First Look:

Turok

My face burns with the humid scraping of prehistoric nettles and a pre-dawn era of visceral combined with a controlled predatory wisdom. Today I am hunting wabbits!.....Um, today I am hunting bad guys and dinosaurs! Turok is a name that has become for me synonymous with the likes of 1,000,000 BC and King Kong and the Isle of Doom and all the wondrous joys wrapped in the early Famous Monsters of Filmland “GIANT MONSTER” spreads. It captures the excitement of Land of the Lost and adds an element of clandestine battle skill. I love dinosaurs! This game has them. I really would like to to be the one in charge of creating atmosphere in a game that comes so close to getting it right. This one is plagued with the uncertainty of what should the villian be: man or beast? We have bad guys in every game, why not concentrate on why we really buy into Turok? Like a Jurassic park with balls. Big bouncy T-rex balls. I found that there were too many instances by where Splinter Cell was hovering in the wings, but not quite being allowed to play. Yeah, Turok is a bad-ass commando with a cold, hard past but he never comes across as being anything more than a square-jawed Thundercat. His lineage is played up in very scant segments when referencing his propensity for using a compund bow, but they could have leaned more into the spirit side of his being. Going deeper, tapping into a lunatic fringe that is akin to battle madness soaked in peyote or prehistoric waba leaves. Perhaps he could at least be shown gazing into to a distant horizan with a solitary tear running down his chiseled cheek. Touchstone and Propaganda Games should make this series creepier. Darker. Not so much “Hoorah! but more “Halt! Who goes there?”.

I still enjoy the title though, elevator levels aside. The game itself has a electric feel to it. You are in the world of terrible lizards-being driven by a n XBOX 360!!!!! so they must be really bad-ass. And some are. It’s exciting to see a T-Rex pop in for a snack mid-game every now and then, however it would be better if you could control your destiny a little more. Like being able to track animals through the foliage based on your innate skills or inherent instincts. Although looking for clues in such dense and impenetrable jungle would be migraine inducing, what with the weird pov.. The attacks come at such awkward angles to what you see and it is so difficult to regain your line of site, that the close combat becomes tedious. 

Turok should also have a published or bonus selection of artwork, the menus art especially. Every cut page and every background drawing is spectacular but hard to find elsewhere. I am trying to get as much as possible for the gallery in the meantime.

Gaming

cinematic experience:85%
audio:85%
video:85%
overall design:70%
sets:75%
characters:75%
story:70%
play:70%
replay:tbd
next gen ranking:85%

AS IT STANDS:
7.8/10