Published: Sunday, March 23, 2008
'Turok' gets a makeover; unfortunately, game play does not
You've got a knife in your pocket, a high-powered bow slung across your back and an automatic weapon clutched in each hand as you face off against a ruthless military force and a hoard of hungry dinosaurs.
Whew! That's just the first level of "Turok," (Touchstone, for Xbox 360 and Sony PS3, $59.99) an M-rated (Mature) frenetic-paced shooter where the action rarely stops for a breather and danger lurks around each prehistoric frond.
The Turok character first materialized in a video game with "Turok: Dinosaur Hunter" back in the late 1990s. I tackled the PC version back then, replete with clunky landscapes that disappeared into the badly pixelated distance -- er, I mean creepy fog.
Now, Joseph Turok is back and looking for more prehistoric blood. He's on a mission with some covert ops buddies to capture and bring back Roland Kane from a mysterious planet full of dinos. But no sooner than Turok's Wolf Pack squad approaches the planet, they are blasted from the sky and crash. The surviving team members, including Turok, must trudge to Kane on foot, avoiding peril at every turn.
I played the Xbox 360 version of "Turok," which I can safely say doesn't break any new ground in gaming. Tried-and-true weapon and mobility techniques remain in play. I found better weapons along my journey while playing as Turok, and increased my ability to bring down bigger beasts with fewer shots and take out opposing military foes from a distance.
Once the dinosaurs spotted me, there really was no way to escape them. They're too quick. I had to engage quickly or be killed. Some of them knocked me down to stun me, while others clawed at me mercilessly until the edges of the screen turned red, indicating I needed to find cover to rest and heal or die.
The healing takes about 5 seconds, and it was pretty easy to avoid further punishment while mending in the early levels.
"Turok" is a solid enough shooter because the double threat of paramilitary foes and dinosaurs is foreboding. This would have been better if the game designers had come up with something, anything, that I hadn't seen before.
They didn't.
Whew! That's just the first level of "Turok," (Touchstone, for Xbox 360 and Sony PS3, $59.99) an M-rated (Mature) frenetic-paced shooter where the action rarely stops for a breather and danger lurks around each prehistoric frond.
The Turok character first materialized in a video game with "Turok: Dinosaur Hunter" back in the late 1990s. I tackled the PC version back then, replete with clunky landscapes that disappeared into the badly pixelated distance -- er, I mean creepy fog.
Now, Joseph Turok is back and looking for more prehistoric blood. He's on a mission with some covert ops buddies to capture and bring back Roland Kane from a mysterious planet full of dinos. But no sooner than Turok's Wolf Pack squad approaches the planet, they are blasted from the sky and crash. The surviving team members, including Turok, must trudge to Kane on foot, avoiding peril at every turn.
I played the Xbox 360 version of "Turok," which I can safely say doesn't break any new ground in gaming. Tried-and-true weapon and mobility techniques remain in play. I found better weapons along my journey while playing as Turok, and increased my ability to bring down bigger beasts with fewer shots and take out opposing military foes from a distance.
Once the dinosaurs spotted me, there really was no way to escape them. They're too quick. I had to engage quickly or be killed. Some of them knocked me down to stun me, while others clawed at me mercilessly until the edges of the screen turned red, indicating I needed to find cover to rest and heal or die.
The healing takes about 5 seconds, and it was pretty easy to avoid further punishment while mending in the early levels.
"Turok" is a solid enough shooter because the double threat of paramilitary foes and dinosaurs is foreboding. This would have been better if the game designers had come up with something, anything, that I hadn't seen before.
They didn't.
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