Turok Evolution für Xbox

For those of you who may not know, which most of you should, Turok began on the N64. The original was actually quite good and was a step of for the FPS genre. But ever since the first, the sequels have gone downhill with each new release. And of recently, the newest installment has been released multi-platform style and I?ve nabbed a copy of it for X Box. So how does it do? Keep reading and find out.

Obviously the X Box version is going to be the strongest of the three, so this review shouldn?t be confused or taken the same if you are planning on purchasing or renting it for the PS2 or Gamecube. The game starts off with a rather gory introduction and that?s only for the introduction for Acclaim, in which is shows a soldier getting axed in the face and his face splits in half and yeah, you get the picture. Turok: Evolution has you playing (Tal?Set) the next man seeking the name of Turok. He must face his foe ?Captain Bruckner? a butcher of Indian tribes. They are both thrown into a world that we?re all accustomed to by now from playing the previous Turoks. But anyway, lets dive into this game.

You start out in the wilderness equipped with nothing but a spiked club, called none other than the war club and in my opinion beats out almost all of the weaponry against all basic foes. In a matter of seconds are you already fighting off, not enemies, but wildlife. For some reason random attacks by baboons and other small critters occur a lot. But they are easy to kill and give you some early practice at using the games controls. The controls in Turok are quite simple and really easy to get used to if you are a FPS buff. If not, then it may take a while but not to long to get used to Turok. The only downside to there controls was you could not customize any of it other than the sensitivity and inversions of the controller. I would much rather have been able to switch my jump button around, but even still not a big problem.

While running through the games environments you?ll notice that the surroundings are full of life and wild animals, which is really cool. You are in the jungle after all. But the atmosphere is filled with grass, bushes and trees. But what is really cool is when you walk over the bushes or grass they shake and wave (a tad to much though) which adds to the game and can also give you hints to way others may be hiding. At one instance I annoyed this dinosaur (by shooting it a bunch of times in the head), which got mad and started flaunting its head around which resulted in him knocking over a tree. I thought that was a really neat touch how the environment was interactive like that. Even though the world of Turok is fairly detailed in that sense, it is rather bland in the over all look. You can obviously tell that the game was made for the PS2 and Gamecube, so it didn?t utilize the machines graphics capabilities. Not that the graphics are horrible, they are actually fairly pretty at times, but from more of a technical standpoint is where they fail mostly. Such as the water and its reflections. Here you have huge longnecks in the water drinking and feeding, however they don?t cast any reflections. And another example was I shot this little raptor thing (I?m not a dinosaur buff so I don?t know the actual names) and I blew its head off but when it fell to the ground the shadow still showed the head. Obviously I?m nitpicking at small details that most of you probably wouldn?t have even noticed. But my point is that all of this should be fixed and after playing other more detailed FPS games I expect more. Especially the water, designers seemed to have had that one pegged but in Turok it just doesn?t look as great as all of the other games out there.

The game-play for this game isn?t as deep if you are used to more of a mission objective type game. Turok is centered on the action approach. While that?s fine and dandy, it just makes it get a whole lot boring and tedious after awhile. When compared to a game like Halo with lots of action, it just can?t keep up because of the lack of depth. I?d compare this more to games like Doom. It is pretty standard and has a more old school feel to the game. The game has you moving through ?levels? or areas with some objectives but not how you?re used to. It is simpler, such as the first one you have to find this floating key thing and once you touch it, for some reason it opens up a new area for you to progress to the next area. It doesn?t make sense but I don?t think they intended for it to. My biggest problem with the game was the enemies. I didn?t like the idea of random attacks by baboons, or the very, very stupid enemy intelligence. For instance if there is a group of troops, you can just sit back with your Tekk Bow and pick them off one by one without the others reacting in any way. And what?s even worse is that if they take more than one headshot to kill, they just sit there. I shot this one in the head and the arrow was sticking out of the troops head and he just sat there normally, just waiting for me to shoot him again. Another downtime in the game-play is introduced in the second chapter. Which are the flying levels. Firstly you are on a pterodactyl and you have to fly through shooting and guns blazing to pass the stage. But the bad thing isn?t necessarily the concept; it is how they did it. They make it appear to be a fighter jet game. Smoke streams are left behind from the birds wings and when you crash there is fire and smoke with a splatter of blood, and the controls and response time is horrible. Basically what you do is wait for your crosshair to turn from green to red, and then you launch a missile and kill the enemy flyers.

Turok had a lot going for it but its over all un-polished package gives it a huge hit. The X Box is lacking in FPS right now which is the only way I?d ever recommend this game to you, is if you?re going through FPS withdrawal then it is good for a couple rents or even a purchase if you like it that much. While it does have its moments and I even got into it a couple times, I just couldn?t really sink myself into it. I?m quite happy with waiting a bit longer for the Xbox?s massive list of great FPS games coming out shortly. Don?t totally dismiss the game though, defiantly go and rent it for sure as some of you will be able to get passed the lack of challenge and graphics. It does have some cheats to unlock and an art gallery which is always nice to see little extras and the multiplayer is there too, while that won?t win any awards, it is still decent. While the game isn?t a two out of five, it is most certainly not a three out of five, but somewhere in between..