We’re currently in something of a golden age for console shooters. Last year saw some of the best first person shooters ever on Xbox 360 and PS3. With so many quality titles like Halo 3, Call of Duty 4 and Bioshock for gamers to choose from, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for an FPS to stand out from the pack unless it has a really unique hook. Enter Turok, a re-launch of the popular N64 series about the adventures of a time and dimension hopping Native American dinosaur hunter.
It’s hardly surprising that the entire Turok concept has been reworked, dropping the time travelling elements in favour of a sci-fi marines survival yarn. But developers Propaganda Games have retained the signature element of the series. Dinosaurs, lots and lots of ferocious man killing dinosaurs of all shapes and sizes that make Turok a bit different from any other shooter out there. But, while admittedly cool (who doesn’t want to stick a shotgun into the maw of a slathering veloceraptor and pull the trigger?), are hoards of blood thirsty giant reptiles and a change of setting enough of an evolution of the series for it to survive in the current shooter jungle?
The game casts you in the role of Native American soldier Joseph Turok, a former criminal press ganged into the space marines. The whole set-up is very clearly inspired by the movie ‘Aliens’ and games like Gears of War, right down to the generic huge shouldered and multi-ethnic trash talking marines. Turok was once part of a Special Forces team called Wolf Pack, led by the enigmatic and grizzled Kane. Kane and his team have gone rogue and Turok is now part of a hunt with a team of crack marines to take him out. Having previously been a part of Wolf Pack, your new team mates don’t trust you and ship-board tensions are high.
As the game opens and the Task Force approaches the planet Kane is hiding upon, your ship is shot down, crash landing on a ‘Lost World’ populated by T-Rexes, Veloceraptors and other nasties determined to eat the survivors. Not to mention the army Kane has assembled to kill you.
It sounds like an excellent set-up for an action packed battle for survival, but the problem with Turok is that the execution of all of this is never quite up to the current high standards of the genre. Sure, Turok’s three way fights between the dinosaurs, Kane’s men and you are exciting in places, and the sight of huge dinosaur bosses is a treat, but it’s let down in several key areas.
The game’s main story line is initially promising, using periodic flash backs to explain the animosity between Turok and Kane but it seems to fizzle out and by the time you confront him at the end, there’s very little satisfaction in it. Kane just ends up taking a back seat to getting off planet and you stop caring about him.
Turok also suffers in the graphics department, despite some great looking dinosaurs and decently rendered character models. The general environment, with its jungle theme, often looks dated and textures are fairly low res and murky up close. It just keeps you from believing that you’re in an organic living world. Compared with other current games that have rich, detailed jungle or forest, like Drakes Fortune or even Halo 3 or Half-Life Episode 2, Turok is lacking in graphical chops. There are some nice touches, like wider jungle vistas and grass that sways as you move through it, but constantly looking at jagged textures and drab underground or indoor levels pull you out of the game.
All this wouldn’t be a problem, if the game's combat were better. But the impression of Turok as merely adequate is underlined by the enemy AI, especially with human foes. You can sneak up and knife a soldier metres from his buddies and have them do nothing. Or have a huge fire fight and walk round a corner to find enemy troops seemingly unaware of the commotion. To be fair, Kane's troops (in sadly uninspired black suits with helmets) will take cover and flank you, but you’ll never be in any great danger, unless overwhelmed by sheer numbers. The friendly marines who fight beside you are hardly any better, and so useless in a fire fight it’s hard to care that they predictably go from hating you to a grudging respect. But at least you can follow them if you become lost and get to see most of them die horribly in gaping dinosaur maws.
While the dinosaur AI isn’t much better than the enemy soldiers', and they only tend to be really effective when attacking in numbers, the prehistoric monsters are clearly the stars of Turok. From vicious Utahraptors to mighty T-Rexes, it feels like the designers lavished much of their attention on the creatures, with some positive results. They’re far and away the best looking things in the game, and the boss fights against huge beasts like the T-Rex are the highlights of the game. They’re genuinely impressive, despite some unfair collision detection and the poorly designed Sea Beast boss fight.
Besides attacking with tooth and claw, the ‘smaller’ dinosaurs can surprise and jump you, triggering little ‘survival’ mini games. You get a close up of the attack and ‘RT’ or ‘LT’ prompts flash up on the screen, with you needing to hammer the respective buttons to fight them off by knifing them in the eye or something similar. You can also kill enemies with just your knife in some spectacular ways. Holding the knife and getting close to an enemy causes an ‘RT’ prompt to appear. Hitting it at the right time makes the action switch to third person view and you get to watch Turok kill man or beast in stylishly gory fashion. These are cool to watch but the knife is grossly overpowered. You’ll eventually find yourself just running at groups of dinosaurs’ knife in hand and simply timing the ‘RT’ attack to kill them one by one. It’s a shame, because althrough the attacks initially look great, they detract from the game play. The dinosaurs stop presenting a challenge on their own. As a result Turok only really shines when you’re in a three way dance, fighting both Kane's men and the creatures. You briefly forget the game's shortcomings as you gleefully fire a flare at an enemy soldier, causing every dinosaur nearby to rabidly attack him. But it’s a delicate balance often upset by times when the game seemingly tries to make up for lacking AI with levels designed around snipers or rocket men who seemingly can’t miss. Rather than creating a challenge, these just induce controller tossing frustration.
Your cache of weapons is surprisingly muted for a Turok game (previous titles had some pretty exotic toys), you get the usual things like SMGs, Shotguns, Mini-guns, Sniper rifles and Pulse Rifles, supplemented by the one hit kill weapons, the Bow and Knife. The weapon choices make sense given the more realistic approach of the game, but it takes too long to kill enemies with most of the guns, leaving you opting for the cheap knife in many situations. Turok isn’t a particularly hard or long game, easily finished on the default setting in about 8 hours or so if you’re an FPS veteran, but the level design, while competent, doesn’t provide much incentive for re-play.
Turok's multiplayer is in a similar mould to most, with the standard death match and capture the flag variants, but Propaganda have also included a couple of 4 player co-op maps, which are slightly harder than the main game, thanks mainly to more rocket men and snipers. Multiplayer also suffers from a frustration with the knife attacks; just like the chainsaw in Gears of War, you never quite know if it’ll be you or the other player who gets that one hit kill despite attacking first. On the positive side there are dinosaurs in the multiplayer maps that attack everyone, adding an additional element of mayhem online.
As much as we love the concept of battling dinosaurs, apart from some stand out set pieces Turok just doesn’t come together enough to elevate it above average. Not graphically or game play wise and that’s a problem. It isn’t a mediocre game, and fun in places but almost everything about it feels very dated. Perhaps if it had come out early last year before the standard got as high as it did, it might have gotten a better reception. As it is, Turok just doesn’t have what it takes to compare with it's genre fellows right now, despite it’s cool dino baited ‘hook’. Unless you’re a rabid FPS player who’s burned through everything else currently out there, this game simply hasn't evolved enough to stand out from the pack.
Score : 2.5/5 - Barely average.
Turok is out now on Xbox 360 and PS3
