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For years, gamers have gone without a good dinosaur video game. Several big-budget ventures have appeared promising in the past, but their arrival and reviews only brought disappointment to fans of both palaeontology and gaming. Now there's a new fan-made mod currently being worked on, developed completely in Half-Life 2's Source engine, that'll attempt to give dino enthusiasts the game they've been waiting for.

This mod is called Jurassic Life, and it's based on the immensely popular Jurassic Park film franchise.

According to the official Jurassic Life website, gamers will be thrown into the role of Robert Muldoon, a character from the original Jurassic Park that (spoiler alert) was consumed by raptors. What this information implies is that the game will occur prior to that unfortunate event.

Jurassic Park Source Engine Mod

The story will be based entirely around the events that occur in the first movie; albeit modified in order to provide gamers with a better story and a much needed change of scenery. Since the devs currently working on the fan project will be altering the story, it's also possible that Muldoon may be given a much bigger role — one in which he may even survive the dino outbreak.

"We allowed ourselves to change and include some miscellaneous new things compared to the original story, in order to intensify the gaming experience; we looked at the gaming aspect and at the same time worked on make the levels, characters, events recognizable... make parallels between the original storyline and the modification one, and get the feeling of reviving some movies moments."

Poor grammar aside, it looks as if the developers know what gamers expect from a solid Jurassic Park-inspired mod. The graphics certainly aren't up to par with what many fans were hoping for, but — given how dated the Half-Life 2 Source engine is at this point — the visuals are more than adequate. The gameplay, while still a little rough around the edges, looks to be shaping up nicely too — although it's not much of a feat to top the likes of TellTale Games' Jurassic Park.

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You can follow Riley on Twitter @TheRileyLittle.

Source: Jurassic Life (via Eurogamer)