Jurassic Park: Trespasser

buchtis · 17 Dec 2011 at 16:22

I heard about this a while back, apparently a hugely ambitious game from 1998 that went **** up due to budget and time constraints. Since this was released in 1998, I would have been 11 at the time so I didn't have a chance to play it but i'd love to hear from people who did and their opinion on it. No idea why but i'm starting to get fascinated by it to the point of wanting to download it and have a go.

Oh, and I think i've found the best informative/playthrough videos on YouTube. The guy that does them is from the U.S but he has an amazing radio voice and the videos are very informative. If anyone is interested feel free to have a watch, I strongly recommend it:

Channel here: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0058A651EB882B48&feature=plcp

Seems amazing for 1998, did this set the blueprint for Far Cry?

LizardKing · 17 Dec 2011 at 16:37

the game was fundamentally ok, but the controls method was just bat crazy and you needed a super computer to run it ok.

Jongo · 17 Dec 2011 at 17:08

i actually have the disk of this lying around somewhere i remember playing it when i was young and being really scared by the dinosaurs and never really went back to it.

Brings back a lot of memories watching this and all the frustration with just controlling the character.

Rroff · 17 Dec 2011 at 17:13

Probably not that fun to play by todays standards but it seemed immense at the time especially the physics. It ran ok on my setup but I found it way way to clunky to play and never got beyond the first half hour or so.

I'd imagine that x-isle (which was the foundation of Farcry) is heavily based on it:

- it was also quite a bit ahead of its time.

Tical · 17 Dec 2011 at 17:16

I loved this game, but as the OP said it was kinda rushed out. It was messy in places, especially the manipulation of the environment (picking up and moving stuff etc), but if you could persevere it was worth it. It was one of the first FPS games where you could manipulate items in the game world, rather them just being static and unmovable.

Its one of those games that could have been amazing and still talked about, but it fell short and was quite frustrating sometimes.

Main reason I remember it was the health bar of the (female) character was a red heart tattoo on her right breast, and you had to look down to her cleavage to see your current health.

buchtis · 17 Dec 2011 at 21:44

Is there any way to get this game legitimately and working there days? Googleing but can't find anything.

FARGO · 17 Dec 2011 at 22:58

I enjoyed it but found the mechanics very frustrating.

I spent most of the time looking at the wobblies too.

TheVoice · 17 Dec 2011 at 23:55

Never heard of it, but just watching the first walkthrough video and I'm quite impressed, especially considering it's from 98. It was clearly a very ambitious project for the time, but it got a lot of things right, like the voice acting and use of dialogue; something many games these days still seem to struggle to get right.

OldComputerGuy7 · 18 Dec 2011 at 03:44

Loved this when i played the demo in 1997, i remember trying to get a copy of it was hard as most of the normal game stores did not stock it.
I eventually got a copy of Tresspasser and Hardwar (also awesome) at a computer fair.

Great but flawed is the best way to look at it, someone once discribed it as the best box stacking game ever lol.
But really it was great fun, IIRC it was released about 30% done so was never going to show what they had planned for the game.
Its shame really given a few more years and they could have polished it into something truely wonderful.

The one thing about the game is you felt truely alone and in danger, but i loved how you could do things like push a crate on top of a raptor and kill it as guns an ammo were often in short supply.

I always enjoyed it and always wished that EA would have released the source code so the game could be made to work better.

Check out this site for info and patches
http://www.trescom.org/
This ATX patch fixes a bunch of things too and adds a few features.
http://atx.trescom.org/#DESC

Going to reinstall and have another go.

d_brennen · 18 Dec 2011 at 03:52

I remember this game well. Boobies and insta death galore

Well worth a play nowadays to see how close it was to brilliance. Last time I tried it ran ok on vista 64

Also see Messiah for missed chances and ahead of time technology. Tessellation, pft

Flinkman · 18 Dec 2011 at 10:52

I loved this game, was a bugger to pick up though. Was quite ahead of it's time having real world physics in it!

Even now when I change the radio in the car I pretend I have the arm from Trespasser, lol!

Rroff · 18 Dec 2011 at 13:05

d_brennen said:
Also see Messiah for missed chances and ahead of time technology. Tessellation, pft

I remember the PC Zone spread for Messiah with a fairly indepth look at the technology and I remember being impressed, but when I got some hands on time with it IIRC again it was very very clunky to play.

Biohazard · 18 Dec 2011 at 13:35

Flinkman said:
Even now when I change the radio in the car I pretend I have the arm from Trespasser, lol!

You must do it rather funky indeed :eek:

GothicGhost · 18 Dec 2011 at 14:47

Fun game and I still have it

Going to have try play this again but will it work on windows 7 ?

d_brennen · 18 Dec 2011 at 15:36

GothicGhost said:
Fun game and I still have it

Going to have try play this again but will it work on windows 7 ?

Worked for me on Vista with a patch or two from the fan site, so don't see why not

If only the devs had more time and money

Mak3R · 18 Dec 2011 at 16:48

I remember playing this game when I was young. I dont believe I ever got very far without mass death. And yes the rack was quite distracting even at that age...