Very Detailed Review of Turok
Graphics: Although they were not the best graphics I've ever seen they were still very beautiful to look at. It seemed that the game designers concentrated more on the characters than on the background, a fatal flaw for most games, but I found that I did not mind as the gameplay was extremely intense. The backgrounds of the game, while extremely visually appealing, are very similar in nature. As you progress through the game you will only come across green, brown, yellow, yellowish-brownish-green, gray, blue, and grayish blue. Each background area is beautiful, but they are all essentialy the same. Now we reach the dinosaurs, the true stars of this game. Each dinosaur was created with such painstaking detail that it almost hurts me when I realize that I must kill them. Something that I really liked was the appearance of blood on the dinos. The more you shoot them, the more blood paints their skin.
Graphics Overview: The dinos are amazingly done, the humans were well done but could have been better, and the backgrounds are very beautiful but repetitive. 4/5
Sound: In the jungle you can't always see what's stalking you, so you have to open your ears and listen lest you find yourself pinned to the ground with fanged jaws closing around your neck. The sound is very well done in this game. From the slight rustle you hear in the leaves to the low Boom of an incoming T-Rex approaching your position. Though you know what is coming, you still feel a sense of encroaching fear. The music is average at best. Quiet music plays during areas you need to be stealthy for and an intense piece of music plays while you either run for your life from Mama Scarface (the T-Rex) or are caught in a large scale Firefight when you are outnumbered by 20-1. The music isn't the best but it's placed in the appropriate areas, and although it doesn't hurt the game, it doesn't help it either.
Sound Overview: The sounds made by dinos as they move toward you are scary and very well done but the music is par at best. 4/5
Gameplay (Single Player): The single player campaign is fun, but it's far to short and way to frustrating (for some people). The beginning of the game is very easy and straight forward, if you see something you kill it. 'Nuff said. If a dino attacks you, pull out your knife and stab it in the head, say "Holy crap, that was awesome," then continue on and do it again when you see another dino. The knife becomes little more than an instant kill button and you soon find out that in most areas gune are for pansies. The game isn't very forgiving of your mistakes. You make a single mistake on Normal mode and you may live to tell about it, but on the other difficulties you will find yourself at your last checkpoint faster than you can say "Crap." This brings me to the checkpoints. They are very few and far between. For every one checkpoint that you find you may have found 3 or 4 if you were playing Halo or Gears of War. This makes the game very frustrating sometimes as you just carved a bloody swathe through your enemies and are inches away from a checkpoint that took you 20 minutes to reach only to be shot in the back by the one guy lucky enough to avoid your weapons, and now you have to start the 20 minute cycle, hoping that you kill them all this time. Lastly, we arrive at the boss fights. This is a shooter that has intense battles at regular intervals and boss fights that actually feel like boss fights. Like old school shooters, the bosses have weaknesses that you must find and exploit or else you die. The boss fights are very reminescent of the old school shooters of the golden age of video games, and although not as good as they could have been, are the shining points of this game. A very frustrating part of the game is the sensitivity of your turning. It's to sluggish at its standard setting, making it hard for you to react to incoming attacks. Tweaking the sensitivity takes time and uses a lot of trial and error, either overshooting your enemy because you turn to fast, or falling short. Once you find the right setting for yourself you will be surprised how much easier it is to catch enemies before they attack you.
Gameplay (Single Player) Overview: While the game is fun it gets repetitive. The bosses actually feel like bosses. The checkpoints are very frustrating. 3/5
Gameplay (Multiplayer): Multiplayer is perhaps the most fun this game has to offer. There are several maps, all of which are infested with dinosaurs and other hazards that seperate you and your team from the opposing side. This offers some interesting variety to the see an enemy and kill him that all multiplayer shooting games seem to have adopted these days. They now add the see an enemy, stalk him, avoid dinosaurs, kill him without being noticed by any enemies. Or, you could stick your victim with a flair and watch as the dinosaurs, who are attracted to shiny things, attack the now shiny person. You could even stick a dino with a sticky bomb and watch it run at a group of your enemies, detonate the bomb, and watch with satisfaction as the dino and all of your unfortunate enemies explode in a hail of body parts. The only downfall I find with Turok's multiplayer is the fact that it does not include the ability to play with two or more people on one system, you can only play with multiple people via X-Box Live, or the PS3 online network.
Gameplay (Multiplayer) Overview: Very fun. Adds variety to a repetitive style of multiplayer gameplay. Can't play multiplayer on your own X-Box. A nice break from games like Halo and Gears of War. 4/5 (Only because you can't play multiplayer on one X-Box.)
Gameplay (Multi-Player Co-Op): Co-Op for this game has an independant story that is very loosely tied into the main game. The co-op portion of the game is hard, and so you don't underestimate the difficulty of this game I will repeat the above statement. The co-op portion of the game is HARD. It is so hard that it is nigh impossible to complete with any less than 4 players. You are so outnumbered and outgunned that if one player makes a mistake the rest of the team is almost assured defeat. But fear not, you are given multiple lives, 2 each if I remember correctly, and are rewarded with a full stock of lives, if you lost any, each time you reach a checkpoint. The co-op portions are short, only about as long as one single mission from the main story, and there are only three co-op missions in total, and they offer very little in replay value. All in all, they only give you about an evening worth of pleasure.
Gameplay (Multiplayer Co-Op) Overview: The difficulty of these missions makes it very fun for you and a few friends to team up and tackle it just for the sake of overcoming a challenge. Far to short. 3/5
Overall, Turok is a solid game. It could have been better, but then again so could every game ever made. This game feels like an old school shooter, which I love, and has great boss battles. Although the game is off to a rocky start because of some serious flaws in its design, it has the potential to grow into a franchise that rivals the original N64 Turok. The game designers are taking a step in the right direction. With a little more polishing and a longer game they could have a shooter that rivals even Halo and Gears of War.