Jurassic Park
Turok does not follow the story of the old games, but introduces a new character. As Joseph Turok, you are a new hire for a military team Whiskey company and are out to get your old boss, Kane, who is thought to be constructing weapons. The story is uninspired, but works decently. You are en route to get Kane in space when your ship is shot down, and you find yourself on a planet infested with dinosaurs (and Kanes company.)
For a game that runs on Epics epic (pun intended) Unreal engine, the graphics are a little lackluster. Don't get me wrong, they are great, but not as good as some of the other Unreal engine games out there. The character models are dated looking, and the weapons look quite generic. The planet is lush with green foliage, but the environments don't change quite enough. You will see a lot of green forest, followed up by boring steel complexes, then more forestry, then steel complexes, then underground, more steel complexes, etc. At times though, the game is breathtaking, like at the beginning when Turok is overlooking a wide area full of brontosaures eating foliage and pterodactyl flying through the sky. The game uses decent amounts of HDR lighting without being obnoxious. Water effects are good too, and the lava looks nice. The dinosaurs are what steals the show. They almost look too real. The rubbery look of their bodies make for some really nice dino eye candy.
The sound fares well too. The voice acting is generally acceptable, with Turok sounding as gruff as he looks, but your teammates often can annoy. Guns pop off realistically, and the sound of explosions is loud. Unfortunately, the dinos can sound underwhelming, which is disappointing. They sound as if they should sound, but not as mean as one might expect. The soundtrack kicks in every so often to build tension, but is nothing memorable.
Unfortunately, the gameplay doesn't do much to keep things interesting. You can dual wield some weapons, even mix and match to keep things interesting, but not all weapons. Only a couple, the pistol, SMG, shotgun and a plasma pistol can be dual wielded. Turok in the past has been known for its unique weapons, but in Turok it is not the case. Standard fare weapons are here, but each weapon has alternate uses, and some have alternates that are pretty inventive. For instance, the chain gun can spool up as an alternate fire, and blow off rounds as a primary, but when the heat starts to pick up, you can turn it into a turret. Man, this should have been in every game with a chain gun! The second moust button is mostly used for zooming, and the shift button is held for alternate fire, and shift+second mouse button is used for grenades. Pretty interesting. Turok also can dodge left, right and back, for intense situations.
The games enemies are unfortunately pretty boring. The human enemies are brain dead, and the dinos are too easy to kill because of knife kills. Basically, all you have to do is get close to a dino and when the screen flashes the mouse button, you click for an instant dino kill. The animations for the dinos are cool, but this takes away almost all of the fun factor. You can literally kill 20-30+ raptors with ease. You are supposed to be able to use the knife for stealth kills on human enemies, but it is too difficult to sneak around. Strangely, though, when you kill an enemy, whether by gun or knife, they never bleed. Every enemy is generic with a full body suit, mask and all, but only yellow sparks come out when you kill one. Odd.
Multiplayer is not even worth mentioning, especially since it is too difficult to find a good game since no one really plays. Honestly, Turok is not a bad game. It as some interesting ideas, but nothing really fleshes out. I played this on my friends XBox, and honestly, the PC version is a little superior because there is absolutely no aim assist, making this game too difficult. I ran into only one bug, and that was quick save and quick load did not work. Apparently, quick save only saved your progress at the last checkpoint, so it was not a save anywhere affair, and this game could have benefitted from this at times. I cannot whole heartidly recommend this game, but it is a nice purchase when the prices falls.