Location: Home Page » Preys-World » Articles » Turok Review

Preys-World - Turok Review

Monday 10th of March, 2008 - 20:26:50 GMT

I have fond memories of the Turok series; I remember playing Seeds of Evil on the N64 and being blown away by the graphics and variety in weapons. To this day I still think the Cerebral Bore is one of the most enjoyable weapons to ever feature in an fps. So I was disappointed when the series took a downward turn and after the dull Turok Evolution I was interested to see whether this new game could resurrect the franchise.

Upon starting the game the first thing that struck me was how shiny everything looked and how like the cut-scenes in Stranglehold, another game that was developed using the Unreal 3 engine, everything liked slightly blurred as if the scenes had been shot through a soft-focus lens. It’s all rather strange and perhaps adds credence to the belief that unless you are Epic you will have difficulty getting the best out of the Unreal tech, but that’s not really an issue to be discussed here.

Turok differentiates itself from previous games in the franchise in that you no longer play as a lone-wolf fighting against dinosaurs and the titular bad-guy. Rather you are part of Whisky Team tasked with capturing the leader of rogue outfit the Wolf Pack. After a bit more story-telling your ship hit by a missile and forced to crash-land on the planet. From here the game starts proper and you are tasked with meeting up with the rest of your team on another part of the planet. You soon stumble upon a fellow team member by the name of Slade and it transpires that he doesn’t trust you and believes Turok to be a spy for the Wolf Pack. The interplay between Slade and Turok remains a nice little undercurrent as you progress and generally the game makes a good stab at trying to tell a story. Whilst it is certainly formulaic in places with the team full of your normal stereo-types, the story moves along well and the little bits of banter between the AI controlled soldiers helps to give them character, something that is missing from most games of this type. There were times when I genuinely felt bad when a character died which is a testament to how the game cleverly draws you in without actually straying from the conventions of the genre.

Architecturally you spend you time fighting in one of either three locations, outside a jungle setting, inside bases which look like they have been taken straight out of Star Wars Return of the Jedi, or underground in tunnels. Infact now that I come to think of it the planet you have landed on is a lot like Endor from said Star Wars film except the Ewoks have been replaced by man-eating Dinosaurs.

Speaking of dinosaurs Turok handles the integration of the beasts rather well. The dinosaur threat mainly comes from Velocoraptors with the odd T-Rex and larger foes thrown in. They are a lot faster than the human foes and a few hits from the larger ones can see you kissing dirt. It definitely makes a change of pace to suddenly find yourself fighting a Raptor. I have to credit Turok for the way it manages to make you fearful of a dinosaur attack. Whilst this is mitigated to a certain degree with the ability to one-hit kill Raptors with your knife, the speed and ferocity of the attacks and the way they tend to come out of caves when you least expect them creates a palpable sense of fear when entering an area that you think may indeed contain dinosaurs.

When the game was announced the developers made much of the ability to pit enemies against each other with the player given the tools to pit marines against dinosaurs and whilst you can take advantage of the times when both appear in the same area it is a bit of a gimmick and certainly isn’t used that often with most sections of the game pitting you against either human or dinosaur. All in all though the inclusion of the prehistoric beasts does add to the game and are more than just a feature thrown in to boost sales.

As already mentioned this is more of a team based shooter and so the majority of the game will see you fighting alongside AI controlled team members. Fortunately they are fairly competent and unlikely to wander into your crossfire. However they don’t seem to inflict much damage and during the course of playing I never saw a friendly take-down an enemy on their own, therefore it is left mainly up to you to clear the area of any bad guys. Added to that your team members can’t actually die, they just go into the foetal position and remain there for a couple of minutes before making a miraculous recovery and rejoining the action. They do serve a purpose though despite their invincibility and lack of damage. Enemy AI will focus their attacks on them meaning it is possible for you to perform a flanking manoeuvre and the level design is often geared towards encouraging you to take advantage of this option.

Weapons wise I was rather disappointed with what was on offer. As I stated in the introduction Turok games are famed for their strange and interesting weapons and whilst the excellent Torque Bow returns the rest of the weapons available are your standard fps fare. Each weapon has an alt-fire mode and certain weapons can be dual wielded and most of the weapons pack a meaty punch which is good as I can’t stand games where the weapons feel like pop-guns. During the course of play I found myself relying mainly on the Pulse Rifle due to its large clip and secondary fire which allows you to launch concussion grenades that knock enemies out of cover and personally I felt it was far and away the best weapon making the others seem pretty pointless.

I managed to blast through the game in one weekend so it is not overly long, but in this day and age when there are so many games vying for our attention it is no bad thing that Turok can be completed in around 6-10 hours. I have to say that at no point was I bored throughout the whole experience. The change of level setting and enemy kept the game fresh and helped you to forget the fact that underneath Turok is a pretty standard example of the genre. It doesn’t do anything different to the many other shooters on the market and the guns are a bit of a letdown when compared to other Turok games, but it also doesn’t do anything particularly bad either and because of this you can easily have hours of fun with the singleplayer campaign.

For fans of the series it is definitely an improvement on Evolution and has enough little quirks and fun moments in it that you can forget about the various flaws and just enjoy the game. It isn’t a Halo, but then it isn’t a Soldier of Fortune 3 either, so as long as you go into the game with that mindset you will find an enjoyably solid if unspectacular fps experience.



-Nat I