Prehistorically Old-School
Turok returns from the dead, apparently just to frustrate us into wishing he hadn't.
Published: March 15, 2008
The team at Propaganda Games, the whole lot of 'em, have some serious balls. That they would not only resuscitate the brand that encapsulated everything that went wrong with Acclaim but would intentionally keep almost everything about it, from multiplayer to the frugal use of checkpoints, completely old-school takes major cajones. I'm not saying it's made a good game -- quite the opposite -- but that they were willing to stick to their guns means they earn some props from me.
They've also earned, at times, a string of profanities that would make a longshoreman blush like a wee schoolgirl, not to mention a few thrown controllers. Turok shouldn't be an especially difficult game, but the combination of boss fights with no real indication of what you should do beyond maybe shooting and often running coupled with even normal skirmishes that have so much going on you often end up limping into the next one unknowingly results in a near-constant string of cheap deaths and retries.
It's not like the game is trying to be different either. You play a bald space marine with American Indian roots that kills dudes and dinos alike with a really big knife. Sometimes you'll impale something or someone with an arrow to the head, but often you'll chew through ammo in a dash to get to the next bit of breathing room. On the one hand, it can make for some epic fights, but more often it means you're getting shot by a guy while a raptor chews at your face. It's all rather exhausting, and not in a good way.
Traipsing through the jungles as you lazily and clumsily move from one vague objective to the next (there's only a basic and at times line-of-sight indicator as to where you're supposed to go, and most of the time it's just a basic objective like "go here" or "find this guy"), occasionally stumbling across some of the local cold-blooded fauna isn't all that bad on its own, but one of the core tools at your disposal, a shotgun with a flare for a secondary fire was supposed to allow the dinos to be baited into attacking the generic soldiers while you clapped and giggled with glee from some high perch. These opportunities are few and far between, however, leaving the dynamic of pitting enemies against each other little more than a bullet point in most cases or worse, a source of two different threats hitting you at once.
Then there's the issue of the controls. Even after completely burying the sensitivity settings, it would often take a good 10-15 minutes of play time each session to even come close to nailing targets. The sniper-like precision needed to hit enemies with the bow meant it was rarely used (a capital shame, as it, like the knife kills, are quite satisfying), and so much as a nearby cough caused the reticule to spasm wildly, to say nothing of the effects of recoil. Doesn't this dude have arms bigger than my head? Isn't he special ops-trained? And yet recoil and a twitchy, over-sensitive aim are his biggest enemies during firefights?
This is exacerbated when you hop online, since smooth, deliberate manipulation of the sights are what keep you on top most of the time. Usually it just meant that after getting into a shootout with someone and losing for the sixth time, I just busted out my knife and tried to go for the kill there. But, just as it is in the single-player game, the specifics of when you can use the knife are something of a mystery. I'd get right up on a guy in a multiplayer match, wait a half-second to get the prompt to give him a new airhole, and then he would end up knifing me. Frustration, as is apparently the hallmark of the game, would ensue.
They've also earned, at times, a string of profanities that would make a longshoreman blush like a wee schoolgirl, not to mention a few thrown controllers. Turok shouldn't be an especially difficult game, but the combination of boss fights with no real indication of what you should do beyond maybe shooting and often running coupled with even normal skirmishes that have so much going on you often end up limping into the next one unknowingly results in a near-constant string of cheap deaths and retries.
It's not like the game is trying to be different either. You play a bald space marine with American Indian roots that kills dudes and dinos alike with a really big knife. Sometimes you'll impale something or someone with an arrow to the head, but often you'll chew through ammo in a dash to get to the next bit of breathing room. On the one hand, it can make for some epic fights, but more often it means you're getting shot by a guy while a raptor chews at your face. It's all rather exhausting, and not in a good way.
Traipsing through the jungles as you lazily and clumsily move from one vague objective to the next (there's only a basic and at times line-of-sight indicator as to where you're supposed to go, and most of the time it's just a basic objective like "go here" or "find this guy"), occasionally stumbling across some of the local cold-blooded fauna isn't all that bad on its own, but one of the core tools at your disposal, a shotgun with a flare for a secondary fire was supposed to allow the dinos to be baited into attacking the generic soldiers while you clapped and giggled with glee from some high perch. These opportunities are few and far between, however, leaving the dynamic of pitting enemies against each other little more than a bullet point in most cases or worse, a source of two different threats hitting you at once.
Then there's the issue of the controls. Even after completely burying the sensitivity settings, it would often take a good 10-15 minutes of play time each session to even come close to nailing targets. The sniper-like precision needed to hit enemies with the bow meant it was rarely used (a capital shame, as it, like the knife kills, are quite satisfying), and so much as a nearby cough caused the reticule to spasm wildly, to say nothing of the effects of recoil. Doesn't this dude have arms bigger than my head? Isn't he special ops-trained? And yet recoil and a twitchy, over-sensitive aim are his biggest enemies during firefights?
This is exacerbated when you hop online, since smooth, deliberate manipulation of the sights are what keep you on top most of the time. Usually it just meant that after getting into a shootout with someone and losing for the sixth time, I just busted out my knife and tried to go for the kill there. But, just as it is in the single-player game, the specifics of when you can use the knife are something of a mystery. I'd get right up on a guy in a multiplayer match, wait a half-second to get the prompt to give him a new airhole, and then he would end up knifing me. Frustration, as is apparently the hallmark of the game, would ensue.