After spending 20 minutes playing the upcoming PC and console title Jurassic Park: The Game, I wasn't entirely convinced its subtitle was appropriate. It's structured like a television series, based on a film, and is wordy like a novel. It sounds messy, but its atypical approach to gaming presentation is precisely why Jurassic Park is such an interesting piece of interactive storytelling. I didn't feel as though I'd just taken part in Steven Spielberg's realization of a beloved world as much as I had directed a scene in it.

Even if the game is more expository than exhilarating, this is Jurassic Park in all the right ways. Just know going in that it's a bit boring to actually play. "We wanted to give people an experience that feels like that first film," said designer Joe Pinney, "so we're really stretching ourselves in terms of gameplay." Although Pinney doesn't spell it out explicitly, it's apparent that recreating the aesthetic and ambiance of Jurassic Park took priority over everything else.

The episodic series, which was delayed from April to late summer, runs parallel to the first movie. The new ensemble cast, which stars in various playable sections of each episode, shoots off in another direction, and the plot follows up on a loose end that has been on Pinney's mind for more than a decade. "I've always wondered what happened to that Barbasol can of dinosaur embryos," he said. "I always thought they were going to wrap that up, so this is a great opportunity for us."

Pinney means business when he says Jurassic Park "is very much story- and character-based." The limited gameplay is purely a vehicle for interacting with objects and areas highlighted by contextual commands. Pressing the appropriate buttons is a means of pointing characters in the right direction so they can play their part. These roles stay true to the collective core of any Telltale adventure.

The action, which involves escaping the toothy maws of scaly predators, is brief. You simply hit buttons when prompted and then watch the admittedly exciting cinemas. It breaks up the exploration, which is handled in the classic adventure game style, but with even less interaction than usual; you'll tell someone where to look and they'll take over the rest of the actions if there is something interesting to be seen. The puzzles are grounded in reality, unlike the goofy, often arbitrary tasks required to complete, say, Sam & Max.

Much like other "cinematic games" of its type, the camera swoops and spins during tense chases, where the familiar soundtrack hints that a dino is about to gnaw on the heroes' throats. To assist players stuck on puzzles, characters exchange small talk to hint at solutions. Stray paths that yield no progressive results allow characters to reflect, as though an omniscient narrator were giving us a peek into their thoughts.

With its refreshed take on a few genres, Jurassic Park may trip over its own ambitions. If gamers are willing to take a shot at a simple yet wholly familiar type of storytelling, the adventure game could succeed despite itself. Fanatic film nerds will obsess over the game's timeline, characters and references, and JP promises enough of the near-perfect presentation to compensate for its sometimes unappealing gameplay.