Written By Shaun McCracken
I'll admit, the Turok series was never one of my perrenial favorites. I do
own Turok 2 for the N64 (and this) and that's about it. The series is good at
providing massive environments with great detail and giving players a lot of
weapons to brutally kill dinosaurs with. Plus, it's really bloody, which may
appeal to a sick few. But the series always had problems; if it wasn't with the
controls, it was with the level design or the multiplayer stages. There were
many things that held it back from being an excellent shooter.
So did Turok Evolution resolve these issues? In a short answer: NO. In fact,
Turok Evolution seems a lot like the Turok games before it. It does have large
stages, it does have dinosaurs, it does have an interesting selection of weapons
and it does have a lot of blood. But it also has the same control problems, the
same unbalanced difficulty and even problems with it's framerate (which is much
more improved from previous efforts, but still drops now and then). Is it worth
picking up? Read on.
Turok Evolution really never changed it's storyline from past games. Somehow
a native american named Ta'l Set gets sent into this alternate, prehistoric
society that is somehow technologically advanced. There's talking dinosaurs, and
look, they have guns too! How odd? And you know what? They wan't to kill you
(the hell you say)! But then there's a group of people who want you to eliminate
the dinosaurs and reclaim human society! Did I mention the crazy general that
comes along with you, and also wants to kill you? Haven't we seen this kind of
story too many times before? But in a first person shooter, do we care?
Turok Evolution starts off pretty slow and eventually does pick up in action.
But here is where one of the problems lie, in the enemy AI. At first, the
enemies seem really stupid. Almost like they pity you and give you something to
kill, just for free. Then they get "smart". They run in groups, hide behind
rocks or trees and will run away if you hit them too much. What's unfair is that
they hide in really intricate places where they can't be found. I don't know how
many times I've been shot at by an enemy and couldn't find where it was coming
from. Sometimes I can find them on ledges, but then it's all a mystery. And no
matter how spastically you move, they always to seem to have an impecable aim.
Therefore, I have been killed a lot by dinosaurs that can't control themselves.
But there is a bright side, with your Tek Bow, you can stand pretty far and
eliminate enemies without being attacked. Of course, this only works if they
can't see you and if the area isn't populated with enemies.
The game design is fairly straight forward. You spend most of your time in a
first person mode, but there are stages where you take flight on a pteroyldactyl
and shoot things. In a way, it feels almost like Agent Under Fire, where you
take a break from shooting and do some driving. The difference is that Agent
Under Fire did this better and seemed to make more sense. The flying stages here
are almost there because other games have tried to vary the gameplay. It's not
bad, I just thought it could have been executed better.
The level design can be called ambitious and frustrating. Turok Evolution is
not a flat game. You will climb, swim, scale cliffs, jump over ledges and more.
Unfortunatley, this would work better in a platform game (such as a Mario game)
that in a FPS. The biggest problem is in jumping. In most FPS games, jumping
seems secondary, but in T:E, it's manditory. And it's hard because you need to
adjust your view to make the jump. It's just more frustration and aggrivation.
The control scheme could have been realized a little better. While it's not
as bad as Turok 2's default scheme (which is really confusing), this one takes
some getting used to. I wish it was more like Agent Under Fire's, minus the
fumbling for items with the D-Pad. Here, the main stick moves you forward and
side to side, while the C-Stick is responsible for turning and looking up. A
minor tweak could have made this tolerable. Firing weapons is rather easy, as
is jumping and crawling. Weapon selection may be a little confusing in the
beginning.
The graphics and sound are fairly good. It's not at the highest point it
could possibly be, but it doesn't have pixelation or poor sound sampling. The
game is fairly populated with trees and shrubs and plants. Plus, there's
dinosaurs that act as decoration. All of it comes together pretty well, but it
chokes the framerate. It should be running at 60 frames per second, and at times
it does, but when there's too much, it drops around the 20-30 area. Out of the 3
versions, the GCN version has the faster framerate, but the X-Box version is
more stable (from what I hear) running around 30 fps. It's really not bad, not
like SpyHunter or running SSX Tricky on the GCN in a 2 player mode. The textures
are adequate. They aren't pixelated, but don't really have much depth. It's
fairly standard. They look good from afar, but up close, it's kinda blotchy.
The sound is good. It's not totally obnoxious, but it could be better. The voice
acting is terrible. The sound effects are spot-on.
Finally, I have to say this: Turok Evolution has one of the WORST loading
times I have ever seen in a Gamecube game. Nintendo designed the GCN for minimal
load times, but somehow Acclaim managed to create 20-30 second load times in this
game. Considering that the chapters are broken up into 4-7 stage pieces, you'll
be sitting there watching the loading screen twiddling your thumbs. I can imagine
it's even longer on the PS2.
Turok Evolution may be the next shooter fix you've been looking for, if you
can stand some of the game's unbalanced problems. It is longer than other FPS
games I've played, and will have some replay value it it's multiplayer mode.
And while it's not a perfect game by all means, it does manage to bring some
much needed FPS action in a Turok package that manages to be better than the
previous games in the series.
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Turok Evolution
