Turok Evolution is a decent shooter with enough pros and cons to just get by as a good game.
Graphics – 7/10
Sound – 6/10
Gameplay – 7/10
Presentation – 7/10
Overall Score – 7/10
My Rating – 7/10
In Turok Evolution, you are a young Native American warrior named Tal' Set, and you are fighting a group called the Slegs, a bunch of reptilian humanoids who have a great deal of technology and weapons. The rest of the story is unknown; it is unknown what planet the game is set in, when it takes place, and how you're involved.
Usually, when a good in-the-news gamer hears the name of Turok, he would most certainly imagine an FPS with dinosaurs. Certainly, that is what sets it apart from other FPSs'; dinosaurs were the stars in the previous games as well as the newly released Turok in 2008. Wait, did I even mention dinosaurs in the five lines of the first paragraph? No. Well, that is the situation of the involvement of dinosaurs in the game; nothing. Almost nothing to be fair; you will only encounter them in quite a few numbers in the first few chapters, while later on, the rest of the action will be concentrated on the Slegs (although they do use a rocket-mounted Ankylosaur as a weapon, clearly describing the dinosaur as a living tank). This is somewhat disappointing to me and maybe many other dinosaur and Turok fans out there, because it was the label of 'dinosaur hunter' of one of the earlier games and the sick boxart of this game which got me to buy it. Unfortunately, they weren't up to my expectations. Ordinary FPS gamers wouldn't care much about it though, but anyways, dinosaurs or not, the game still fares good.
Turok, like many other decent shooters, will have you looking in First Person of the main character, who must travel through jungles, bases, cities and inside buildings to complete his mission[s]. The game is set in 15 chapters, each divided into smaller segments between save points, though these are still pretty long. Usually, in most of these missions, your main objective would be running from point A to point B, and that is it. There is a little difference here or there, sometimes you have to turn on some switch, or kill a certain enemy unit. Other times, you will be pitted in an arena against a horde of enemies. Other times, and certainly the most frustrating of the game's elements, you will fly a giant pterosaur (giant flying reptile, or flying dinosaur as common people call it). In the end, all you really have to do is complete a certain objective[s] which prevent from going any further until you complete it, until you make it to the end of that level and it saves. The frustrating part is that these levels become pretty long later on, and once you die, you have to start from the beginning of that level. You also have to do quite some backtracking at times, and walking through the long tunnels and hallways back and forth is boring.
Perhaps the most interesting part of the game is the arsenal of weapons you have. At the beginning, you start with a simple traditional axe, which deals quite a lot of damage compared to many guns. Later, you get the bow and arrow, and this will be the most vital asset of the game. Not only is it fun and easy to use, but the arrows come in three types; normal, poison arrows and explosive arrows. The Tekbow (a somewhat advanced bow) has a zoom option, something which the rest of the weapons (all but one) lack. You will end up using this for most of the time. You will also be given simple guns such as a pistol, a shotgun, grenades and flamethrowers, to more out-of-the-ordinary stuff like the Plasma Cannon, Rocket Launcher, and the Flechette Gun which also has a Minigun option. The weapon designs are pretty cool, and there are upgrades available for each of them, either a different firing mode, or a Quad Barrel for the shotgun, or a sniper scope for the pistol. The rocket launcher also has a different type of ammunition, which, when shot into a foe (it is homing), it rips out the bad guys from the limbs and head. This is a one hit KO, and never misses. The Plasma Cannon has firing modes ranging from a standard shot, to a homing one, to one which, when it strikes an enemy, an enemy nearby also gets shocked. These variants also take up different amounts of ammo for each shot. Perhaps the most vital of these guns besides the Tekbow, is the Minigun, since it can take out almost anything in no time, and the Rocket Launcher, which will mainly be used for destroying heavy armor and flying airships. All in all, the weapons are interesting and, for quite an old game, innovative.
The enemies clearly look like they are from a single species, or at least, the same planet. They are all quite different from each other, yet have something familiar with each other. They range in size, from tiny skeletal ones wielding a rifle to massive ones (big as in three times of you) carrying a minigun or a rocket launcher. There are also some carrying flamethrowers, snipers, and rifles, not to mention the most common variant carrying a shotgun. Enemy behavior is weird at times. Each one has a different behavior. Shotgunners somersault out of your crosshairs (believe me, you'll miss them a lot), while the smaller builds sometimes surrender to you if you manage to hit them without killing them. They also begin to vomit when you hit them with a poison arrow[s]. The best part of this game is how the enemies die; this game has its moments at times. Sometimes, the flamethrowers will accidentally kill the enemy in front of them. Other times, you will knock a guy off the edge of a platform with an Explosive Arrow, while the animations when they lose a limb (or a head) are hilarious. The enemies in this game were well made and designed and boss fights are interesting to some extent. Same goes for our allies who come from time to time. I had a few chuckles watching them die or come in the way of a grenade.
The environments are also well made. You will go through jungles, enemy camps, inside huge buildings and even inside a massive dinosaur. Even though the maps are linear, they are well spaced enough and have an open feel to them. The scale is also pretty large, but that can be a good thing and a bad thing. Good because you'll have to use different tactics and use your surroundings to kill efficiently, adding substance to the game, and bad because, well, there's a whole lot of backtracking. The flying missions have pretty creative and cool tracks, and they look like they would've been fun if it weren't for the awkward controls.
This game will do you a good 20-25 hours in gameplay, and that's a good thing, because there is no replay value whatsoever, and no multiplayer at all in the PC version, which is the dumbest thing I have come across in years. You wouldn't really want to do the game again because of its unforgiving system in which you when you die you have to start from the very beginning which can be a good 20 minutes lost if you approach the end of the level, hence the long game time.
The graphics of the game aren't much to praise. From today's the standards, the game obviously sucks, but even in 2003 there were games which fared much better from a visual standpoint, hell even the console versions that were released a year before look better. All in all, if you are the type who wouldn't mind graphics in which you can tell dark green from light green, you could get by it's ugly looks. The sound is, well, nothing much here; all you do hear are the grunts of the Slegs, the sound of your guns, and the ambient sounds in the jungle parts of monkeys and typical jungle rustlings. There is no music in the game, none at all, which can be difficult for some to accept, though I didn't really mind.
Despite its flaws, sometimes, this game has it's moments, and you may or you may not enjoy this game depending on yourself, I happened to enjoy it despite the lack of dinosaurs which were the main reason I bought it. Aside from the flight sequences, you won't have trouble getting through and will have a good time.
P.S. I didn't talk in detail about the flight sequences because they wouldn't do justice to the score I gave, yes, they're that bad.
P.S. I used cheats to get through the final boss.