QJ.NET reviews Turok

 Thought the Turok franchise died after the great Acclaim extinction? Think again. Touchstone has picked up the fossils and breathed new life into the series with this nice rendition for the Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony PlayStation 3. Should Turok have stayed in the history books or does it deserve its new lease on life? Find out in the full article.

Acclaim‘s Turok series for the Nintendo 64 was recognized as its of the very best shooter franchises of its era, grounding its popularity on great graphics, a compelling sci-fi storyline, and some of the sickest weapons ever conceived for video games. When Acclaim sank, a lot of fans were saddened with the thought of never seeing another Turok game again. Fortunately, a lot of us were wrong.

In 2007, we were all pleasantly surprised with Touchstone‘s announcement that developer Propaganda Games is working on a new Turok title. While some initially thought that we’re set to get a remake, the devs had something else in mind.

Same name, different game

Instead of giving the classic Turok: Dinosaur Hunter an updated look and gameplay enhancements, Propaganda threw the old template away and built a significantly different offering. In this Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony PlayStation 3 shooter, you play as native American mercenary Joseph Turok who’s a former member of a notorious organization called Wolfpack. Turok eventually realizes that he’s had enough of the thug life and decides to bail out.

Turok later switches sides to the Whiskey Company which is in hot pursuit of Wolfpack leader Robert Kane for war atrocities. A chase for Kane leads to a remote planet where Turok’s ship gets shot down. He and his allies survive the crash, but what awaits them on the distant world is far from a warm welcome.

As it turns out, this planet is infested with dinosaurs of all shapes and sizes. To make things worse, Kane is up to no good again with illegal experiments on custom-pacing the evolutionary process. The order of the day is now to survive and find a way to take Kane and his little science projects out.

Check out the scales on that raptor!

The first thing most people will notice about the new Turok is the high quality of its visuals. This game makes good use of Epic Games‘ Unreal Engine 3 as seen in how everything is detailed and lifelike. The movements on the vegetation, the special effects on the weapons, and the character models are all topnotch.

Particularly impressive are the dinosaurs – the sheen on the scales and even the way they move are masterfully executed. Perhaps the most impressive sightings are easily those of the bigger lizards. Be it a T-Rex that wants a mouthful of Turok sandwich or a brontosaurus walking majestically in the distance, it’s all awe-inspiring.

Perhaps our only gripe with the visuals is the insane amount of shaking that happens when you aim your weapon for too long or take a hit. Sure, drawing a bow will eventually tire an arm, and that’s realistic and all, but it also gives the sensation of using a character with severe multiple sclerosis or something. It’s just really hard to swallow all this when you think about a guy who habitually manhandles raptors with his bare hands, yet he can’t arch his bow for ten seconds without the incessant trembling.

Where’s my Cerebral Bore?

One thing that this blogger found disappointing on a personal level was the absence of the crazy-ass weapons that sealed the early Turok games’ reputations as bonafide bad boys. A lot of people were expecting old toys like the brain-seeking Cerebral Bore and the crippling Shredder to make comebacks, but no dice. Call it wishful thinking, but I wouldn’t have lost sleep seeing more guts in high definition.

Oh well, no use crying over spilt milk. This generation’s Turok may not have the notorious arsenal of its fathers, but it still has an amazing armory all its own. All the standards are here like assault rifles, shotguns, sniper rifles, grenades, and pulse guns. Novel newcomers like the stickybomb and the mini gun that can be turned into a gun turret help keep things fresh and innovative.

What we liked about Turok‘s weapon system is the alternate fire mechanic. Aside from a weapon’s usual function, it carries nasty bonuses as well. For instance, tags and flares can be fired from standard weapons to lure dinosaurs into human enemies. This is especially fun when you get tired of blasting thugs and you decide to treat the local raptors to a generous Wolfpack buffet with all courses served rare.

The game also gives premium to playing sneaky as it endows the knife with lethal capabilities. Though this melee weapon is usually a tool of humiliation in most other shooting games, it’s a valuable and fun alternative in Turok. Creeping up to small and medium-sized dinosaurs will enable you to perform stealth kills shown in gory third-person sequences.

The only thing not too sweet about the knife mechanic is its range inconsistency. It’s a bit frustrating to creep up to a raptor and have the knife kill cue show up from about five feet away. Other times, however, you’d have to be right up the reptile’s tail to have the trigger cue show up. When you factor in the raptor’s movements, this could result in a gory death with Turok’s Mohawk ass on the receiving end.

Shoot first, think later

The streamlining of styles in playing through Turok is pretty clear coming from a developer perspective. While you do get squadmates here, don’t think that this is going to be even close to a tactical shooter. Most of the time, your homies aren”t good for anything except for taking lead implants to the chest, so you’ll pretty much have to do a Rambo rendition of sorts. Once you get that “if it moves, it dies” mentality down, you’re set to go.

Guns and ammo aren’t infinite in Turok, but they’re plentiful and you can carry four types at a time. You can feel free to go out on a limb and get a little trigger-happy because the levels are designed in such a way that ammo replenishing often happens even before you actually need to restock.

The missions may seem to have expansive fields at first, but the you’ll realize an hour into Turok that aside from a few road forks, you’re stuck in a linear affair. It almost feels like playing an old-school corridor shooter where getting lost is close to impossible.

That’s not to say that this concept is bad. As a matter of fact, it’s a lot of fun. This is the ideal FPS if you just want to hang loose and blow stuff up. Those who seek more depth, however, may get disappointed because the game doesn’t allow players to make much choices. It’s a straight-up shootout where being a dinosaur or a thug really sucks.

Speaking of dinosaurs and thugs, we noticed quite a few things going amiss. The AI on them, for instance, tends to run from hot to cold. The best example of this happens when you try to creep up to bow range in the bushes. While this is supposed to provide ample cover, guards will sometimes spot you merely by looking your way even if you crouch and remain perfectly still at a safe distance. Other times, though, they’ll just stand there and wait for the bolt to take them out.

Even their behavior in open firefights is questionable. Instead of moving around the maps and trying to secure positions, thugs have a tendency to stand and fight, seemingly oblivious of the lead spray that you’re dishing out. It’s either they’re pretty dumb or amazingly macho. Maybe it’s both.

We hunt in packs

Though the single player mode may have a few minor issues, the multiplayer mode is solid all throughout. Sure, it doesn’t have the depth that greats like The Orange Box or Halo 3 may have, but it has a few things going all for itself.

You can’t play the campaign cooperatively, but Propaganda Games offers unique missions that you can play with friends in the multiplayer mode. Competitively, there are the standard Deathmatch and capture the flag modes and their variations. All of these are intense, thanks in large part to the fun that the weapons and their alternate firing mechanisms bring.

The addition of War Games is also a welcome one with its objective-based style. This offers a nice break from the mindless blasting in the single player campaign into some more serious, social action where cohesive execution is of higher value than a fast trigger finger.

Lastly, the inclusion of dinosaurs in multiplayer maps is what sets Turok apart from other shooting games. Having this element mixes things up and adds wildcards into the mix. Some may call it a deviation from pure, skill-based play, but we say that it’s all part of what Turok is as a game.

A successful evolution

Turok is an above-average FPS when stacked up with today’s crop. Its single player style is refreshingly old-school, its multiplayer mode is intense, and it doesn’t make too many mistakes. Sure, 2007 hosted a great batch of releases for the genre, but Turok is still an offering worth giving a spin. Its minor flaws are small enough to be ignored when you consider how much fun the title packs. We highly recommend it and we hope a lot of you get to enjoy it.