Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis puts you in the shoes of a Dr. Hammond-type scientist, and challenges you to build a dinosaur themed amusement park.

Similar to the first movie, you can lay down electric fences. Some fences have a higher electric discharge than others, and are meant for the bigger dinosaurs. While a 100 volt fence might keep a raptor safe, it might take a 500 volt fence to keep a T-Rex from escaping.

You have various buildings at your disposal, from the standard restaurant and bathroom to gift stalls and photo booths.

You can opt to construct a safari tour, like what took place in the first movie. You even have the ability to take the tour yourself, and see your park as your visitors see it.

One of the most important objects is the Ranger Station. With this building, you can have helicopters patrol your park to watch for any disasters. If a dino should escape, you have the option of entering the helicopter in a first person view to try to shoot the dino with a tranquilizer dart. If you want to stick to building only, you can let the AI capture the dino.

In order to breed a dinosaur, you must hire a team to locate fossils, then you must have the fossils analyzed. The whole process takes a while, but the longer you let your teams work, the longer your dino will live, and the happier your visitors will be. Force the team to give you the results early, and your dino might only live for ten days.

The different dino's require different resources. Herbivores require lots of trees and grass, while carnivores require goats and cows. Your carnivores may get tired of being fed, so you might have to send in a smaller sized dino (a raptor in a T-Rex pen, for example), for the larger dino to hunt.

The game includes multiple camera angles. You can rotate 360 degrees, zoom in and out, enter "visitor" cam, ride on the safari, take a scenic tour in a hot air balloon, or look out the helicopter.

Also included is a compressive guide to dinosaurs, geared to help you figure out what each dino likes and dislikes, and how to make them happy, as well as a brief history of each specific dino.