Review: Turok for Xbox 360
Written by admin on February 1st, 2008 in gadgets.
Turok is a current-gen re-imagination of an old N64 series, and if you’ve been tracking the development of this dino beast first person shooter as I have, then you may have watched some Turok behind-the-scenes clips. Well, today the embargo expires. Read on to find out whether the game lived up to my lofty expectations or if it was crushed under the weight of them, like a T-Rex trouncing a Turkey Vulture.
Graphically, the game is built in the Unreal Engine, so you know it’s good. But let’s just say that the dinosaurs look even more realistic in this title than they did in “Jurassic Park.” People look very similar to Gears of War or Unreal Tournament III, which is not really any surprise considering they were all made in the same engine. It does still work, because these are supposed to be tough guys, but I’d like for there to come a day when all the characters built in this engine didn’t have to look like clones. For these purposes, though, I’ll accept that the brawny thugs with scars motif is one that works. Basically everything else–the high grass hiding raptors, fire on the ship, and more–takes advantage of the engine and looks fantastic.
Sound is very important to Turok, because of the nature of the enemies. You’ll have to listen for baddies as much as look for them, due to the way the animals and people hunt you.
The story starts out gripping like an action movie, and the beautiful and epic cinematics continue to push the narrative forward. Turok and his reluctant companion are both remarkably well fleshed out, given that they could easily just be thuds.
In all these areas, the game does what I thought it would, and if that’s all I had to talk about this game would be a winner. Sadly, the gameplay itself detracts from the experience.
As a shooter, it’s rather ho-hum. The weapons do have alternate uses, but the main difference compared to every other shooter seems to be that the buttons are different. It takes next to no time figuring out the control scheme. Generally, though, the weight and feel of weaponry is much more like the hollow Blacksite: Area 51 than Call of Duty 4. And that’s really unfortunate. Shooting endless waves of enemies and dinosaurs is boring, which seems like an accomplishment in itself.
One rather cool innovation is that when you are near an enemy you can press RT and perform a finishing move. On people, you perform an ultraviolent, stealth kill. On dinosaurs, however, you do everything from picking up a little dino and slicing its throat to jumping up and jabbing a larger dino in the throat. Blood splashes everywhere. The first couple times you do this, it might be fun, but it quickly loses its edge. Oftentimes the best way to dispatch with the raptors is to slice through the dino’s eye and then kick it away. Each time you do it, it loses some of the “wow” factor, until it just becomes annoying watching the same animation.
It’s bad enough when that time-consuming kill move works, and yet you are still swarmed and overpowered by a slew of his dino buddies. But it’s so much worse when you see the RT symbol come up on the screen, you pull the Right Trigger instantly, and yet you’re still mauled.
When you are mauled, you get a button mashing exercise, which involves RT, LT, sometimes both at once, and the Left Thumbstick. If you are successful, then you basically just stab the animal in the eye over and over and over again. Sometimes it’s a kill, sometimes it’s not. But the animation on that is almost always the same.
Another issue I have with the title is how easy it is to feel lost. The environments look real, and I give credit to the team for getting grass and moss and trees and caves–heck, everything–looking so good. But make a few turns without a good sense of direction and you’ll just wander around. If you click in the Left Thumbstick, then the game is supposed to tell you what direction to go. But often it’s just repeating the previous command, such as “Go to X,” rather than a compass direction. And even when it is a compass direction, there’s no indication of how you get to that area of the map if it’s not at the same height.
All of these things might be forgivable, if the game wasn’t so punishingly difficult–even on easy. Refacing the same foes and executing them with the same kill moves is repetitive just to state, let alone to actually play through.
The game does throw some unique-looking bugs and other baddies at you as the game goes on, but I don’t know how many people will get that far into the title.
All told, I’m disappointed with how Turok turned out. It had so much potential, but is flawed overall. I’m a big-time dinosaur fan, and a big-time gamer, and I still did not enjoy my time with this game. Unfortunately, it feels very much unfinished.
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