By Jimi Stine

Pros: Big dinosaurs, and if you close your eyes and turn the sound off it's almost like you're Dr. Alan Grant from Jurassic Park.
Cons: Broken animation, gets old fast, you aren't actually Dr. Alan Grant from Jurassic Park.

If you've ever driven cross-country you'll know a thing or two about roadside attractions. You see billboards advertising the best tacos for hundreds of miles, and whether you want to or not, you stop to get some because you're just that curious, bored, and you really do love tacos. Of course they're never the best tacos in the world, and you definitely pay too much for them. Jurassic VR for Google Cardboard is the roadside attraction of VR games.

The images in 'Jurassic VR' are well-drawn, even if the animation is lacking.Jurrassic Park VR

I've loved Jurassic Park ever since I was a kid drinking out of a sippy cup on the living room floor. Dinosaurs have always fascinated me. Virtual reality offers a unique way of experiencing our lizard/bird friends, and at $1.99, one would hope an app would deliver when it says you'll "get immersed in the enchanted world when you see the Brachiosaurus eat from a tree or when you hear the T-Rex make his terrifying roar for the first time." It doesn't.

Watching the trailer provided on the Jurassic VR App Store page is pretty much all you get: detailed but oddly shiny dinosaurs striking mechanical poses. It's like a fast-food pizza joint filled with robot dinosaurs without questionable slices or any fun.

Mechanics here are limited. Using the Google Cardboard's trigger or tapping the screen starts and stops your walking (though even "walking" is misleading as it implies you have some physical presence in the game world, and as far as these dinos are concerned, there isn't).

The dinosaurs don't interact with you in 'the Jurassic VR' app.Jarassic Park VR

Moving your view turns the camera as you walk, and that's all there is to it. As mentioned, the world doesn't seem to notice you. The dinosaurs themselves don't seem even to notice one another. Honestly, this game is only a step or two away from being downright broken, as many of the dinosaurs, particularly our air-born friends, aren't animated. They don't work.

There are, I guess, some redeeming qualities here if you really look. Though disturbingly metallic, the dinosaurs are well-detailed, and the sound effects, though they sound like they're coming through an old phone booth from the 1980s, are relatively robust.

The screenshots and trailer are, at the very least, honest in their depiction of the game, even if the nostalgia it draws on unfairly attracts us dinosaur-loving kids.

If you're still curious about this roadside taco, you can download the iOS version for $1.99 on the App Store or the Android version for free on Google Play.

—Jimi Stine is currently studying Narrative Design for Interactive Media at NYU and recently reviewed the VR app VR Car Sim. He loves dinosaurs a lot as long as they aren't genetically re-created abominations trying to eat him.

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