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Video game revamps Jurassic period, challenges players |
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Wednesday, 27 February 2008 |
Editor’s Note: This is the second in a four-part series featuring popular video games in current pop culture.
by LINDSAY CRAVEN
Lifestyles Reporter
So you are running around, having a great time shooting bad guys and defending the innocent and holy crap, there’s a dinosaur!
“Turok” makes the Jurassic period cool again with its first person shooter style and great use of graphics and sound.
The game is a remake of the 1997 “Turok: Dinosaur Hunter” on the Nintendo 64.
Since its origins, this game has grown and developed to heights probably not imagined in 1997.
 © Touchstone. TUROK TM & © Classic Media, Inc., All rights reserved.
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The story focuses on Joseph Turok, a former mercenary who joined the Whiskey Company to hunt
down his former mentor.
En route to his mentor’s planet, Turok and his team’s ship is shot down, and all are left to wander
around a strange planet filled with villainous guards, giant scorpions and - you got it - dinosaurs.
There are several fun and interesting aspects to this game.
You can wield two weapons at once, and your selection of weapons is much different than most first person shooters out there.
You have the bow and arrow, which allows Turok to sneak up on his victims and even pin them to walls
with the arrow, as well as the sticky bomb gun, which shoots a grenade that sticks to its target and
upon the tap of a button, explodes.
Other tools that come in handy are the flare launcher and the chain gun.
The game play is fairly challenging, but for those with extensive experience in first person shooters – a
la the Halo series, Doom, Half Life – it may fall short of adequate during the moments of action.
To solve this, I would simply suggest that you switch to the hard or inhuman difficulty levels the game
offers.
As for the rest of us, the dinosaurs and the guards tend to bombard when they attack and this can
prove difficult to overcome at first.
However once you learn your weapons and different ways to attack, you can manage this pretty well.
Another fun feature of “Turok” is the stealth killing modes.
For fans of games like “Manhunt,” this is a huge plus for any game where you are killing someone.
Turok has the ability to slowly sneak up on any of his enemies and kill them with his knife, gun, bare
hands, etc., in a quick, brutal and undetected way.
Not only is this awesome to watch, but it also helps you out when you are in an area packed with bad
guys.
Turok also tends to have a pretty steady supply of ammo and weapons.
Most of the weapons are picked up fairly early in the game, but the ammo for them is spread
graciously and sporadically throughout the sets.
So even if you are running low on ammo in the middle of battle, odds are you will be able to make it to
a supply before you are taken down.
My complaints with the game lie in the story.
At first we see Turok’s introduction into the Whiskey Co., and even a few flashbacks on his days with
his mentor, but this back-story slowly fades out to the point that you are not even sure what it was by
the end of the game.
However, while this may cause you to lose sight of the purpose of your character, it still does not take
away from the actual game play.
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