criticalhit.net
Turok - Xbox360: Reviewed
To give you a very light idea of the story, Turok a Native American, is in space as the "new guy" with a bunch of Mercs who don't trust him when their ship gets damaged and ends up sprawled all over an unknown jungle planet . The ship has split into two, so Turok and the survivors from his end of the ship make a plan to find the other half, quickly realising that there is more to this planet than they realised (Oceanic Airlines?).... I usually have no problems sniping something two pixels wide when playing most shooters, but Turok's controls lack precision to the point where it can become impossible to aim at someone who is standing dead still a few metres in front of you as you battle with the inability to make small adjustments to your crosshair.... The rest of the controls are fine and I had very little issues getting used to them but the aiming is infuriating and I can probably imagine that if any sort of casual gamer picked this game up, they would suffer with the controls to the extent that they would stop playing because I had an immense struggle with it and I have been playing console games for 20 years now and I could barely handle it when playing the game on it's easiest setting. The addition of a decent auto-aim or a smoother aiming system would have easily made me think higher of this game, but the controls alone made me want to take it out of my console and never put it back in again.... I did however have a good laugh when one of my gunshots scared one of the friendlier dinosaurs and it ran around in the same circular path for about five minutes and I imagine it would continue to do so until I shot it or left.... When it comes down to weapons, the developers did a pretty decent job, with each weapon having an alternate fire but the major problem I have is that a lot of them feel like they were stolen right out of the cookie jar.... You get the feeling that the game had five different lead designers over the course of the game because it simply can't decide what it wants to be and instead tries to be everything else, making it feel very unfocused and very average. There is nothing truly unique to it and I honestly had points in the game where it felt like I was playing something from 10 years ago with a revamped graphics engine. What really got to me was the fact that for some reason, it still felt like the game had something to offer, but everywhere you turned you were faced with another bad design decision that confused or frustrated you.... I honestly can't see how the developers played this game and thought that it was fun, they were so jaded with the ideas of knifing a dinosaur that they forgot to make sure that everything else in the game was actually playable.... However, as far as I have heard, it isn't bad, isn't great either but it definitely isn't enough to save this game from the dismal attempt at a first person shooter that it is.... This wasn't the case though, so what we are left with is an frustrating, average, shallow shooter which can be finished in around 8 hours ( Five hours if you know how to pass certain areas and aren't left wandering or dying for 45 minutes at a time) that is not nearly worth the R600.00 price tag.... If you are really desperate for a shooter and have already played most other shooters out there, then take a look at Turok, if not, move on. I oddly enough still have a bit of a good feeling about this game even though playing it was a painful and aggravating experience.... Scoring: Gameplay: 4/10 : Spray and pray at its absolute worst Presentation: 7/10 : Decent Sound: 7/10 : Like listening to Kimi Raikonnen talk Value: 5/10 : Depends if you use the disc as a coaster or not Overall: 6/10 (Not an average) : A good idea destroyed by bad decisions in the design process.
Nick De Bruyne