Turok Review
An attractive shooter with a Brontosaurus belly full of problems.
Posted by Chris Buffa on Monday, February 04, 2008
After plowing through the Middle East in Call of Duty 4 and exploring an underwater city in Bioshock, Turok's prehistoric wonderland is a refreshing change of place, thanks to lush jungles and underground caves teeming with a host of imaginative critters. You'll battle a t-rex one-on-one, fry a bunch of scorpions with a flame thrower and bury razor sharp arrows into raptors' heads, in addition to battling an army of Killzone inspired super soldiers. However, despite its attractive graphics and homage to one of gaming's most legendary characters, Turok is a forgettable and sloppy first person shooter that fails to capture the excitement of the popular Nintendo 64 franchise.
Once again, you reprise the role of Joseph Turok, a one man killing machine that left his old faction, Wolf Pack, to join up with a band of soldiers called Whiskey Company, the goal to stop Wolfpack's leader, Roland Kane, from launching some diabolical scheme to control the universe. Enemy fire rips into Turok's ship, and him and his new friends crash land onto a mysterious planet teeming with dinosaurs. Armed with high tech weaponry, Turok sets out to not only look for survivors, but to also take down Kane and his army, by any means necessary.
Turok is decent for the most part. During the course of the seven hour journey, you'll battle a plethora of critters, from fast moving raptors to acid spewing bugs. And since the dinosaurs aren't picky eaters, it's possible to divert their attention to the opposition, which gives you much-needed breathing room, and believe us, you'll need it. While not impossible, Turok spikes in difficulty at random moments, thanks to poor design decisions that start with getting knocked down.
Whenever a larger enemy hits Turok, he falls down, most times in the opposite direction from where he was facing. Oftentimes, you get an opportunity to use the knife to jab your adversary in the throat or eyes, but you can't fire a gun, nor can you perform quick weapon switching or reload while standing back up. This proves deadly in firefights, where a dinosaur will hit you from behind, you'll attempt to recover and then get shot in the head by a sniper. To make matters even worse, the game seems to repeatedly spawn dinosaurs if you stand in the same area, which undermines the stealth segments of the game. Although the developers encourage you to sneak through the grass and kill silently with the knife, it's almost impossible to do when a dinosaur has its way with Turok from behind. And forget about getting help from Whiskey Company. Although your computer controlled comrades divert enemy attention and open fire, they almost always land non-lethal hits, leaving everything up to you. All of this leads to lots of unnecessary deaths, made more annoying by a save system that records checkpoints only, so expect to restart missions instead of reaching half-way points.
Don't expect closure with the story, either. Turok's developers make a point to show lots of cut scenes of Turok interacting with Kane, but you'll never have a clear grasp of who Kane is and how he managed to terraform a planet that quickly spawned dinosaurs. By the time we reached the final battle, we just didn't care anymore.
On a lesser note, the weapons suck compared to other first person shooters, especially previous Turok video games. We love the knife and the bow, but everything else, the 9mm handgun, FP9 Small Machine Gun, shotgun and rocket launcher are standard issue firearms that pale in comparison to Turok 2's Cerebral Bore. We kept looking for something we'd never seen before, a weapon that'd make Turok stand apart from its competition. Yeah, the flamethrower is pretty sweet, but it hardly compares to the toys in Unreal Tournament 3 and Resistance: Fall of Man.
As expected, multiplayer adds much needed value to the game, thanks to 8-12 person battles, the usual modes (Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag) and lots of Xbox 360 achievements (sorry PS3 owners). But it's hardly revolutionary or worth playing over Halo 3, Call of Duty 4 and Team Fortress 2.
While not a bad game, Turok isn't a memorable one, either. Wandering through this ancient world and slaughtering hundreds of dinosaurs is cool, but not worth $59.99. Considering the missed potential and franchise legacy, it's 2008's first disappointment.
Final Score: 6/10
