The surprise is the replay value. It is a great game to play to just kill time, but it always seems to call you back!
The game play is similar to Roller Coaster Tycoon, Zoo Tycoon, or Sim City. You are to build a dinosaur part from the ground up, including every thing from high-voltage fencing and ranger stations to burger stands and bathrooms. Additionally, you also have a dig team scouring different parts of the globe finding dino remains and DNA for you to extract in your lab. Once all of your dinos are born and your guests start arriving you must both continue building up your park whilst keeping everyone, human and otherwise, happy.
It doesn't really seem like a really tense game, and on paper sometimes seems like a yawn, but when you are playing, there are so many things needing your attention, you stay really busy.
If your park reaches five stars, you essentially complete the main challenge, but you can continue on managing your park indefinitely. Sometimes it is almost as much trouble keeping the five stars as earning them in the first place.
Although the main appeal of this game is the dinosaurs, I assure you this is not just a game for dino nerds. The play of the game is such that just a passing interest in theme parks or dinosaurs is sufficient to satisfy.
It's one of those few games you can just keep going back to, which is why I felt it deserved a 9/10. Even a great game can get tired after the first play (have you really replayed many of your favorites?), but this one just gets better each time you play, as long as you put it down for a time. It definitely grow on you!