Turok Review

Now over ten years later, Turok remains an emblematic title of the Nintendo 64. The goodwill gamers have from the Nintendo 64 days were enough to overcome the horrible reception to Turok: Evolution on the GameCube, PS2 and Xbox. Considering how badly that game fared, I am quite surprised by the amount of hype and anticipation that has built up to the release of this next-gen Turok game for PS3 and Xbox 360.

The hype was unwarranted. In many ways, Turok for PS3 and Xbox 360 is a remake of the Nintendo 64 game (from here on I will refer to it as Turok 64). You still play a bow-toting Native American named Turok. A dinosaur hunter. Some questions are answered that lingered from the Nintendo 64 games, thanks to voice-acting and cut-scenes.

Turok, and a company of soldiers, crash land on a foreign planet which is overrun with dinosaurs. It turns out that Turok once belonged to a rogue military outfit who he is now tasked with hunting down. The leader of the group, Kane, is a ruthless mercenary. As Turok you will travel around this planet, hunting down Kane and battling for survival in a world inhabited by overgrown lizards and scorpions.

The single-player campaign is relatively long at eight to ten hours. Me and my friends beat it trading turns as a rental in just two days. Much like Halo 2, you can dual wield and swap out weapons as you go along. You will always have your trusty bow and arrow, as well as your knife to keep you company. There are a good number of weapons to choose from with pistols, shotguns, machine guns and other expected firepower in a first-person shooter.

As for multi-player, you can jump online or play a short three side mission co-op. The online multi-player is poorly executed. The weapons seem unbalanced with players often opting to just use their knife instead of anything else. You get deathmatch, team deathmatch and capture the flag with seven different maps to choose from. They also will unleash computer-controlled dinosaurs on everyone on the map, so watch out for those. You can join with up to 16 players and little lag will be encountered.

There are some really bad graphical problems in this game. Aside from the occasional pop in and out of textures, there are several glitches that I noticed. One was in a cave near the end of the game. The lighting in this area is all screwed up where in one part of the cave there is an almost fog-like haze and totally clear just a step in the other direction. Also, dinosaurs and other characters often get “stuck” in the ground. Their tail or another part of their body may appear underground, only for another part to appear above. Furthermore, there are only a handful number of dinosaurs, which is just not acceptable.

In conclusion, Turok does not appear to be a bad game at the surface. Indeed, it has a lot of necessary elements of a good game: a decent length, a recognizable character, online multi-player, a fairly well thought out storyline and so on. Yet these advantages are also its weakness. You never grow to care much for Turok (the character, not the game), the online play is uninspiring and the storyline may explain things well enough, it just can’t save a game that suffers from poor graphic design, A.I. and monotony. If you expect to relive Turok with the same amount of vigor and excitement that accompanied it in the 90s, you will only be disappointed by this game.