A re-imaging that's turned out for the best but still contains so

Turok

Released:	Feb/05/08.		Difficulty:	Variable.
Developed by:	Propaganda Games.		Learning curve:	0 - 30 min..
Published by:	Touch Stone.		Platforms:	Xbox 360, PS3, PC.

Pros:	+ Amazing visuals, + Killing dinosaurs is awesome, + Lush forest’s, + T-rex Battles are epic.
Cons:	- Stupid A.I., - No aim assist, - Human enemies not as fun, - Short single player, - Very few checkpoints, - Knife Mechanics aren’t well tuned.

Review.

After many months of fine-tuning and days in stores, the new revamped “Turok” is ready to be played. But how does it hold up to today’s shooters? Or better yet, how does it hold up to the pass installments?

We’ll to say this is the best would be a lie, but it is a good game even though it has trouble devising itself from every other shooter on the market. It seems to have trouble showing how it’s a completely different game; it doesn’t follow the original Turok with the main protagonist being a Native American warrior named “Turok” going back in time to fight prehistoric dinosaurs in an ultimate class of destruction where it eventually evolved so much from its original design until it became the horrible “Turok Evolution” which caused fans around the world to cry because it was that bad. But the new Turok has somewhat kept it the same but added some new ideas to the series, which have been done a thousand times before, but makes it seem newer because its using dinosaurs.

This time it about a group of mercenaries called “whiskey” that set out to find and capture a dangerous group of people called “Wolf”. The main character this time is no longer our memorable native Turok, Son of Stone with a more updated released prisoner now mercenary Native American named “Joseph Turok”. The surroundings of the new Turok seem to somewhat fallow the origin of the originals but adds more off a futuristic twist too it to keep it both interesting and somewhat fresh to the series. This of coarse takes out some of the originality that it once had and makes it very similar to most sci-fi that’s out there (ex Alien, halo, quake, etc). But this is not entirely bad because it dose make the games single-player story hook you in and drag you along like a hillbilly strapped to a mad bull.

The gameplay is also something that has changed a lot from its original bases, no longer being a first person pain in the ass making jumping a constant backbreaking competition. But now it’s switched to a more halo-like control scheme where you no longer have to worry about the matters of actually staying alive from jumping. But that doesn’t make it any better, it seems like they changed the frustrating jumping mechanics for a more loose movement. This meaning of coarse trying to slightly turn to the enemy to the right or left is not really an option, this then causes you to too turn to much from them. This isn’t good especially when you have retarded reptilian dinosaurs with dinner knives for hands thirsting for human meat right behind you. This then brings me to the knife combat in Turok. It seems that no matter how much you time the trigger to go into a exciting seen where Turok will stab the dinosaur of you choice in wonderful mutilating ways doesn’t seem to work so well, instead ending up as a small poke which leads to your utmost demise. This is really annoying because of the few fucking checkpoints in the game making the game more repetitive then it all ready is.

Now with that entire aside and said, graphically the games is great. The forests are beautiful with large amounts of foliage and prehistoric atmosphere that could not be done without the Unreal 3 engine. And with that being said they also happen to be the only people who got Epics graphic style right, except with you know…colour. What I really enjoy about this is the damage modeling, where when you hit an enemy it causes blood to show from that area and so forth. You may also know this from Bioshock, which also used it as we’ll as many other games. So over all this game looks great, but what isn’t these days. Just because you have the graphical power behind the game doesn’t make it better in any way.

Multiplayer is where it sort of gets some points. Although its not up to what the original Turok was like it still shows some of its fundamentals that make it great such as having random raptor bots roaming the arenas in search for any players to attack. That may also be a downfall to the true fans of the series with the lack of being able to play as the raptors themselves and just as the human character. But since its not being developed by its original developers we could lighten up on them …for now.

Now that we touched on the visible aspects of the game lets move on to the actual sound, and lets just say it’s very superb. Of coarse the reason for that being from the talented Ron "fucking" Perlman, which happens to be the best damn actor ever! Moving on. So ya that sound quality is good (mostly because of Ron) but not the greatest, the other actors could have used some work in developing their characters but over all its good.

So here we have it a recently developed retelling of Turok, which happens to be a pretty well developed game. But it does suffer from some major issues of devising itself from other shooters out there. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try the game out.