The game can hit highs the likes of Halo or the Half-Life series but more than often misses producing those moments.
The menus are somewhat stylish which was pretty surprising but when the beginning cutscene starts, I realized the story is told through the ingame engine which doesn't have the same impressive look to it. Now the engine isn't horrible but the character designs share the same body types as the characters in Gears of War and the skin is also extra shiny. There are inadequacies like this throughout the durations of Turok. The game on a whole looks pretty good but upon closer inspection, there are blurry textures all over the place, hundreds of mercs that look exactly the same and the environment's openness is pretty much just an illusion. It's too bad too because some of the vistas that Turok exposed me too were very beautiful from afar.
Combat suffers from some strange designs too. First off, the majority of the guns feel very underpowered and that is in stark contrast to what the previous Turok's believed in. Other annoyances are that the dinosaurs in the game usually died these gruesome but awe inspiring deaths while the mercs, on the other hand stayed in one piece during explosions and just shed sparks when shot or stabbed. I understand the move to cut down on violence, but when dinosaurs are exploding into bloody, twitching body parts, I expect to see at least a drop of the red stuff when I'm shredding humanoids with automatic fire.
Those mixed feelings aren't to say that the combat is bad, in fact, at points the combat can be out right invigorating. There were times, most towards the end of the game, where the game would throw everything it could at me and surprisingly I'd survive. I would just pan the area looking at all the dead bodies under the shock of how I survived such an onslaught. The game also happens to pull off a few boss battles fairly well.
Other than the bosses, the mercs show very little variety in looks, fortunately there are a handful of different dinosaurs that break up the monotony of repetitive encounters. These beasts ended up stealing the show hands down. Not only are they usually relentless with their assaults, there are also a few variances of them, from agile tree climbing raptors to raptors with large goiters that spit acid. The AI for all of these creatures is generally good but nothing surprisingly smart.
One idea that seems to have backfired on the developers is the fact that grenades, tail swipes, tramples and lunges from the enemies can send your Turok flying to where you can see your arms and legs flailing away. It's a cool effect that leaves you disorientated for a bit which isn't bad per se, but the fact that Turok is about as agile as a flat-tired wheelbarrow with a ton of bricks in it, this new feature means you might end up restarting your game more often then you should. I don't blame this new effect; it's the lack of speed in the controls that are the actual culprit that makes you dead.
Back to the weapons, the knife, bow, flame thrower and the mine gun seem to be the best weapons available, all other weapons require headshots to quickly put enemies down. Each weapon has a secondary function but even these don't help improve some of the guns. The minigun gets improved a bit with the ability to set it down as an automated turret and the shotgun shoots out flares that dinosaurs find as nice distractions but other than these weapons named, the other ones are mostly misses.
The story in Turok is a vanilla tale involving a military mission to capture a rogue elite squad leader. Since this is a reboot of the Turok series, gone are the aliens, monsters and most of the originality. This time around the story starts off with a purpose and then as the threat from this elite squad gets stronger, the mission devolves into the quest just to get off the island alive. Teammates throughout the story will meet their untimely demise but that's ok because no connection is built with the supporting cast. I enjoyed just watching the interesting ways each one was picked off.
In closing, Turok suffers most from rollercoaster pacing. The game can hit highs the like of Halo or the Half-Life series but more than often misses producing those moments. It's a good start to the new Turok series, a great turn in the right direction over Evolution that hopefully improves if they decide to make another installment.