Turok - Not the Worst Game I've Ever Played
Spalls Hurgenson
high-water mark of first-person shooters. They have usually been
bog-standard games whose small innovations have been counter-balanced
by shoddy gameplay. The latest iteration of the series, titled simply
"Turok" continues the trend.
Much ado has been made of how this newest game has abandoned the
continuity of the previous titles; having only minimal familiarity
with the older games (and not being too impressed by what I *do* know
of this saga of a time-traveling native-American who battles dinosaurs
and interstellar overlords), I'm not too bothered by this. And while
the new setting isn't anything to crow about either (it's completely
predictable and full of the usual cliched situations and characters)
it gets the job done.
Technically, the game is equally average; the engine is capable, but
is sadly underutilized; thanks to ultra-linear level design you never
-except for a few brief instances - feel as if you are in a living,
breathing world. Rather, the impression one gets is that you are in a
long corridor with jungle-wallpaper with scattered boulders and
foliage between you and the exit.
But it's the gameplay where the game fails the most; it's just not
that interesting. It utilizes that newly popular feature of many
modern FPS games, regenerating health, which minimizes the challenge.
The AI is only of limited effectiveness, but this is counterbalanced
by the underpowered weapons.
Oddly enough, for a game whose main feature is shooting at dinosaurs,
this is actually the least fun part of the game. For one thing, there
are, essentially, only two sorts of dinosaurs: bipedal
Tyrannosaur-type dinosaurs (of varying size, but pretty much look and
act the same), and some sort of giant (and fast moving) iguana. Fans
of dinos like Stegosaurus, Brontosaurus or Triceratops can look
elsewhere. But my main complaint about the dinosaurs is how
unrealistic the AI is; it consists almost entirely of "run straight at
the player and bowl them over". This is terrifying the first few times
you encounter it, and annoying for the next three or four hundred
encounters.
Fortunately, the game does pick up a bit after the introduction of the
space bugs (or alien scorpions, or whatever the hell they are), and
some of the three-way battles between the bugs, your team and the
enemy soldiers can get quite interesting. Sadly, this change of pace
only occurs three quarters of the way into the game, by which point
most people have already abandoned it for better products.
In the end, there's not much to recommend about Turok except to say it
doesn't totally suck. It does have a few moments of panache near the
end, a (small) handful of interesting visuals and, for the Jurassic
Park fan, the chance to shoot at dinos. But its otherwise lackluster
gameplay more than counterbalances all this. Like many recent releases
(Turning Point excepted), it's not that it does anything egregiously
wrong so much as it just doesn't get anything really right; at best,
it can aspire to mediocrity.
Tim O
wrote:
>The Turok Dinosaur Hunter games have never been, at least on PCs, the
>high-water mark of first-person shooters. They have usually been
>bog-standard games whose small innovations have been counter-balanced
>by shoddy gameplay. The latest iteration of the series, titled simply
>"Turok" continues the trend.
[snip]
I figured on snagging this when its down to 20 bucks. The theme is
compelling to me, but not for 50 dollars wtih the rep the game has.
Thanks for the nice review.
Tim
Michael Cecil
wrote:
Wait, it's not at $20 yet? OMG! How much did it originally list for? I
got a free Turok CD with a Voodoo 1 graphics card. That must have been 12
or more years ago. Golly, Spalls you really must have a huge pile of
unplayed games.
--
Michael Cecil
http://macecil.googlepages.com/index.htm
http://macecil.googlepages.com/safehex.htm
http://macecil.googlepages.com/hackingvista.htm
** Posted from http://www.teranews.com **
noman
wrote:
>On Wed, 14 May 2008 05:44:12 -0400, Tim O <tim...@REMOVEhotmail.com>
>wrote:
>
>>On Wed, 14 May 2008 02:36:36 GMT, Spalls Hurgenson <yoi...@ebalu.com>
>>wrote:
>>
>>>The Turok Dinosaur Hunter games have never been, at least on PCs, the
>>>high-water mark of first-person shooters. They have usually been
>>>bog-standard games whose small innovations have been counter-balanced
>>>by shoddy gameplay. The latest iteration of the series, titled simply
>>>"Turok" continues the trend.
>>
>>[snip]
>>
>>I figured on snagging this when its down to 20 bucks. The theme is
>>compelling to me, but not for 50 dollars wtih the rep the game has.
>
>Wait, it's not at $20 yet? OMG! How much did it originally list for?
A new Turok game has recently come out on PC.
--
Noman