorite games this gen. I'm not saying it's amazing nor do I have shitty taste, it just it has a place in my heart because of the dinos and the gameplay.

It has numerous flaws (campy dialog, wonky story... though I'd like to see a film adaption =P, choppy framerate...) but i still love it.

My favorite thing about it is how the deinonychus attack you and flee behind the flora and come out somewhere else for a blindside attack. This isn't a cheap trick where they disappear but rather they're camoflauged and you need to keep an eye on them if you want to not be surprise attacked.
 
i just started playing dino crisis for the first time. i'm not far in, but it's good so far.

i'm not saying Trespasser doesn't have issues beyond the unrealistic realism, i'm pretty sure i got killed by a vibrating box at one point (also, one thing that always made me laugh was when you dropped something on your own head and died), but some of the things we're discussing we're actually on the same page.

you say the controls are terrible, i say what they make you control is terrible, but really i think we mean the same thing.
 
GameplayWhore said:
Trespasser is the kind of failure we need more of. Usually, games just suck because the developers barely tried to make a good game. Here, they tried to make an amazing game and overreached, which is the kind of mistake you can actually learn from. What's sort of cool, actually, is that some of the modern control schemes (I'm looking at that Razer Hydra, but also Move and Wii Motion Plus) seem far more fitted to the game's concept of interaction than the regular 2D mouse interface.

But anyway, this game terrified me when I came out because of the glitches. I played the demo, saw vertices of medium-sized objects stretching across a hundred feet, got speared on the tail of a dead raptor, and my brain could not compensate for the particular kind of reality distortion going on. So while I don't actually have nightmares (never really do), I went to bed with horrible, scary visions of random objects suddenly spearing around across infinity, and this went on for months.

There you go. Trespasser almost turned me legitimately insane.

I'm tempted to play the fully patched version, though. The concepts they were shooting for were just so awesome.
if you haven't played boiling point, you really should.

track down the unpatched version if you want the full experience. if you want the cliff notes, just look up the list of fixes that came with each patch. boiling point was so awesome and terrible.

edit: fixed name of game...
 

Steeven

Member
I remember playing the demo of this game and just fucking with the physics and the dinosaurs to see how they reacted to things I did. It was awesome. I didn't have money back then for the full game. A few years ago I stumbled upon it and finished the full version. Still liked it even after all these years... There was just something about the atmosphere. The raptors scared the crap out of me, it was always hard to see if they were just walking somewhere or were hunting you. I agree the physics were kinda crap, especially when you had to build some sort of tower to get from A to B. And the handling of the wrist also wasn't quite natural, but unique and somehow fun at the same time. I did get into situations where the controls just pumped up the adrenaline because they were fucked and you didn't want to get killed, so thats some sort of a plus.

They really should remake this game, or make a game like this with the Source engine or the Crysis engine.
 

Dan Yo

Banned
Steeven said:
They really should remake this game, or make a game like this with the Source engine or the Crysis engine.
A first person survival game set in the Jurassic Park universe with the Crysis engine or something similar would be a dream come true.
 
I remember me and my brother putting our money together and buying this when we got a new computer around that time (Pentium?) and it ran like shit so we returned it and got Half Life. This was back when Software Ect. let you return opened games just because they didn't run well or you just flat out didn't like it.
 

Dan Yo

Banned
Jobiensis said:
Different strokes for different folks I guess.

I never had a problem with
1) Having to toss a gun to pick up another with more ammo
2) Looking down to see my health
3) Having to stack boxes to get over a short fence
4) Opening doors
5) Gunplay with the arm
6) Physics quirks that didn't impact gameplay

I did have a problem with
1) Boxes coming to life when stacked (felt like stacking magnets)
2) Dinosaurs getting caught here and there
3) Dropping the gun at the slightest bump

I felt the game was very close to working well enough to be great.
I agree with this. It certainly had its issues, but many of them were overblown.
 

wowzors

Member
I could only imagine if they made a jurassic park game with the Dead Space engine. I feel like its capable of some decent outdoors but it would really shine on the indoor lighting aspects, making the dinosaurs that much scarier/intense.
 
Yo, anyone willing to start a new thread for Primal Carnage? I've found tons of new footage straight from the team's youtube account.

MOJ1v.jpg

go6fy.jpg


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ROL47N6L0g&feature=feedf
 

Amalthea

Banned
It would be crazy if a dinosaur could pick up weapons in Primal Carnage.
Using a raptor with a machine gun would keep all other players respawning forever (if they didn't use the same selection).
 
Tyrant_Onion said:
It would be crazy if a dinosaur could pick up weapons in Primal Carnage.
Using a raptor with a machine gun would keep all other players respawning forever (if they didn't use the same selection).

Oh yeah bring back Dino-Riders and make a license game!
dinoriders1.jpg
 

clip

Member
I'm playing this now for the first time and jesus god, it's blowing my mind. If I'd played this in '98, I'm sure it would have greatly shaped my opinion of what was possible in the medium.

I'm currently stuck in the abandoned town, not sure what to do, but damn it feels great.
 
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