Military.com Game Review: Turok

Valerie Gorchinski - Military.com

Apr 16, 2008

Turok
Xbox 360 -- $59.99
Rank -- ***

The plot device of space marines on an alien planet has inarguably become cliché. When the big kick-ass spaceship full of marines got shot down and crash landed in the opening movie sequence of the latest installment in the Turok series, I was hardly surprised. When the main character (Turok) was consistently teamed up with massive, grizzled marines who all had chips on their shoulders, I still wasn’t surprised. However, when my massive, grizzled AI counterparts actually did some good by shooting at things and hitting them, I was surprised.

The basic plot of Turok is simple -- you’re a tough guy with a past who keeps having flashbacks and crash lands on a planet with a bad guy you’re on a mission to hunt and bloodthirsty dinosaurs you hunt for giggles. The ship tears apart in the crash and in your search for the bad guy you shoot, stab or otherwise grapple with raptor, rex and all their dino friends.

Controls for Turok are pretty standard to most shooters -- one of the things the developer got spot on. This allows for anyone even slightly familiar to the genre to pick up the controller and play. The trouble with Turok is that it doesn’t give you much reason to want to keep playing after you’ve picked up the controller.

The environment is, at times, so repetitive that it is far too easy to lose your way and then throw your controller in a tantrum all too fitting of a three year old. The aiming system seems to be mostly absent and I found myself spending what seemed like hours to slog through the larger battles because it’s a massive pain to line up your target just right. A slight nudge on the joystick and rather than edging over a bit, I turned around to face the other direction. Annoying to say the least, especially when there are people shooting at you and a hungry raptor is charging at you.

For all of the little things that are wrong with Turok, it must be said that killing dinosaurs with a knife never really gets old. During combat, there are many cinematic kill moves to be executed. The game occasionally prompts you to pull a certain trigger or press a particular button with perfect timing to break the back of a smaller dinosaur over your knee or stab a slightly larger one in the eye with your knife. It’s a little disturbing how much fun these short sequences are. In fact, the gun combat with enemy humans really just seemed like a road block to knifing more dinosaurs.

Bottom Line: The plot has been done to death in games and the environment is often drab, boring and confusing to look at but it’s a fun game that would have been even more fun if all you did was run around the planet killing dinosaurs.

Turok is also available for Playstation 3 and PC.

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