Even with a weak script, Turok's flexible play mechanics, strong level designs, and high production values make the story mode alone worth the price of admission. [Jan 2008, p.49]
When the gameplay is playing to its strengths – three faction combat, survival-hunting element, spooky jungle terrain – it is thoroughly enjoyable. Only occasionally does it slip into the old-school generic FPS territory which should, like the game’s reptilian protagonists, be well and truly extinct by now.
This game is freaking awesome and the dinosaurs and creatures of the island are really scaring and intimidating. Really good FPS game with incredible executions and gore.
A hardcore, old-school shooter. In many ways, it feels like the "Ninja Gaiden" of shooters, so if that sounds appealing to you, you'll probably love it more than we did. But if you're looking for a more modern experience, something from the current crop of shooter stars like "BioShock" and "Call of Duty 4," the frustrating bosses and save system will seem positively prehistoric. [Feb 2008, p.46]
Turok isn’t just another below average shooter. It’s slightly better than that. While it may seem a little short and over-familiar come the end, its positive points are at times excellent and it does come with an extra layer of polish that's often lacking in other games. Plus, you can stab dinosaurs in the neck. And that’s awesome.
Even playing on the easiest setting, the difficulty regularly spikes to bowel-clenching impossibility. This wouldn't be so bad if the checkpoints flowed a little more freely, as most of the difficulty spikes tend to arrive after a protracted battle has already left you tattered and bleeding.
I will admit that I was disappointed that this wasn't like the good old days of Turok on the N64 but at the same time this game still managed to be fun and enjoyable (even if it's difficulty was located somewhere between merciless and 'go f**k yourself').
The story for the most part is...forgettable. Completely and utterly forgettable. All you need to know is that you crash landed on a planet, there are dinosaurs everywhere and you're badass enough to grapple them and stab their asses into extinction (a second time). Yes, there is the whole business with Kane training dudes for some personal army and how the planet is some weird prehistoric petri dish but you'll honestly find yourself more concerned by the fact that you just stabbed a Dilophosaur to death (and that it was AWESOME).
The weapons are pretty bland considering the rich history of sheer insanity that's come from other Turok games. There's nothing like the Cerebral Bore or the Nuke, the closest they get is with the sticky bomb gun (which in itself isn't all that impressive), overall the weapons just feel boring and half-arsed and there's little variety (you've played any shooter recently, you've seen the entire arsenal at your disposal already).
The dinosaurs that inhabit the game world can vary between being a useful tool and distraction to being colossal pains in the backside, luring them over to enemies with the flare gun almost never seems to work but on the up side it's almost laughably easy to stab most dinosaurs to death with the knife (even on Inhuman difficulty, entire packs of raptors can become as threatening as newborn kittens if you remember to use the knife executions to the exclusion of all else).
The stealth segments in the game just **** majorly, success at sneaking just feels completely arbitrary and your stealth weapons either draw lots of attention to you ('oh **** did yo just hear an arrow kill the guy down the corridor from you!') or are just plain awful (try aiming with the bow, it will take a while to get the hang of it). This isn't quite so bad though seeing as the 'guns blazing' option is always available (even if it comes at the price of your support characters being snarky towards you) so you're not punished too badly for screwing it up.
Overall, Turok is a good game if you can handle the testicle-crushingly cruel difficulty and occasional rage inducing stealth segments, it's not quite Seeds of Evil but it's still pretty damn good.
Good game. The graphics are what was to be expected from a 2008 game. The history is kinda all over the place but the bosses are fun and the mechanics is like every first person shooter from the last decade.
Every now and again one of those games emerge into the market. Those games which have an average hype into the market, but then is forgotten after some time. Turok has taken this very path, it has been almost forgotten, and sometimes while playing the game, i can see why.
You play as a rough and tough guy named Turok. He has just been recruited into a squad with other people that look as tough as him, though nobody likes him very much at a glance. They don't like him because Turok used to be on another squad and he betrayed them, so nobody trusts him yet. But before anything else happens the space ship that you are in reaches its destination. However, before even entering the planet's atmosphere, you are hit by a missile or something. You then wake up still in the wreckage of the ship, you have one man by your side. The first mission teaches you all the controls of the game while you find a way out of this wreckage, the other man leads the way; though he soon dies and you are left **** a bit.
As soon as you are playing as Turok in the first person perspective, you should notice the average effort put into this game while making the graphics. The wreckage is displayed really nicely with all the crumpled metal parts and the sparks of electricity emerging every few seconds. It can also get scary because the graphics allow you to see a small movement of a large piece of metal before it falls a few millimeters away from you. Then as the game wears on, the graphics are mostly presented with the dinosaurs. There are many species of dinosaurs in the game and all of them look very real, you can even notice a small amount of reflection of the sun on the dinosaur's body; or even on the knife that you are just about to use to murder the dinosaur. My favorite part of the game is stabbing the dinosaur; whether the dinosaur is the size of your leg or ten times bigger than you. Stabbing the dinosaur is done differently for each kind of dinosaur, and they are all done ruthlessly and very swiftly. Though they are all done in a different manner, all of them have the same result - a fountain of blood before instant death. Even though the fountain of blood looks a bit unrealistic, the satisfaction you get from doing that is amazing. Also, many times there are quite a few dinosaurs together so stabbing them one after the other can be really fun, though it can also get a little repetitive because the dinosaurs that attack in packs are all the same dinosaurs and so the way Turok stabs them is always the same. Another disappointment with this is that in some parts of the game, the dinosaurs come in too large packs and it is very easy for them to kill you before you get a chance to kill them.
Throughout the game, the background music is always exciting and heart pumping. The sounds of the gun shots are very realistic. But the thing I loved best about the sound effects were the roars of the dinosaurs. I have no idea where the makers got the sounds from, but all I know is that they got it right. The sound of the T-Rex's roar is the most frightening of all because when it roars, you can hear it clearly over the sounds of the gunfire everywhere. Another sound effect that I loved is when you stab the dinosaurs, you can hear the blade ripping through the flesh of the dinosaur and then the sound of the dinosaur screaming in pain. Both these sound together sent a shiver up my spine, it was that realistic.
One of the real letdowns in the game is the amount of checkpoints in a level. There aren't many. This can get really annoying because you might have just finished a very tough battle against the bad guys and then suddenly a dinosaur pops out and kills you. Even if you survive the attack from the dinosaur, another battle with the bad guys in bound to kill you, and then you will have to do the first battle all over again...happens a lot during the campaign. And it is at these frustrating points in the game that you feel like quitting and destroying the game.
Finally, I just want to express how much I enjoyed the game at the start, because the first few levels were set to the right difficulty. But then, as I went further into the game, some levels are really impossible and frustrating because they were extremely difficult. Otherwise, a fun game to play to stab your way through.
I really wanted to like this game. I really, REALLY wanted to like it. to play another game where your enemies are dinosaurs sounded awesome to me, but this game manages to fail at what it does. first off, the story, while interesting, is pretty bland. the Turok series has more of a sci-fi approach this time, which would be cool if this concept wasn't constantly milked in most FPS games. the gameplay isn't that good either. the control for the game makes playing the game a bit confusing, and this game has tons and tons of difficulty spikes. this is mainly because one of your enemies in Turok is military soldiers. MILITARY SOLDIERS in a TUROK game. these enemies appear more often than dinosaurs, and it really drains the fun of killing dinosaurs that Turok games should have. The music for the game isn't that good. nothing in the soundtrack stands out, and I find myself always forgetting these tunes. the graphics are passable. all environments are pretty, and the character models look nice. my only complaint is that the dinosaurs look a bit too glaring, especially raptors, which look like plastic at times. As mentioned before, this game has numerous difficulty spikes, even on the easiest difficulty. this game will kick you in the butt if you're not prepared, as numerous parts of the game involve fighting too many enemies at once, or getting shot at from all angles. If one thing is good about the game, it's the voice acting. the voice acting, while not suberb, does a decent job at this game. the voices fit for each character, especially Turok. In the end, Turok is not that great ****. its story is bland, the gameplay is a shut off thanks to there being military factions, and its difficulty spikes make Turok not an enjoyable game.
Freezes too much on PS3. After an hour and five freezes later, I had to hang it up. Looked interesting from what I did get to play. I'd recommend passing this one up on the PS3.
SummaryTurok is an epic, story-driven FPS game set on a dark, mysterious planet in the near future. Players take on the role of Joseph Turok, a former Black Ops commando, now part of an elite Special Forces squad on a mission to take down a war criminal on a genetically-altered planet. After the ship is shot down while approaching the planet, J...