Another day of the week another first person shooter, but hey at least there are dinosaurs in this one.

Story:

Well if you’ve ever played one of the earlier versions you would know that Turok isn’t part of his name. In Turok: Dinosaur Hunter you played as Tal’Set and in Turok 2: Seeds of Evil you played as Joshua Fireseed. Yes I realize that there were a couple of games after these two, but these are the ones that matter for they are the best of the franchise…and still are. In Turok you play as Joseph Turok a former member of a team consisting of bald and bearded badass mofo’s known as “Wolf Pack.”

The Wolf Pack is known for specializing in down and dirty missions and accomplishing them at all costs. Doing these missions for the most part rids you of whatever ethics and respect for mankind that you have. Old Joe didn’t want to be a part of this and broke away from the group. Afterwards Wolf Pack leader Roland Kane goes all Col. Kurtz and high jacks his own personal planet and bio engineers his own super virus.

This isn’t some normal planet either it’s a terra-formed planet with dinosaurs running around. Because Kurtz…I meant Kane is a deranged nut job they send in Whiskey Company to clean up the mess. The game opens up with a scene ripped from “Aliens” and they awake from hyper sleep. Before Turok can ask for a pair of slippers the other members of Whiskey Company tear into him for being a traitor and immediately don’t trust him. As the team heads to the planet the ship they are on gets shot down and the team is scattered. Because of this the story goes from “Let’s kill that bastard,” to “Let’s get the F out of here!”

Throughout the game you’ll run into somebody from the team and they’ll tag along with you, but for the most part you’re with a guy named Slade. This guy hates your guts and won’t shut the hell up about it. It got to the point that for most of the game I wanted to stick my dino killing knife into his forehead, but the game wouldn’t allow me to. Aside from this the game goes into Turok’s backstory like how he was trained by Roland and what led him to leaving Wolf Pack. The story isn’t bad, but it’s so cliché ridden.

Gameplay:

Honestly what can I say that hasn’t been said about some other first person shooter. Well for starters there are about three different kinds of shooters. You have “Godly; why can’t I put this down,” “Average; it’s playable, but it’s starting to bore and irritate the crap out of me,” and “This game is crap on a stick.” Turok falls into the second category. While I was playing the game I longed for a run button but there wasn’t one. The pace at which you are able to travel at sets the pace for the game. The walking pace in The Darkness almost killed it for me and it isn’t helping Turok either, but in it’s defense it’s faster than Jackie Estacado and his cement shoes.

Being able to run to cover or nicely outmaneuver a speedy dinosaur would be great in this game, but you can’t. But this isn’t the main problem in this game; it’s the aiming. And in this genre if you don’t get the aiming right you don’t get the game right. The sensitivity in this game is so hit or miss. If you leave it at the default setting you won’t be able to hit the backside of a Brontosaurus and if you turn it down slightly the game won’t be fluid enough so you have to make do with what you have. The game also has the novelty of duel-wielding, but after a short time I stopped using it because my accuracy was taking such a serious hit. So pretty much you’ll use the zoom feature and just one gun it.

One of the gimmicks in this game is the inclusion of dinosaurs and for some odd reason dinosaurs supposedly equals cool. And well it doesn’t. I don’t mind having an extra batch of enemies to deal with, but if they’re a pain in the ass to shoot then I really don’t want them. This part isn’t me complaining, it’s me observing. Dinosaurs tend to be all over the place and are in harmony with their environment and want you dead. There are pretty much two species of dinosaurs that you’ll mostly see in the game in various colors. You have the small raptors and the medium sized Raptors. Occasionally you will see a Dilophosaurus (not the Jurassic Park kind), but they’re in the minority. The best way to get rid of most dinosaurs is to pull out your knife and pull the Right trigger when the prompt comes up. Then you’ll see a scene showcasing a rather brutal and cool looking stabbing scene.

Is it fun to stab dinos? Yes…briefly. After about an hour of doing it you’ll wonder why, A) why couldn’t these things be smarter and B) why aren’t the guns cooler and more powerful. If you’re old enough to remember the originals you’ll remember how over the top the weapons used to be. You had a Fusion Cannon, Nuke Canon, Cerebral Bore, Charge Dart Rifle, semi-automatic magnum pistol, double barreled pump action shotgun with explosive shells, grenade launcher and more tools of outlandish delights of overkill. In this Turok you have a shotgun, machine gun, Pulse Rifle and for the most part that is it because I found myself using those the most. There’s also a Gatling Gun, Sticky Bomb launcher and flamethrower, but those don’t show up till much later in the game.

For the most part I just found myself running around with the knife in my hand. And while on the topic of the knife I would like to know what sporting goods store Turok bought this thing. You’re stabbing raptors in the head with it, slashing the throats of giant herbivores with it, pretty much cutting troops in half with it. While on that topic I must say they are cool looking. My favorite dino killing animation has you jumping on the back of it so you can slash its throat. And when it comes to killing a man say good bye to the windows to the soul. Half the time your Bowie Knife forged from Adamantium is going through someone’s eye.

While on the topic of killing let’s talk gore for a minute. When you kill a dinosaur you get blood; kill a human and you see sparks. Now let’s compare this to at least Turok 2 since it was the last one I played (Evolution doesn’t exist to me). In Seeds of Evil you get to blow off heads, arms, legs…everything, blow holes through specific enemies and see their ribs. The game had something that bored through the head of an enemy and came complete with a blood geyser as a reward. So I must say the lack of immense gore is a little bit of a let down, especially if you grew up with the N64 games.

I do realize that dinosaurs had the brains the size of a grain of rice, but please humor us a little bit with the AI. A lot of times after the miss their initial charge they just run into the wall. Later in the game you get these creatures that is a cross between a dinosaur and a jungle cat. Though it is cool looking it is stupid. It’ll just run around attack you then dart off and climb a tree. You will shoot it off the tree and then it will scurry around and then climb up the same tree, which I thought was weird. The one thing that I thought was cool is that sometimes you’ll catch other dinosaurs attacking a different kind of dinosaur. You can also use the dinosaurs to kill the high school drop out soldiers.

These guys have no will to survive what so ever and the only thing in their actual favor is that they take a lot of hits and the aiming in the game is clunky and sluggish, plus numbers is on their side. These guys will come out and attack you in droves one after another coming from the same location. There was one instant when I saw about 6 guys running out of the same hallway. Because of that I threw a grenade and killed half. One of the remaining survivors then runs out and I kill him, then I rush in and kill the rest. They really don’t flank you either. There are times when it will feel like they are, but that’s only because you might wander into them during the confusion of some firefights. There’s a lot going on with the dinosaurs and soldiers coming at you. The big pain is that if you get hit by a dinosaur you will get knocked down (yes you see your feet on the way down). Because of this you’ll become disorientated by the camera switch and have your back towards the enemy.

Another problem are the boss battles. You can’t just empty rounds into something and watch it die. I do realize that bosses are supposed to have strategies, but everything has some kind of unintuitive strategy to it. The only fun one is the T-Rex battle and the rest border on “this is bullsh*t” to “this game can go to hell.”

Don’t get me wrong the game isn’t bad, but some of the fundamentals are lacking and don’t even get me started with the lack of a flashlight. There are some instances of fun, but it’s outweighed by the clumsy aiming and mediocre gameplay.
Rating: 6.9

Graphics:

The graphics aren’t actually bad, but they don’t wow you. Upon entering the jungle you’ll be treated to a scene with Pterodactyls flying overhead and a Brontosaurus thundering through the jungle. You’re on a cliff looking down and all I can really say is “where’s the depth?” I said this because it doesn’t really look like you’re that high up. The jungle vegetation is all right. There’s not that much detail in it and when you look at the grass it looks a tad blocky. If this game had come out before Uncharted: Drakes Fortune it still wouldn’t turn that many heads regarding the jungle area.

The dinosaurs actually look pretty cool and the animation for the creatures is actually pretty cool. I’m not sure how they did the motion capture for them but they look and move pretty convincingly. There is this one boss that though I hated fighting it I liked looking at it. It is some kind of nightmarish combination of squid and lizard with more tentacles than a bad hentai (yes I went there). You will see its tentacles flailing while it’s throwing rocks at you and it is really just cool looking. The skin texture is pretty scaly and reptilian and you’ll notice that when you shoot them you’ll see holes and other forms of damage on the dinosaurs. The bad thing is that there are times that the skin texture won’t load in and they will have a very plastic like look to them.

The game isn’t rife with technical glitches or frame rate hiccups like Blacksite: Area 51. My only real complaint has to be the load times after dying, which last for like 15 seconds. Also character design is a tad uninspired; especially on the enemy troops. They look like Helghast rejects with glowing goggles.
Rating: 7.5

Sound:

The music isn’t bad, but it’s a tad understated at times. There times when you here the tribal jungle beats cascading through your speakers. It gives you a little bit of a rush especially after you just nailed some guy to a wall with your bow and arrow or after you put your knife through someone’s heart.

The dinosaurs sound pretty realistic and at times a little bit pissed off at you. The sound the enemy soldiers make when you kill them is really irritating. None of the guns sound powerful, but the explosions are thunderous at times. It’s all just a mixed bag, some things are cool and some things aren’t.
Rating: 7.0

Replay:

Well there’s your pre-requisite tacked on multiplayer. I played a couple of sessions and couldn’t stick with it. Because of the sluggish shooting and the over-powered knife a lot of people just run around knifing one another. The game has a separate co-op campaign, Capture the Flag and there’s deathmatch and team deathmatch (what shooter doesn’t have these two?). To be frank and honest I wish they concentrated more on making the core gameplay more polished and unique, but this is the price of multiplayer I guess.
Rating: 7.0

Overall:

While it’s definitely not a bad game it’s just not unique. In this genre you have to wow from the very beginning and offer something pulse pounding and innovative. This seems to be getting harder after the likes of Bioshock, The Orange Box and Call of Duty 4. I have played a lot worse and it’s a lot better than Turok: Evolution, but it’s still not as fun as the first two games in the franchise. Personally since they have the tech for it I would like to see a current gen remake of Seeds of Evil (complete with Cerebral Bore).
Rating: 7.0