Hot off the heels of their Back to the Future game, Telltale is back with another license close to the heart of my youth: Jurassic Park. It takes risks, leaving behind the traditional point and click interface of their past games for something a little different.

The first of the two demos I played was exclusively an action scene. Several of the game’s protagonists were stuck on a roller coaster and I had to prevent them from being eaten by a pack of dinosaurs. The solution? Successfully complete a lot of quick time events including button presses and quick flips of the analogue stick. You could sum up the entire action demo simply by saying “Space Ace”.

But there was a weird layer of detachment added to this scene. The character whose actions were affected by my inputs constantly changed. This made me feel less involved with what was happening on screen since no singular character represented the player. Occasionally I’d fail and watch a death scene before snapping back to the last checkpoint. I watched my cart go on the wrong track into a pack of dinosaurs, a young girl falling out of the car to her death and more, all while my death counter rose.

If this was all the game was, I’d be pretty sad. Thankfully the second demo I played was far more interesting, though still different than Telltale’s previous games.

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On this one-hundred and thirty-first episode of Barrel Roll, Jonah is joined by returning guest host Wesley Johnson for a most excellent adventure. It seems even though they both graduated high school in the late 90′s, they have to gather up famous figures from history to turn in one final report so they can graduate, start their band, and save the future through bodacious music.

The show starts with the regular news and new game releases, then moves on to our “games what we played last week” segment. There the guys haven’t had time for much new stuff, but have been enjoying Borderlands as well as the SNES classic Earthbound. Jonah has also given the Onlive service a try for the first time and gives his thoughts on that.

After the main show, be sure to stick around! Jesse has just returned from PAX 2011 and is here to give his thoughts on some of the stuff he played there. All that plus more on Barrel Roll #131, “Wes & Jonah’s Excellent Adventure”.

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