A good ten years ago, the Turok series was an exceptional FPS-experience, featuring original enemies such as dinosaurs and amusingly strange weapons. Because of publisher Acclaim's smashup, "Turok Evolution" from 2002 has been the last game of the series till the present day. Now, in 2008, the Canadian developer "Propaganda Games" tries to bring the franchise back to life. But can the new Turok stand up to the expectations?
Joseph Turok just performs a stealth kill. But the knife serves a better purpose in the awfully designed jungle against dinosaurs.
Indeed, most ego shooter games don't offer a very original or motivating story but Turok does a better job on this discipline as some might think.You are Joseph Turok, a native Indian who isn't related in any way to the hero from the original series. He's a former member of the mercenary squad "Wolfpack", whose charismatic leader Kane is notorious for his brutality. Turok left Wolfpack und joined another unit, which crashed to a strange planet, where evolution went crazy and therefore is swarmed with dinosaurs and Kane's men. Why Turok switched sides and fights against Kane; what he plans and where all those dinosaurs come from, turns out to be a quite interesting matter. The hostility of Turok's comrades and the constantly present danger of dinosaur attacks provide a strained atmosphere. Many short ingame cutscenes set on the story. Hereto the camera elegantly switches between ego and 3rd-person perspective by, so to speak, slipping out respectively into Turok's head. Plus there are some extensive and atmospheric flashbacks from Turok's training with Wolfpack. The dialogues are not more than second-rate but authentic and the voice acting is solid. Till Kane is defeated, a skilful player doesn't need more than eight hours but the story is satisfying, even though the ending leaves some questions open.
The dinosaurs are really impressive.
The graphics are okay for 2008 but there is so much more possible with the "Unreal Engine 3". Though the character models are quite well designed, the facial animations lack any detail; there is virtually no expression in the faces. In contrast to that, the dinosaurs are really impressively and lissomely animated. But the virtual jungle isn't convincing at all: Levels are completely linear and the vegetation turns up to be completely artificial. Since "FarCry" (2004) we know that jungle can be done way better. The textures are quite sharp, but mostly boringly designed and flat. There is practically no graphically impressive scene in the whole game. Level design in the grey and empty building complexes is moreover so totally unimaginative that you get the impression the developers just wanted to get it over. For example you still have to endure the obligatory lift ride where you have to shoot the enemies on every floor, without the opportunity to save, needless to say. *yawn* The sound effects are as average as the music.
Your team mates know how to defend themselves too. Usually a quite gory matter.
The game design comes along with a few nice ideas, but reveals some serious issues as well. The dinosaurs are well designed and they are a constant threat, as long as you only use firearms. But as soon as you switch to your knife the whole thing becomes ridiculous. The developers implemented quickkills, which means that if you stand right in front of a dino, you just have to press the left mouse button and Turok will knife the poor thing in a quite nicely animated and rather gory sequence. The first ten times, this looks really impressive but later in the game, when Turok brings even headhigh lizards down with just a mouse click, the game gets way too easy. Plus there are only two animations per saurian type so the optical effect gets scuffed pretty soon. As well, you can kill every soldier silently from behind which isn't the best way, since the sneaking is unfairly difficult. If you get spotted and don't have a rifle in your hand, prepare to see the loading screen for a fairly long time. All in all, combat against other humans is partly unfair and frustrating. What turns out to be a useful idea is to attract the dinosaurs with the secondary mode of the shotgun and set them on the soldiers. Speaking of weapons: In contrary to the original installment, 2008's Turok only uses, ordinary stuff like SMGs, pistols, rocket launchers and plasma rifles. At least you can use them dual wielded and the bow and knife bring some variety to it.
The lightning is only that nice at night. Usually a grey-in-grey dominates the screen (right).
To come to the biggest issue: The game has been terribly ported to the PC, especially the controls suck. While the mouse responds extremely hectically und imprecisely, which makes accurate aiming nearly impossible; the not configurable button controls turn out to be even worse. You fire your left weapon with the left mouse button, your right weapon with your right mouse button, activate the alternative fire mode with shift plus left mouse button and throw grenades with shift plus right mouse button. Looks like the porting team from "Aspyr" overlooked that a PC with mouse and keyboard has significantly more buttons available than a console gamepad. In addition, the weapon switching can become a quite confusing thing to do. Also, I consistently encountered strange micro slowdowns, despite the frame rate was objectively ok (above 30 fps), even on low details, so that the game experience seemed somehow balking. But the most enervating things are the impertinently long loading times. Till a new level has been loaded you'll easily spend up to two minutes; the quickload function doesn't deserve its name. Even though there is a quicksave button mentioned on the option menu, the game saves only at checkpoints, which are partly widely separated.
The pretty jungle grass is seldom used. If you have trouble clearing a passage, try dual wielding you guns (right).
All in all a pretty streaky first person shooter, which simply has been incredibly bad ported. Beside obvious flaws in level- and game design, the controls and performance can make you livid. But the dinosaurs are well designed and the game features a solid story.
Story: 7/10
Design: 5/10
Gameplay: 6/10
Presentation: 6,5/10
Total : 6,1/10
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