A highly underated game. No doubt worth a rental and it your a shooter fan, more than likley worth a purchase.
The Bad: Visuals could have been improved, uninspired voice acting, some lag issues in online, very hard.
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Ah Turok. It's a series that had it's hayday back on the N64. After a pittiful Xbox,, PS2 and GameCube outing, Turok is back in full force thanks to new publisher Touchstone aka Disney and developer Propaganda Games.
You play as Joseph Turok, a marine whos ship crash lands on a hostile planet filled with enemy soldiers and dinosaurs. Sound interesting? Well, it is a lot more interesting than you'd think. Obviously, the big draw with Turok is fighting dinosaurs, and that is what makes this game unique, but how much the game depends on dinos is interesting, and well deserved. Dinos come into play on almost every level of the game. In the single player and co-op modes, you can leave dinos to take out enemy soldiers for you, or you can kill them yourself and saver the bloody finishing moves as you cut one's throut.
Single player is all about killing lots of enemies and being somewhat stealthy. This is accomplished using scilencers and your combat knife, which is the single most used weapon in the game. With the knife drawn, you can sneak behind an enemy, press the right trigger when the icon appears and watch as you preform a brutal finishing move on your foe. This works in all modes, including online multiplayer. Most of the guns in the game are dual wieldable, including shotguns. These guns are fun and easy to use, but other trickier weapons such as the Combat Bow offer many benefits to skilled snipers.
Speaking of online multiplayer, Turok boasts a very good sampling of online modes all of which are dino infested, so you don't just have other players to worry about. From what I played, the online modes are pretty lag free once you get in game, but getting into a ranked match can take a while, which is something I hope will be fixed now that the game has officially launched worldwide. Each mode allows you to play around with all of the cool weapons of Turok, including the powerful sticky mine gun and, of course, the combat knife. Knife fights online sound like a lot of fun, and for the most part they are, but sometimes it's simply a matter of who can press the trigger first, and even if you do, somebody may be right behind you to knife you once you finish your kill. This can get kinda annoying, but after practising a few times online, it's not so bad. You also can use dinos to your advantage online. Let a dino attack an enemy, then knife him in the back while he is occupied. Ah, sweet revenge.
The co-op mode is another solid addition, but it has several issues that I hope will be finished in the near future. First, the co-op matches are not story related. They are basically like terrorist hunt in the Rainbow Six series, but you have objectives to complete instead. The a.i. for co-op is really hard, so you basically have to play with at least 3 players, if not all for, in order to actually complete a mission. You are only given one life for each player you have on your team, but these lives are shared, so if one guy dies twice, your other players are out of luck. This is irritating, but it does add a bit more stratagy to the game as far as who you play with and what you do. The other irritating part is that there are currently only three missions, which makes the random map selection of online player matches kinda lame. When I played, we got the same map at least 6 times in a row. Hopefully, new co-op missions will come out as DLC, but for now, the co-op mode is fun, but needs a bit of work.
The visuals of Turok are pretty solid, but it's not exactly the prettiest form of the Unreal Engine 3. The voice acting is pretty lame, but the sound effects and music are well done.
Overall, Turok is unique enough of a shooter to be worth getting for shooter fans. It definately brings the series back in the right direction and with a few fixes via patches and DLC, this could become one heck of a game.
Gameplay: Kill loads of dinosaurs and enemy soldiers with fun to use weapons and brutal finishers.
Graphics: Solid for the most part, but some minor touch ups would have been nice.
Sound: Decent voice acting, but solid music and sound effects.
Value: For the enjoyable single player, plus a deep and extremely enjoyable multiplayer, it's worth the price of admission.
Final Thoughts: Dinos eat meat. You are meat. Run away!