- TUROK-O-BOMB-A: Leading FPS candidate for 2008?Is Turok the leading FPS candidate this year? Is Turok a BOMB (slang...to fail miserably) NO to each, but there is some fun to be had here. I like FPS's and Dinosaurs so I had to try this out. Here are my first impressions after playing about 6 hours:
Quite high minimum system requirements
Comes on 2 DVD's, 18 Gigs hard drive space (biggest yet I've played), Win XP or Vista, 2.4 GHz Pentium or AMD Athlon 3400 equiv., 1 GB RAM, 128mb Direct X 9.0c, 3D video card (nVidia 6600 or better or ATI Radeon x1300 or better, excluding X1550), onboard integrated chipsets are not supported. 16 bit Direct X 9.0c sound card, 8xDVDROM drive. Does not use Direct X-10
Borrows significantly from better FPS's such as Far Cry, Half-Life 2, F.E.A.R.
Enemies with armored black suits and red eyes. Companion sniper (like Alex in Half-Life 2) picking off enemy soldiers and dinosaurs. Jungles, buildings, citadel settings, etc. Helicopter unloading soldiers from ropes.
What I liked
-Dinosaur modeling and movement is quite nice. Fast little & big buggers. Most have mean, "dinosaurish" sounds.
-Variety of weaponry with fairly good sounds and handling. Can use double weapons (eg. shotgun in each hand). Most weapons have dual use or alternate fire (eg. shotgun with shotgun or flare blast . Modern weapons and sci-fi types.
-Flare blast near/at enemy soldiers can lure dinos to them.
-Stealth killing enemies with the big Bowie Knife.
-Perforator bow with regular and tek (grenade) arrows. Silent, deadly.
-Nicely done "cloudy" cut scenes showing how Turok initially learned his combat skills.
-Good Native American accent (in English not Kiowa) & voice-acting for Turok .Big muscles, mean-looking too. One tough dude with Mohawk haircut.
-Large and varied environments, however, the graphics are only medium quality throughout. Sound and ambience is pretty good.
Didn't like
-High-priced software
-very long load-times even on my high-end computer
-unbalanced "checkpoint" save system. Some are too easy and short & others are too long & difficult requiring repeating the stage over and over
-Video clip repetition in showing the same dino kill per specie s when Turok uses the "left-mouse button display" for the one stab knife kill. Doesn't feel like you are part of the action when this happens. Neat the first few times but not so great thereafter.
-Belligerent and "smart-mouthed" companion mercenary (Slade) who would rather "trash talk" to you than do his fair share of dinosaur/ enemy killing. The sniper companion does a better job than Slade at helping out.
-Some stages do not have any dinosaurs and just battling enemy soldiers is quite average.
-Rag-doll effects aren't too great.
Summary
I'm having good fun with this title and will complete it. It isn't the best nor the worst FPS and I'd score it in the 70's on a 1-100 scale so far. With 18 GIGs it's likely to be a longer FPS than others. The DINOSAURS are what makes this game somewhat more unique than other shooters
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