You knew it was coming. The mega-marketing machine that is Dreamworks couldn't exactly leave the sequel to one of the biggest movies of all time without squeezing every dollar out of it? To be fair to Dreamworks, the game has a promising concept, and it looks quite nice, really. It's too bad nothing more could be said.
Rather than playing a helpless, weak human, in Lost World you play as various dinosaurs as you progress through the game. This is the interesting part, because the further you progress, the bigger the dinosaur you get to control. You start off as a compy (or procompsognathus, for anyone who likes big words), a wimpy little scavenger, before becoming, amongst others, a raptor, a generic human, and the big one-Mr. T-Rex himself. And as you might imagine, the play style varies the further you go-though on the dinosaur levels, you can snack on carcasses to regain some health. With the compy, enemies are relatively few and far between. With the T-Rex, you're under a constant barrage from all sides. But then again, you're a T-Rex. Let out a mighty roar, snack on a human and crush the rest underfoot!
The graphics are excellent, with a beautiful 3D world bringing you into the jungle. But there's problem number one - it may be a 3D world, but you're running on a straight, 2D track. Restrictive, and annoying, because sometimes it's not clear where you are running exactly. Poor controls don't help, either. The T-Rex might be big and mighty, but according to Dreamworks he was slow at turning around, which is probably the reason he became extinct. There is also noticeable lag between when the button was pressed and when the dinosaur actually jumps - yes, missed jumps galore. These control faults are unbearable, and make the game very hard to play.
What makes it even worse is despite the nice premise, the early stages aren't that fun to play. There's only so much frustrating running and jumping one can handle as a compy, raptor or human. On the bright side, stomping everything in sight as a T-Rex is fun, but do you really want to play through the game to get there?