shooter

Ok, I have to admit, I had never played a "Turok" game before this one; and I am incredibly picky when it comes to first person shooters (Soo many are overrated, this one is not!).

The multiplayer modes are phenominal! There are so many different types of multiplayer gaming, and all of them are fun and provide unlimited hours of fresh action that will keep you glued to your screen. There is even a purely flying multiplayer mode, as well as a sniper mode.

The flying levels are spectacular; visually stunning. These levels were well thought out and are controlled well via the gamepad. They occur in the plot at various times, and occur throughout the story.

I enjoyed the plot of this game, although it wasn't always that significant in the gameplay.

If you are looking for a game with great graphics, get this one! I cannot believe anyone would be dissapointed with the visuals. Plus, the music provides a great mood.

The levels are HUGE and expansive; you could literally walk around for hours in every level (if you wanted to).

The weapons are also fun. New weapons come throughout the game, and they range from a bow and arrow to massive explosives to ... well, that is for you to discover!

I could go on and on, but I'd rather be playing Turok.

Pros:
- Superb multiplayer gaming; many different modes of play.
- A good plot that keeps the adventure going, there is a purpose for this hero!
- Great graphics; I could look at the water all day.
- Extremely high frame rate, and super fast loading times.
- A nice mix of ground combat, flying, and sneaking.
- The game is FUN!!

Cons:
- A few more dino's couldn't hurt.

Turok: Evolution has a terrible multiple personality disorder: sometimes it's this great action packed shooter with awesome lighting effects and high-res textures, and sometimes it's this really ugly-looking, tedious-playing, evil twin.

Turok: Evolution follows the story of the original Dinosaur Hunter: Tel Set. You learn how he was originally transported to the Lost Lands to become a Turok.(well sort of anyway...The story-line's kind of muddled.) Most of the game is just your standard FPS fare: you move through completely linear levels wreaking havoc and shooting everything that moves. It starts off really slow though, with lots of tedious sniping and ugly graphics, but things start to pick up around the fifth chapter or so. You then start doing more indoor levels, which show off the cool lighting and reflection effects, and allow you to engage in more close range combat. Also your weapons arsenal starts to get a lot more interesting.

I think the weapons are probably the coolest aspect of Turok. Most weapons have two modes of fire and some of them transform into completely different weapons (such as the Flechette gun, which can be transformed into a Mini gun). The graphic effects of some of these weapons are truly stunning: the heat-waves on the rocket launcher and flame-thrower are most impressive. In fact, I think the rocket launcher in Turok is probably the coolest rocket launcher I've ever seen in a FPS. There are some really interesting weapons here: for instance, there's the gravity disrupter, which when you press the trigger quickly, will knock enemies backwards, or you can hold the trigger in and it will charge up for a shock-wave attack. You can also switch to the alternate mode and use the gun to pick up enemies and hurl them off cliffs, or bash them against walls and other foes.

The controls are nearly identical to those found in Halo, only the aiming isn't nearly as precise, and your turning speed is far to slow...and then far to fast. You see, Turok has the same problem with aiming that MOH: Frontline suffered from: first the controls move far to slow, and then as you slowly press the thumb-stick further, they suddenly reach a point where they jump to high-speed, and move far to fast, causing you to overshoot what you were aiming for. Fortunately though, with the auto-aim feature enabled, this problem is far more manageable.

There are a few levels where you hop on the back of a pterasaur and fly through canyons in a rail-shooter mode. While the concept of a pterasaur shooter, (complete with lock-on missiles and radio chatter) is super cheezy, and the graphics are quite ugly, I still found it to be kind of thrilling soaring through canyons, narrowly avoiding obstacles, and pulling out of steep dives just in the nick of time. It's nothing terribly great, but it's not as bad as it sounds.

The graphics are just so incredibly inconsistent. Some levels look nearly as good as Halo: with nice lighting effects and reflections. However, some of the levels look like something from an average PS2 game. Even the textures within the levels can be inconsistent. Sometimes you'll notice some really nice looking high-res textures and then a few feet later there'll be an ugly blurry mess. Some of the effects (such as the rippling heat-waves from the rocket launcher) are quite impressive, but some effects are sorely lacking (like water for instance, which is just a flat bluish texture). The frame-rate is alright on the indoor levels, but it does drop a bit when you're outside.

One of my biggest gripes with Turok is the lack of save-points. You can only save after completing a level; this was acceptable on the N64, due to hardware limitations, but the Xbox has an 8 gigabyte hard drive and there's no excuse for using such an archaic save system. I get the feeling they used this system because they knew the inconsistent enemy AI just wouldn't have made the game challenging enough otherwise.

You see the AI enemies in Turok are just really unpredictable (in a bad way). For instance, sometimes you can attempt to snipe an enemy and he'll alert all his buddies to your location, and they'll all instantly know where you are and will immediately proceed to attack you. However, sometimes you can shoot an enemy and he'll just stand there and take it-as if he can't even feel the bullets ripping through his flesh. Again the problem here is consistency.

The multi-player modes are pretty much the usual: capture the flag, death-match, ect.. The frame-rate is fine when you play two players but it really takes a hit when you play with 3 or 4. Unfortunately, Turok does not support the System Link feature-which seems kind of stupid to me. I mean how much time does it take to add in System Link support?!

With 14 chapters, each consisting of several levels, Turok is quite a large FPS. I think maybe, it would have been better if they made the game smaller and then spent the extra time polishing things up. It seems they just spread themselves to thin and weren't able keep the level of quality consistent. At times Turok really shows some glimpses of brilliance. Perhaps, with another six months development time, Turok could have been a good solid FPS, but as it stands now, it's really not worth playing. There's just too many other FPS's of higher quality coming out this fall and Turok: Evolution just doesn't have anything original to make up for it's technical shortcomings.

Sound: 7/10 The sound is pretty solid, with some nice back-round music and cool sounding weapons.
Graphics: 5/10 A real mixed bag: sometimes they're really good, other times they're terrible.
Controls: 7/10 Would be terrible, but fortunately there's an auto-aim option.
Game-play: 6/10 Your typical FPS: Shoot everything that moves. The reliance on the limited save-points to make the game challenging is really annoying.
Originality: 1/10 Nothing new here.
Value: 8/10 With 14 chapters, and each chapter consisting of several levels there's a good 30-40 hours of
single player, plus there is a multi-player mode. No real replay value for the single-player though.
Difficulty:7/10 Hard due to lack of save-points.
Final Score: 6/10 If it could have been more consistent, it could have been a good solid shooter.

This is a pretty good game that somehow was overlooked by gamers. I have the PS2 version and think that the graphics are some of the best that sony has to offer. Good controls and intense fighting make this a great bargain for fans of first person shooters. For $10 you cant go wrong.