Has all the right ingrediants for a superb title so how did they make a hash of it? Amazingly this game does grow on you

User Rating: 7 | Turok X360
In Brief

The Good:
-Hardly class leading but the stealth elements can be fun
-Co-operative play for up to four players
-Quite a nice music score
-Lightning effects are great on the one level they are on
-Should be commended for some of the choices it makes regarding your squad

The Bad:
-Butchering my child hood favourites isn't really my idea of fun
-Completely unrecognisable from the first two titles which were so special
-Graphics are nothing to savour
-Ludicrous AI from friendly and enemy units
-Underdeveloped story that never gets explained and ends just as bad
-Small arsenal of weapons
-Stupid, long winded mission objectives
-Squad remains anonymous
-The constant knock downs will force you to reach for the reset button
-Terribly thought out checkpoints. Too close together or ridiculously far apart and force you to watch a cut scene every time.
-Neglected options set up for the player (only three to alter)
-Badly designed and boring boss encounters

When Turok first made its debut on the Nintendo 64 a lot of people as well as my self where hooked. It wasn't regarded as the best first person shooter ever but at the time it was probably the best looking yet seen. It wasn't only the visuals that impressed but the rich game worlds, large weapon selections and multiplayer fun (GoldenEye wasn't released for another another five months or so).
A year later Turok 2: Seeds of Evil built upon everything. Much greater graphics, bigger game worlds, huge amount of weapons and took in game gore to another level with it being one of the first titles that allowed you to blow limbs off your enemies or blow a hole through their chest with a shotgun. It was glorious.
I was always excited for a new Turok after Rage Wars but Turok 3: Oblivion was the difficult third outing and the magic wasn't re-captured with Evolution on the 128mb generation.
A new developer and a new publisher, have they been able to look back at the first two instalments and deliver the franchise back to its past glory?

The game opens to a six (or so) man unit converging on some straw huts from the forest with the lead character butchering people from the shadows unseen and unheard and we are taken away before the scene is over. You will get to see the rest on the progression of the game but it has no real relevance to the story and isn't that exciting to be blunt.
We are Turok and emerge from Cryho-stasis aboard a space craft heading towards an un-known planet in an unknown part (of what I assume to be) the future. The squadies on board don't know us and do not like us (you think we will have had all this the second we stepped on the craft) and go straight into a mission briefing.
Our target is a man named Kane who just so happened to be your Captain from the Prologue and they want him dead. Why they want him killed and who we are killing him for isn't said and that sadly, is the theme for the rest of the game. We never really discover the who, what, where, why and when.

Not long after the briefing and we are still getting snarly remarks from the other blandly designed character models our ship is hit by a projectile fired from the planet and we have to scramble through the breaking corridors trying to survive. It's all routine really, they know their done for. The screen blacks out and we re-awaken amongst the wreckage in a large jungle with tower plantation. Miraculously we have survived.

We have to fight our way through the jungle searching for fellow survivors and the tediousness continues from there.

You grow no connection to your squad at all in this game, they remain generic and forgettable through out but despite the terrible dialogue, there is some good acting here.

The world isn't a sand box one but made up of 'glass' corridors and always tries to give the illusion of this huge world by giving is multiple paths (which isn't really necessary as they rarely stray from the main one and deviate us little from it) and somehow manages to make it very easy to get lost simply due to the bad level design. Sure it's the jungle and I strongly imagine it would be easy to get lost but when you play the game you will realise that this isn't an aesthetic choice but a result of a tight budget and a short development window.
It looks terrible to be honest. The textures are appalling and the graphics in general are very blocky as well as bare. Think of it like somebody serving you a salad that was condensed in a work bench vice then put on a plate for you.
The only saving grace I can think of is the grass. It does actually have a lot of detail in it which is remarkable considering how little has gone everywhere else and despite being animated with a bit of exaggeration it does look pretty good in motion. Watching the wildlife gently strolling along the back drops look fantastic, but the abysmal effort put into the back drops almost completely ruins it. Think of something a child would make you out of some bits of coloured card, a pair of scissors and a Prit-Stick.
The below par (I'm not going to call them terrible, some effort has been exerted) graphics aren't just routed to the jungle but carry on indoors where the problem grows a big boil in the middle of its face. They actually succeed in making the textures more bare and the environment on a whole feels empty.

The objectives are long winded and pointless, the game would of gotten a lot more respect if it was a simple case of get from A to B killing everything you see in the world as this is largely what you do.

The combat here is like a coin, one side is good and the other is atrocious. In fact don't think of it as a coin it is hardly a 50/ 50 split, try to think of it as a party hat shaped like a cone.

I must start with the AI, where on Earth did game testers and the programming team think this was remotely acceptable? I have not seen artificial intelligence this bad since the 32/ 64 mb era.
Your squad mates are completely useless, they don't come to your aid, they generally can't shoot for ribbons which is absurd when they are meant to be an elite unit and they constantly run in front of your fire. I hear you say that a lot of games share that problem but when you look at the opponent AI that is what really sinks the game.
The enemies armed with guns are my biggest gripe. You can be stood right in front of you and they do not see you but if you say pop your head out from behind a rock 500, 1,000 metres away they instantly spot you and open fire with every last single bullet they shoot hitting you in the chest despite being in full auto mode and all that distance away (they even do this with Shotguns for Christ's sakes).
And what about up close with them? Well they either stand still or endlessly strafe left to right always keeping their distance but when near death they suddenly ignore your squad mates and how they've just been acting and they all charge at you. I can't really complain about the animal AI as I would expect them to rush at me.
But by far in a long way what I find most annoying of all is that Dinosaurs fight other Dinosaurs as well as attacking enemy troops and if you stand action less in the distance watching this (as the events can be entertaining) they will suddenly stop, ignore the fact they've just been trying to tear each other a new one in a fight to the death, shake hands and both start attacking you.

The Turok franchise always had a huge arsenal of fantastic looking varying weapons for you to acquire and choose from but here they have completely neglected the trade mark. I can think of only maybes seven weapons in which you can obtain in the entire game. The way it lets you combine certain ones when dual wielding is about the only positive point to be gained.

The knock downs that animals cause by belting you close range causing you to fall on your back unable to act happens way too often and it infuriates you even further than you thought could be possible.

Remarkably this combat system does have some good points to it.
Dino's stalking you and pouncing out from behind long grass is always good for a shock and immersion but the star of the show here is the stealth.
It is caused by the woe full AI and is nowhere near on the level as Metal gear Solid but, it does deliver some great moments.
Using your bow to take out enemies and sneaking up behind enemies with your knife equipped for quick and violent take downs does take you back to being five years old and pretending to be Rambo. It's even more special on the rare occasion you can sneak up to a group of four or five on patrol and take them down one after the other with all them completely oblivious to the fact that you are butchering their squad mates.

There is some elements the God of War franchise made famous are here too, more specifically quick time events. Sure many loathe them but I happen to quite like them.
Enemies getting to close and your having to bash buttons to save your life while butchering the attacker looks great but with this games lack of sales it does lead me to believe that thankfully the God of War franchise isn't only the success it is because of its violence.

The last thing I want to say about the game play happens to be my biggest gripe of them all. Checkpoints.
They are either ridiculously close together or shockingly far apart and matters aren't helped with the terrible placement of them. When you die (and you will, it only takes one second for an enemy to empty an entire clip into your head from a mile away) you have to walk an empty piece of land and watch a cut scene, then sort out your weapons before a fight. It drives you up the wall.

The ending finishes in just the same spectacularly bad fashion that story is told I'm afraid. If you (like me) love games with a good, well told plot this certainly isn't for you.

I'm sorry but at the end of this title I couldn't bare to see what the online was like. I had removed the disc the second the credits started rolling.

I have to admit I played the demo and could not see a thing that warranted me trying the full game, I would never have bothered if it wasn't for my Brother picking it up for a one digit fee in a moment of madness.
Turok is now completely unrecognisable (which is the idea of a re-brand I assume) and has now completely strayed away from not only everything that made it special but everything full stop. The only thing this game shares with the N64 ones is a native American named Turok.
The vast universe full of different life forms, varying scenery, huge and richly designed weaponry and more surreal elements to the story.
It does try hard to be different but it hasn't strayed too far away from going for the mass market. Angry space marines (like Gears of War), injecting everything with testosterone (like Gears of War).

Remarkably though, all the faults and infuriation's aside, this game does grow on you. It doesn't come anywhere near to being a favourite but it does become a much more bearable experience.

This is a moment of great sadness for me. The fact that one of my all time favourite franchises that got so much affection and time has fell terminally ill and ended up in this state.
Please no more low budget unimaginative titles trying to earn a quick buck from the games former glory, either try properly or give it the good grace to die.