Turok Review
Score: 3/5
Turok 2: Seeds of Evil is the stand out entry in the Turok series. It certainly had its issues, a sometimes erratic frame-rate chief amongst them, but what it lacked it made up for in its presentation, beauty, expansiveness, explosiveness, and gore. Memories of the utterly brutal Cerebral Bore still float through my mind. Also, you got to ride a rocket launcher equipped Triceratops. I could really go on here.
This Turok does indeed capture some of the qualities that made Seeds of Evil great. In fact, it even manages to innovate, and does things heretofore unseen in a first person shooter. It is very disappointing then, that in spite of Turok’s great qualities, the game is marred by poor execution overall, and a handful of other issues.
The fact that Turok does away with sequel naming conventions and uses “Turok” without subtitles or numbering, immediately suggests that the developers consider a new start. There is no doubt that this is the case: Turok has nothing to do with the previous games, and makes not so much as a peep of a reference towards it.
What we have instead is a more grounded sci-fi-ish riff on the Turok universe that only shares with the originals Turok himself. This new vision begins with our protagonist aboard a spaceship filled with marines tracking down Roland Kane, the leader of the “infamous” (or so we’re told) Wolf Pack, of which Turok was a former star pupil. The marines are tasked with taking Kane out, but Turok’s reasons are personal. The ship is shot down, crash lands on a mysterious planet filled with ravenous dinosaurs, and the game quickly becomes a frantic, disaster filled survival story.
Turok’s story is so truncated it makes Gears of War look like Les Miserable. We have barely a whisper of context to grasp onto. How did Turok end up under Kane’s tutelage? What is Wolf Pack anyhow? Why are the marines after Wolf Pack? What the hell is with this planet? Good luck finding the answers. By the time you face off with Kane you’re left wondering what was missed, and no number of flashbacks demonstrating Kane’s nastiness really compels you to scalp him.
I’d be more inclined to dump all over Turok’s mystifyingly vague story if it weren’t for the truly excellent atmosphere. Voice acting is surprisingly excellent with the likes of Powers Booth (Kane), Donnie Wahlberg (Sheppard), Timothy Olyphant (Cowboy), and Ron Pearlman (Slade) offering up their considerable talents. Turok’s Gregory Cruz is especially convincing, providing a rumbling Native voiceover with pitch perfect tone and restraint. Everyone does an amazing job.
Moreover, the cinematics are deftly handled and the characters faces and body language are superbly animated. Much of the presentation revolves around Turok’s crewmates and their attitudes towards him. Realistically, some characters are more forgiving while others’ suspicions of his allegiance grow to manic levels. And just as distinct as their personalities are their physical renders, such that this is one of only a few videogames where I could distinctly identify each of them with a mere glance.
But it’s the environs that really impress. Starting off in a dense jungle, the scenery is thick with foliage and complex rock formations and other geometry. Gigantic trees tower into the air and some scenes treat with distant vistas. Mist floats ominously in sporadic pockets and thick tall grass sways and bends against movement. Moving indoors and underground, the complexity in geometry and lighting make even these mundane areas engaging.
Perhaps the only complaint with the visuals is that the colour schemes, no matter where you find yourself, are so monochromatic that they’re practically oppressive - the jungle is drenched with so many variations of green I nearly sprouted ferns from my eyeballs.
This jungle thickness by design allows Turok to creep about unnoticed at times, and delivers a significant aspect to gameplay: quiet kills. That tall, thick grass I spoke of earlier is perfect for crouching into and encroaching upon Kane’s henchmen unnoticed, as you’re treated to the impressive display of the grass bending in real-time against his movement. Once you’re close enough to your target, a quick pull of the right trigger launches a brutal third-person cinematic knife kill, resulting in some variation of Turok kicking out the legs of his victim and plunging his knife into their head or back or chest.
Likewise for the dinosaurs. Getting close enough to most dinosaurs grants Turok the ability to perform a knife kill, much in the same manner as your human opponents. If placed correctly, Turok plunges his knife into the top of a raptors’ head as it writhes in violent throes of death and blood erupts from every orifice. If Turok pulls this off while behind a beast, he leaps onto its back and slits its throat for equally bloody results.
There is certainly no doubt that these kills look great, and there are a variety of animations depending on your position and type of foe. But these kills lack a certain satisfaction due to their ease of employment. Stealth kills on humans are expectedly easy to pull off, but you can throw yourself into a pride of raptors, spinning about and pulling the trigger willy-nilly, stabbing and slicing with bloody reckless abandon without consequence.
Your dinosaur and human opponents will often interact with each other. They’ll typically be fighting one another off, allowing you to sit back and have all the dirty work done for you. You can even draw raptors from their hidey-holes by shooting their egg clutches nearby. Once they’re out, they’ll go after whatever is in the vicinity. This is an aspect of gameplay that Propaganda specifically highlights, but doesn’t add up to much in the end; there are few obvious scenarios to use this tactic, and when you do the raptors are more apt to come after you instead.
Whilst facing off with your enemies individually, they prove to be aggressive and mildly tactical. Human opponents will flank, dive away from explosives, and take cover. That said, they’re still pretty stupid: Many will stand out in the open strafing right to left and back again ad nauseam. The dinosaurs do pretty much only one thing: Come right at you.
While the dinosaurs are certainly formidable foes, and you’ll face off against a variety of mini-raptors, bigger raptors, dilophasaurs, and other critters, they all suffer from a severe lack of interesting, distinguishing behavior. This failing is highlighted by the excellently designed Lurkers, a cross between a jaguar and a dinosaur that can scale trees and move at lightning speeds while staying very close to the ground. Lurkers will often strike out of the tall grass then disappear within a breath, making them very difficult to catch. They’re a great addition, but point out how routine the other dinos are.
One of Turok’s biggest failings is its core shooting action which approaches the weaker end of the spectrum. Poor sound design for the weapons is the primary culprit. It is utterly baffling that so many developers can’t seem to succeed with what is arguably the most impactful aspect of shooting action. I’ve stated this time and again: gunfire needs to “pop”. Here, it does not. Instead, the weapons sound like they’ve got a wet pillow duct-taped to the muzzle.
Another unfortunate aspect of your weaponry is their lack of punch relative to one another. You’ll come across SMGs, handguns, pulse rifles, mini-guns, a flame thrower and others, yet they’re more similar than dissimilar to each other. The issue is that the weapons that are supposed to be the most powerful (i.e. the mini-gun) don’t feel significantly more powerful than the weapons that are supposed to be the weakest (i.e. the SMG).
The weapons aren’t all bad. The pulse rifle is extremely effective and will likely end up your go-to weapon throughout the entire campaign. Each weapon also has a secondary function, typically in the form of some projectile explosive. The shotgun shoots a flare that attracts raptors and sticks to enemy combatants – use your imagination. Moreover, all of the weapons animate beautifully. And I can’t fail to mention the bow which provides a great deal of satisfaction with its ability to pin enemies to nearby surfaces.
All of the aforementioned weaknesses could be glossed over by most gamers, given Turok’s fascinating setting, strong cinematic qualities, and viscous gameplay. But Turok has larger failings trumping all the others: poor structure and pacing.
Turok spends an interminable amount of time trudging through the same scenes. It seems to take half the game just to reach your ships’ wreckage, and most of that journey is through jungles or caves – they look great, but not that great. Eventually Turok treks through more modern facilities interspersed throughout the planet, but they don’t come often enough, and even they’re repetitive. The solution would have been as simple as breaking up the different sections of the game and reshuffling the order that you tackle them in. As it is, you’ll find yourself wishing you could just move on to something different.
Turok also periodically frustrates with giant spikes in difficulty, even on the normal difficulty setting. Fine progress is interrupted by slamming face-first into a boss-like situation. It isn’t as though one wouldn’t be inclined to a challenge, but these situations are too tough in part due to a lack of clear direction as to how you’re supposed to overcome them. If “flow” in videogames is a real, tangible concept, Turok kicks it in the sack and spits in its face.
The introduction of the various dinosaur antagonists is also poorly handled. One would hope that the various species would be treated with some reverence, but they’re trotted out too frequently in blunt, uninteresting ways. They even pimp out the T-Rex in several scenes in an effort to develop some sort of feud with Turok, which ends in a nonsensical settling of scores between the two. It’s a great idea fumbled.
Rounding out the first-person-shooter checklist is a robust multiplayer offering. It offers, not surprisingly, variations of deathmatch, team deathmatch, capture the flag, and a smattering of other team based games across several maps and team sizes.
There’s enough here to keep someone occupied for some time; the maps are interesting and well constructed, and dinosaurs are also present offering up some strategic spice or just plain annoyance. The issue, however, relates to the shooting action in that the guns feel so unpowered against human opponents that many matches devolve into dancing knife fights – here too you’re treated to a third-person cinematic once you’ve knifed your opponent, further encouraging players to take that route.
Aside from the competitive multiplayer package, Turok offers co-operative multiplayer as well. This is easily the best part of Turok. There are three multiplayer co-op maps where up to four teammates can play through a distinct scenario against AI opponents. These co-op maps sport very tight level design, exciting enemy encounters, variety and flow. Each map is clever in how it forces players to strategize, particularly by creating objectives where players must sit prone to complete them whilst enemies continuously assault the area. The point, of course, is to divvy up responsibilities between the task and defence. The kind of tight design and thrills in the co-op maps should have found their way to the campaign.
Conclusion:
Whatever the case may be, Turok still manages to capture you just enough to push you through to the end. It may not deliver greatness, but it’s a decent experience with innovative elements nevertheless. If nothing else, this Turok promises greater things for the flagging property and gives hope for the future of the series. Short of riding a dual rocket launcher equipped Triceratops, this is as good a dinoventure as you’re going to get.
peachey @ March 5, 2008