Savage dinosaurs, gruesome kills and imaginative weapons save this series from extinction.
Propaganda have stayed true to some of the series traits. The main character is still Native American, there are still lots of dinosaurs, and the classic bow and arrow weapon remains untouched. However, the main characters name is now Joseph Turok, and he's also a space marine.
Turok is a member of Whiskey Company, a squad of heavily armed forces who are tracking down Turok's former gang, Wolfpac, who are residing on a desolate planet. Turok is just as new to Whiskey Company as we are, and this deems Turok untrustworthy in the eyes of his squad mates, but before they can exchange hellos, their ship gets blown out of the sky.
After crash landing on the planet, the squad find themselves separated, and hunted by vicious dinosaurs. And if that isn't enough, Wolfpac are trying to kill the survivors. And this is what makes the gameplay interesting. The dinosaurs are a neutral threat, and this makes them prone to attack the Wolfpac forces.
Using the dinosaurs to your advantage adds a strategical depth to the gunfights, and it never gets old seeing your enemies mauled by a raptor. To encourage dino mauling, the otherwise average shotgun comes equipped with a flare launcher. The flare's attract dinos to their position, so placing one in the enemies cover can turn the tides of battle.
All of the weapons have a secondary function. The minigun can also be used as a portable turret, the bow and arrow can zoom in, and the machine gun can be equipped with a silencer. The stickybomb gun can fire a exploding blob that can stick to enemies and detonated at will. It's secondary fire lays a series of tripmines on the ground.
And the knife...well, the knife can one hit kill enemies with a cinematic finishing move. Jamming the knife into a raptors brain, and then kicking it's body to the floor is very satisfying. It only feels satisfying the first couple of times you do it, though. By the time you've seen the same animation multiple times, it does get old.
Dinosaur fans will see a lot of different species in this game including raptors, brontosauruses, giganotasaurus and the infamous Tyrannosaurus rex. And, for the most part, the dinos all look and move realistically. The animations in Turok are amazing, but the graphics are mediocre. For the most part, Turok takes place in a jungle environment, but it's blandness, linearity and muddled textures are dwarfed by other jungle based games like Uncharted, for example.
The single player campaign will last you around 8-10 hours with little reason to replay it. But you'll spend a good portion of that sitting through the tedious loading times that occur everytime you die, and even mid-game, pausing the action. The lack of people in multiplayer makes getting into a game a rare occurrence. But once you do get online, there are dinosaurs stalking around and it doesn't hold much surprises. It isn't going to pull you in for very long.
All in all, Turok does provide a solid, lengthy single player experience which holds plenty of mindless action and brutal kills. The game is good enough to keep you playing all the way to the end, but there isn't much reason to go back to it. The stealth option isn't encouraged enough, and the mediocre online feels tacked on. If you are interested, then Turok is worth a cheap buy, but it isn't guaranteed to please everyone.