Turok: Evolution

To start this review out, the Graphics in Turok: Evo are very high quality and really improve from the series, though that's horrible to say, as mostly all of the series was on N64. But the cinemas were beautifully put together, and the worlds were very uniquely designed. I think they could have improved on the graphics in some areas, though. The character models were done very nicely. The incredibly neat Sleg unit designs are perfected from the other games in the series. But I can't say that the dinosaurs look like the dinosaurs I have seen in books. No game can say that. And blood. Boy, blood is one big addition to the game. The gore directors near outdid themselves in Turok: Evo. Hell, you can blow their heads off in one shot! One of my favorite moves are as so: You have your tomahawk thing out, you hold R2, so it goes in for a spike shot. You move up into an unsuspecting enemy and release R2. BAM! The guy's arm is gone and this Sleg is screaming. I finish him off by decapitating his head, and slicing off his other arm. He's on the ground, now I take out my flechette gun with the quad barrel and fire away at the remains on the body. The body literally shatters into fleshy, chunky pieces all over the ground. Did I frighten you? Sorry. The start screen itself is very cool, dinosaurs walk around in it!

While the environments are nicely detailed, I must complain about the bland design of some. In the beginning you encounter many areas that look near the same. They really should change the landscape a little bit. I liked how they did it in the trials, where you would follow a lush path, and then come to a very open little area with peaceful long necked dinosaurs, and a lake. That kind of environment is OK. But in levels in flying, you'll encounter areas that sadly every once in awhile can look the same. But mostly in flying missions the environment is really adventurous, and it's always something you'll remember. Such as the dam you attacked bursting, and the water filling the canyons as you swept down with it on your bird. Or the time you attacked the huge Sleg encampment on the banks of the river. One of my favorite things about flying and the graphics in it is that, take that encampment Sleg flying level which I was just talking about. You'll see a lot of big blimps in the sky, obviously troop carryers. Blow one of those things up, and you can actually see several Sleg troopers in the sky grabbing and flipping around for something to hold onto as they die. Blowing up a a guard tower can result in the one guard flying out into the water. I really enjoyed how they got the Slegs to fly out, it's almost humorous!

I received no slowdowns, no frame freezing, popins, etc. Not even when I was in the toughest of firefights, and I was shooting off bullets and blood was splattering all over like no tommorow. You'l find yourself in areas with over 20 Sleg troopers fighting you, and it all goes at a great frame speed with no errors. Look at some of the movies, you'll see exactly what I'm talking about.

Something every diehard FPS gamer wants is a huge freakin' variety of weapons. Turok: Evo satisfys every craving for killing that Sleg in about 8 ways. There's pistols, machine guns, grenades, shotguns, rocket launchers, bows and arrows, etc., etc. There also a ton of attachments to go on the weapons. For example, on the rocket launcher you can have a swarm bore attachment, which bores into the enemy's brains and does some DAMAGE to them. I mean the thing TEARS them APART! That was a lot worse than the other Turok cerebal bores did. There's also these weird magical rock exposion thingamajiggers which can cause extreme damage to Slegs in the area. And for Bows and Arrows, of course your going to expect a lot of attachments for that. There's explosive arrows, ala Rambo anybody? And for some machine guns, you can add quad barrels to them. On one machine gun, you can have 18 barrels. With all due respect to the developers, 18 barrels is just INSANE!!!!!!!!!! So in other words, noone will be disappointed with any sort of lack of weapons.

The default controls in Turok: Evo are a little bit different from some of the recent action FPSes out there. Of course, the controls are changable, but this will rate the default controls. Now, the controls really aren't very complex. Any moron could figure them out easily. Took me just two minutes. X, first of all, makes Tal'Set jump. In Turok: Evo you can jump on and off many objects. Useful for jumping onto ladders, and such. Circle and Triangle scrolls backwards and upwards through your massive collection of guns. And square reloads your weapons of mass destruction.

The shoulder buttons don't have many effects, but one of them is the most important of them all! R1 doesn't do anything if I am correct, but R2 is your main gunfire button. Not just gunfire, your "hitting" button as well. Holding down R2 can also charge some things up, like your tomahawk, which will turn it around and gain power so with just one big hit, you can slice an arm or head off. L1 doesn't do anything either except for making you duck, but L2 changes your weapon mode. Weapon modes mean changing attachments,like explosive arrows on your bow, or multiple gun barrels on a machine gun. The analog sticks are your methods of movement around the Lost Lands. And last but of course not least, pressing the R3 analog stick can switch your pistol, as long as it has a sniper scope to zoom in to enemies-and make some awesome kill shots.

Overall, the control is pretty good. Very, very easy to get used to. But while flying, the controls are a bit different, and a lot trickier. You move around with the sticks, R2 fires your caliber machine guns. L2 fires your homing rockets. And L1 I believe changes your camera . Circle and Square turns the bird you are riding vertical so it can get through small ledges and cracks. So control is excellent, except for some small glitches in flying, glitches such as unexpected turning when your about to hit a wall. You can try and turn away from the wall but you will get put back straight towards the wall and your bird will be smashed to bits in a bloody death smash scene.

The sound in Turok: Evo is overall a pretty good category. But, it was nothing overly impressive, to say the least. I hear there are over 3000 different sound effects. The sounds the guns make are greatly varied, which is good, but perhaps there should have been more dinosaur effects. Like when you blow a Sleg's arm off, they just go "ARGGHHHH!!!!". They should go "You bastard Human!!! NO!!! ARGH!!!" instead of just "ARGHHHH". There isn't a whole lot of music in Turok: Evo either, which is sort of a disappointment, it's all mainly ambience. The ambience is better though than a lot of other games, so I would say that this category is fairly above average.

Replay Value in Turok: Evo is better than I thought it would be. There is a very in depth multiplayer mode that is very fun to play with a friend, which can keep this game on for hours a day with enough controllers and enough friends in big deathmatches. The huge weapon variety can make you for hours experiment with sentences like "If I shoot THAT one with a poison arrow and it begins to barf, should I finish it off with a plasma cannon or a swarm bore rocket launcher?" Choices, Choices, Decisions, Decisions. There isn't a whole lot of goodies to unlock, though. There are only 4 cheats, which is shameful compared to the huge list that Turok 2 had. But a good addition to the game is the art gallery which has a lot of cool pictures, as you unlock them. The game is fairly long and has a lot of missions for each chapter. It's also neat how in one chapter it's all FPS and you think it'll go on as FPS but all of a sudden your FLYING for a whole chapter, which can make you play longer cause you'll know you'll have more fun flying because it's a nice break from the FPS shooting.

So overall, what can I say about Turok: Evolution? Well, it's certainly better than some FPS games out there, and a very fresh addition to the gaming industry. I haven't had much fun with FPSes since MOH Frontline came out, and that has become old by now. And fortunately, this is a lot different from the army for once. You play as a dinosaur hunter, not an ex con, not a decorated squad leader, not a navy seal, a bad arse dinosaur hunter! The game is certainly loads of fun when I first played it, and it still is a load of fun to play it. I have played it for a good 12 hours, and I am still having a blast with it. Blowing big hordes of dinosaurs to bits (literally) is loads of fun for a very long time. Acclaim did an excellent job with Turok: Evolution, because this episode is by far my favorite Turok to hit the series of them all.

I.....AM TUROK!

-Ian

7.7/10