When I first heard that Touchstone was bringing out a newly developed version of Turok for PlayStation 3 I thought to myself “Turok on PlayStation 3? I got to see this!” 

Was it worth the wait?

... Let me get back to you on that one.

You begin the game as Turok, a Native American warrior, assigned with the task of hunting down an old military unit that you used to be a part of an alien planet that is inhabited by dinosaurs, giant lizards, scorpions and flies.  You can tell Turok has borrowed many resources from great motion pictures like Jurassic Park; I dare ask why couldn’t they show some originality and come up with their own designs?

As you venture on into the game you discover that the planet is in fact one giant laboratory where its experiments evolving the inhabitants of the planet have seriously gone wrong.  So you are faced the task of fighting your way through to the end where you must find a ship and escape this tropical hell. 

It is fair to say that Turok is a great resemblance of your typical Hollywood style action thriller with its kill to survive mentality. So, ahem, original. Even though the story on which the game is based is somewhat middle-of-the-road Turok would still be classified as an exciting thriller, especially for those game players who love to run around kill anything that moves.  When moving around in the somewhat limited environments, I found myself having to keep my eyes and ears open for those fast, but not quite smart, raptors.  They are nothing that the edge of the razor sharp hunting knife can’t fix.

The range of weapons in the game is quite extensive, varying from your razor-sharp combat and compound bow, to a series of automatic rifles, machine guns and rocket launchers.  Just to make it interesting they even tossed in a flamethrower…. nothing like a dinosaur barbeque!  (If you haven’t tried this yet, you simply don’t know what you’re missing!)

The graphics are disappointing, mediocre even, for this platform. The designs of the characters are similar to those of Gears of War, but are not of a similar standard.  When you shoot an enemy soldier, there is no blood. The dinosaurs, however, are a different story. Seriously, talk about false expectations – the MA rating, specifying Strong Violence, failed to deliver. I wanted to see blood, and plenty of it, and instead got Saturday Morning Disney.

Game play within Turok is limited and at some points really frustrating.  You have no map, so no idea of which way is which. You are only given a certain number of save points within the game, so if you die you then have to go back to where it was automatically saved. In some cases that could be a long way back.  And if you feel like playing against one of your friends in a little one-on-one action, you should forget about it! To play Turok on multiplayer, you can only play online... why??? This is extremely frustrating, not to mention all of the updating of the system that you have to go through just to play. 


Savvy Scores…

Overall, I give Turok a rating of 6.5 out of 10.  While some portions of the game are exciting to play, I find myself feeling quite disappointed looking at a product that had the potential to carry on the legacy of Turok the Dinosaur Hunter to greater lengths.