It's called OPERATION Genesis, Epinions, but it's a lot of fun.

Operation Genesis is an economic sim where you create your own dinosaur park, but a few real-time elements breathe some new life into the genre. Think of it as a game of Theme Park, where the main attractions can kill you.

You start off the game on your own custom island, researching DNA, building exhibits, and of course constructing huge fences to keep the dinosaurs contained. As your research progresses, you are able to create bigger and badder dinosaurs that generate additional customer interest. Of course this raises the danger level as well. To provide research material, you hire teams of archaeologists to dig up bones and amber. As more material is collected and researched, the DNA of each dinosaur becomes more complete and the dinosaurs live longer as a result.

I think the developers struck a nice balance of keeping the money management focused mainly on dinosaur research and less on the park itself so it doesn't turn into yet another city-building economic sim. You do have to monitor some areas like food and park cleanliness, but that's about it. The majority of money is spent developing dinosaurs and their needs. For instance, the dinosaurs need to be vaccinated to prevent a number of diseases that can afflict the animals. Once the vaccines are developed, you need to build a helicopter station so they can be shot with the vaccine (or shot period if they go nuts and start attacking everything.) You can't spend the entire time focused only on the dinosaurs, though. You also need to spend time researching new and better exhibits, such as balloon rides, viewing towers, and the ever-popular jungle safari tours in the woefully inadequate Nissan pickups, so the customers can see the dinosaurs better and improve your park rating.

As the research improves and new technologies are developed, you get an email telling you everything, and I mean everything that happens. This starts to get a little annoying after a while as many of the "common sense" decisions could be delegated. It would have been nice to be able to adjust the settings so certain decisions, like reviving a sick dinosaur or selling fully researched DNA material, could be made automatically. Every so often, a little real-time gameplay comes into action. For instance, a dinosaur might trash one of the pickups, leaving the survivors stranded and it's up to you to fly a helicopter overhead and rescue them before they get trampled on or eaten. Or, if you like, you can jump on one of the balloons or pickups to take some pictures of the dinosaurs. If your photography skills are good enough, they might get published and you'll make a little extra cash as a result.

One of the best features of the game is simply watching the behavior of the dinosaurs as they interact with one another. Certain dinosaurs tend to get along, others don't. As you introduce new and different dinosaurs, the dynamics of the park change. When my park started off with all herbivores, they would wander all over the place. Once I introduced some carnivores, especially my bad-boy T-Rex, they tended to become much more territorial. Plus my normally docile triceritops would start freaking out and trash any nearby pickups, much to the chagrin of the customers. Other dinosaurs would get so stressed, they'd simply keel over and die. Some of the behaviors are a little buggy, they like pushing each other around while they're sleeping, for instance. But for the most part they do seem to have individual personality and it adds a lot to the game.

There are some minor gripes, such as not being able to name your save games (screams console port) and being forced to use certain repetitive functions with your keyboard even though the entire game could have been mouse driven. My main gripe, though, is that it's too easy to beat. I'm no expert in these types of games, but even in my first game, I easily created a money making machine with every exhibit and every dinosaur researched in spite of numerous mistakes that I wouldn't make my second time around. There's really not much involved in keeping the park maintained or the customers happy. It didn't seem like it made much difference to the customers whether I had a few or a lot of dinosaurs. In fact, it seems like the less dinosaurs you have, the easier it is to play. Having said that, I was feeling pretty smug about my park when a huge twister ripped through destroying everything in its path. I was having so much fun watching the devastation that I forgot to declare a state of emergency. Let's just say that the few customers that lived probably won't return anytime soon.

So should you buy it? If you're looking for a complex economic sim, you'll probably be happier with Sim City 4. It's also graphics-intensive, so it'll struggle on standard video cards, but anyone with a Geforce or Radeon will be able to play it. Aside from that, you really do get the "virtual" thrill of building and managing your very own dinosaur park.

One last thing, if you have a twisted sense of humor (like me) you'll be happy to know that you can set the dinosaurs on a rampage and they do eat people. Personally, I put a dinosaur hatcher right in front of the park entrance. Once the tourists throw open the gates they're in for a "real treat." Hope the review helped.

(1Ghz AMD Athlon, 256MB SDRAM, Geforce2 Pro, SB Live)