Set 200 years in the future and with a Halo-like feel Turok is quite different from Acclaim’s take on the dinosaur hunter. The story is about Joseph Turok who is an ex-Black Ops commando and his mission is to capture the war criminal, Roland Kane. The search for his previous mentor leads Turok to another planet populated with dinosaurs. Raptors searching for a meal may dash forward and bite Turok, which cuts out of the first person view and shows the dinosaur chomping on Turok. To reduce the damage you need to rapidly pull one of the trigger buttons to reduce the damage and stab the raptor with your knife. Turok can switch weapons with the D-pad. Pressing left or right rotates through Turok’s guns and he can dual wield a combination of weapons. A shotgun and a rapid fire pulse rifle seemed like the best way to push the raptors back. Grenades did the trick too and when you use those the dinosaurs literally explode, which was something I was surprised to see. But the dinosaurs don’t have to be Turok’s enemy. You can use them as a wildcard ally and put them in position to attack Kane’s soldiers.
Carefully positioned in each level are dinosaur nests with a small group of eggs. You can hide in the grass and shoot the nest with an arrow from Turok’s bow. This will rile the dinosaurs up and they will attack anything nearby, including enemy soldiers. Using dinosaurs this way could clear out a few troops and provide a distraction for you to pick off the remaining soldiers. However, there is no guarantee the raptors will restrict themselves to Kane’s army, they might spot you too. I like how the dinosaurs incorporate a random factor in Turok. When I played the same stage three times the dinosaurs did three different things. It kept me on my toes, especially when raptors and soldiers were simultaneously attacking me. You can sort of guide the dinosaurs by shooting flares with the shotgun. Usually raptors will walk towards the bright red glow, but if they are busy chasing you down the flare isn’t going to save your life.
When Turok gets hurt a red ring forms around the screen and a neat feature distorts the sound. If you keep taking damage Turok’s vision gets blurry, which means it is time to hide and regenerate because you are about to die. There are no health pickups in Turok, but since you recover health naturally you can always take cover to heal. Rushing in levels with guns blazing is one way to play Turok, but that will probably alert troops and make levels more difficult to complete. The other option is to proceed through the level using stealth. Turok can sneak in the grass, crawl up to soldiers and use his knife to quietly kill soldiers. As long as Turok remains in the shadows he can spring stealth kills on Kane’s troops. The levels are designed with crevices for Turok to hide in and elevated pipes to crawl on, which act vantage points to spot out dinosaur nests. Compared to running through a level shooting everything in sight, stealth made Turok easier. Less soldiers to fight and by sneaking through paths I was able to avoid some of the spitting raptors.
The feature I didn’t get to try out was multiplayer. I was told up to 16 people will be able to play in a match and you won’t be able to play as dinosaurs. Too bad, I was hoping to play as a raptor online.
