Every now and then comes along a game that shakes the very foundation of the genre for which it was made, it challenges the player base to expect more, the developer community to strive harder and the publishing houses to throw more money their way. Turok is not one of them. Its based of the Unreal 3 engine which has apparently been the hottest thing since the Beatles, every company lazy enough to not work to create their own engine(like Call of Duty 4, Uncharted Drake's Fortune) has gone forward and licensed(maybe not a bad decision) what can only be described as a beauty of an engine. However none of these companies has been able to fully utilize the engine to its potential and as a result everytime we expect a game to look as good as "Gears of War" or "Unreal Tournament 3" we come back dissapointed. Anyway to do a more in-depth analysis of the games components:
1)Gameplay: Fairly straightforward gameplay dynamics, though I found the dive somewhat inconsistent and realized that it expected a near perfectly angled joystick to do the dive, otherwise it would only result in a half-assed jump leaving the player very much vulnerable to whatever they hoped to avoid. Another notable flaw was that despite the amount of cover thrown at you, you couldn't use it like you could in "Gears of War" or other tactical shooters, this makes it more like a positional cover kinda situation. The cover was also not prone to destruction but that I can live with. There are a couple of quick time events thrown at you, but since they use the same button combinations, you begin to expect and execute them easily. Its also a gameplay element thats better to be rid of. The difficulty level isnt too high, the weapons are enjoyable, though for the most part you can use the same weapons through most situations unless forced to use something else based on the situation. On the whole a 5/10.
2)Graphics: As I mentioned earlier, this game is based off the Unreal 3 engine but that doesn't mean it delivers anything close to the level of detail that you see in Epic's titles. Even so it looks fairly good and on par with the current generation of games, just not next-gen.6/10
3)Sound: The game uses sounds as a primary technique to warn you of imminent dangers and lurking dinos/wolfpack members. It does a fair job of alerting you though sound isn't always an accurate indication of the direction they are in rather just a warning of their presence. It also is used well to indicate the presence of larger and more fearsome dinos like the T-rex and does a good job of intimidating the player with its presence.6/10
4)Environments: The environments aren't too varied, its "jungle", "more jungle", "wolfpack base" and "still more jungle". At a few moments it came close to giving the awe-inspiring expanse of "Jurassic Park", but those moments were fleeting and danger filled. So for the most part the player is destined to the dark or closed quarters combat. Not enough variety. 5/10
5)Multiplayer: Now I must confess that I didn't try its entire Multiplayer content, though the co-op mode intrigued me and I managed to coerce another friend of mine to try it out. It was possibly the most fun I had in the entire game, and there were just 3 levels of it. It was fun, the difficulty was ramped up somewhat (or maybe it is meant for 4 players and there fore is much easier that way), but on the whole it was thoroughly enjoyable. 7/10 (points lost because it only had 3 maps)
On the whole I would say its lucky to have been released at the time that it was because of a dearth of new games, allowing it an undistracted market. It would have been unlikely to sell much in a market filled with better games. It doesn't have much to offer and the storyline is basically a plot sketched together by what could only be a group of shit chucking apes with typewriters. What should have been a final boss encounter was simply a bunch of quick times events which can be one-shotted followed by the real boss who had inexplicably not killed you the first time around. The ending is cliched and the dialogue is barely acceptable. The voice acting is borderline ok. They even left out a punching bag guy who helped you in your training and reappears to deliver a sad one liner only to not been seen ever again leaving the player to wonder whether he simply died during the series of events or hes been spared to reappear in a sequel. Anyway its an ok game and I only recommend it for its multiplayer, the rest is only playable if you have nothing more to do.
Overall Score: 6/10
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