Turok
Xbox 360 – PS3 – PC
First Person Shooter
Propaganda Games / Touchstone
Rating: Dino-sores
Words: Christian Crider

My childhood fascination with dinosaurs was more like an obsession. I remember correcting people, “There’s no such thing as a Brontosaurus, get it right!” Yeah, I was a dinosaur fascist, donning my green T-Rex shirt from the National Museum of Natural History while my plastic Jurassic Park velociraptor ate the face off one of my GI Joes. So it was a given that I’d play any videogame featuring my extinct pals, including N64’s Turok: Dinosaur Hunter. Needless to say, there’s a little nostalgia involved my decision to play Propaganda Games’ latest hatchling, Turok. Based on comic books from the 50s, the story of Turok has endured many reinventions. However, the newest iteration of the all too familiar man-versus-man-versus-dinosaur scenario is a tasty trail mix of honey roasted peanuts and tiny shards of glass.

The graphics in Turok are great. If you’re a sucker for glossy surfaces and exquisitely mapped textures, you’ll probably be impressed – the first encounter with a T-Rex was nothing short of awe-inspiring.  My raccoon-like instinctual desire for all things shiny clouded my judgment at first, obscuring some of the quirky – or downright retarded – elements of the game’s mechanics. For example, Turok’s hunting bow is amazingly accurate and great for sniping enemies, but the damn thing starts shaking if you hold the drawstring back for more than a few seconds. Perhaps if Turok was a skinny teenager this would be plausible, but take one look at Turok’s arms and it becomes a thinly veiled attempt at balancing the power and range of the bow with the other weapons in the game.

Another interesting feature is the addition of Whiskey Company, the spec-ops unit to which Turok belongs. I thought it would be cool to have a helping hand every now and then, but more often than not these squad members lacked any sign of artificial intelligence. Not to mention that they seem to flit around like ghosts on a railroad track, not bound by the laws of physics. One moment your squad member is way behind you, and the next he’s five feet to your left making snide remarks about your combat prowess.

Perhaps the most enjoyable element of Turok was the combat knife, which was almost a mini-game in itself. Instead of wantonly stabbing your enemies, efficient use of the knife requires tapping the right button at the right time to trigger a short cinematic of Turok wasting his enemy with a bloody melee kill. This was particularly fun whilst wading through the hordes of raptors, but got a little old after seeing the same few animations over and over. 
      
All in all, Turok was fun, but fun in the way that learning to skateboard is fun: sometimes it hurts, but it’s cool, dude.