So as a lot of you know I was really, really looking forward to the 360 release of Turok and I picked it up from EB today and have played a bit of the campaign and the multiplayer and have formed some impressions about the game.
First of all, the campaign begins brilliantly, you might want to stop reading here if you want to go into the game a virgin in regards to story because there are a few spoilers. So anyways you start the game with a dream sequence of your training in the Wolf Pack before being awoken in a cryo chamber and hustled into a briefing room and told about your target, Kane whom you have been sent to take out. Your a part of Whisky Company after leaving Wolf Pack for an undisclosed (at the moment) reason. Most of your ‘teammates’ want nothing to do with you, one in particular, a guy named Slade who you later learn had a brother in Wolf Pack who was killed.
Just as you are about to land on the planet your shot down and have to fight to stay alive in a ship that has a rapidly decreasing hull integrity. Surviving the crash, you find yourself in a lush jungle and the game proper begins. Upon walking around to start with you’ll notice that the graphics while not near the level of COD 4 or Gears of War, are still very nice. Some of the foliage and shrubbery leave a little to be desired but for the most part the graphics engine is nice. What stands out are the weapon and character models, they are very well designed and detailed. So you make your way through the jungle until you come upon a dead Marine in a very large area full of long grass. You pick up his weapons and are instantly set upon by dinosaurs rushing you through the grass. The pace is great and fighting your way through unseen enemies that lunge at you from nowhere is actually quite fun.
Eventually you meet up with Slade and decide that the best course of action is to try and find the main crash site of the ship you came in on and look for any other survivors. Slade isn’t particularly impressed that he has to do this with you either. Soon after meeting Slade you walk out onto a cliff face overlooking the entire jungle and the scope of this game takes hold. You overlook a huge part of this jungle and see brontosaurus moving through the trees, pterodactyls flying through the sky and here a multitude of nosies emanating from the jungle. The audio in the game so far is great, really immerse.
But it isn’t just dinosaurs you are up against on this planet, soon after you run into some mercs that Kane seems to have sent to investigate the crash and you engage in some gunplay. The controls for the most part are smooth and well throughout. Turok uses the Halo design of carrying weapons, where by you can only have two weapons that aren’t your bow or your knife and you can also carry up to three frag grenades. After dispatching some mercs you come to a large open area where you find more mercs and another fight begins, but introduced here are Velociraptors which attack both you and your enemy. A few minutes into the battle the ground begins to shake, birds fly from the trees and the raptors run off and a huge Tyrannosaurus crashes out from the jungle and goes to work on the mercs who are closer to it than you. This gives you and Slade a chance to slip off back into the jungle and look for the crash site.
One of the worries people had with the game after playing the demo was that the one-hit kill knife attack would be come stale and repetitive and too easy to use, I can tell you that’s not the case at all. I’m playing through on hard and you can’t just run up to enemies and knife them, you’ll be cut down. Stealth is the best way to use the knife and crouching through the grass, sneaking up to an enemy and silting their throat will never get old, I’m telling you now.
So that’s a look at the campaign which is shaping up quite nicely at the moment but how is the mutliplayer? You have the choice between Small FFA (max 7 players), Large FFA (Max 11 players), Small Team battles (4-4), Large Team battles (8-8), CTF or Co-Op. I’ve played FFA and CTF currently and they are a lot of fun. Unique to mutliplayer in Turok is the existence of dinosaurs, which act as a neutral third party and can be exploited to your advantage. Use the flare on the shotgun to lure dinos to your enemies and make a break with the flag. I’ve tried it and it works and it’s fun.
I’ll have a full review of the game in the coming weeks once I’ve finished it and had more time with the multiplayer but I recommend picking this gem up.
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