Turok – Still a Dinosaur

 

(TRUE ‘M’ for ‘Mature’ - not for the kiddies, folks!)

Turok looked like it would be a great game, didn’t it? After visiting the website, I was very excited to play this title. Gorgeous graphics, powerful weapons, an interesting story, and of course the dinosaurs! Who wouldn’t want to battle the dinosaurs?!

Unfortunately, maybe my expectations were too high, (or the trailer a little too convincing), but I just.couldn’t.get.into.this.game. First of all, the beginning tutorial is almost non-existent. (Maybe the developers thought people would already be familiar with Turok from the last game?)

Secondly, as a new Turok player, I found that doing a few jumps and a climb up a ladder didn’t really give me enough time to get used to the character. Then, to make matters worse, Turok is put in a huge jungle with NO WEAPONS, and NO MELEE ability. I’m sure that the whole point of this was to kind of freak the gamer out a bit, but I found it very annoying. 

Unfortunately, the lack of achievements during local play was also discouraging. The majority of achievements are for online play; however, after participating in an online match, I was even more disappointed with the game than before. The visuals deteriorated significantly, and it was very hard to find anyone without some sort of radar.

Other features lacking in this game were clear story development and the absence of background music. Now, music may not be as important to some people, but for this game, there were large spans of silence between battles, and it was very obvious to me that something was missing.

Fortunately, Turok does have a few good features. The dinosaurs and scenery during local play are nothing short of amazing, and the characters are artistically well-defined. The weapons display was simple to use and I had no problem switching between guns, grenades, bow, or knife.

Overall, Turok has the potential of being a really good game, but unfortunately, this version didn’t live up to the hype. You might want to throw this one on your Gamefly queue, but don’t expect it to stay in your console for long.

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