Turok Member Review for the Xbox360

It\\\'s a good thing I have friends that purchase games every other week like they are obligated to do so. With that,  I can play a lot of games for free, good ones, bad ones, even ones that are so mediocre they make beige look like hot pink. Case en point is Turok, a game that was once in the clutches of Oblivion long ago when Acclaim roamed the universe, and like the meteor that killed the dinosaurs, Acclaim is now all but extinct. 

But you can read that story elsewhere (shameless promotion, I know.) but your here to see my thoughts on Turok. In all honesty, I was both happy and sad to see the game return into the mix of first person shooters, happy because it was a great game, and series, in the past, and sad because it will probably suck now that first person shooters have "evolved" somewhat. And surprisingly, my expectations for Turok matched how I feel about the game, it\\\'s good, but not great.

A lot has changed in the game. For example, your now part of a squadron of gun-ho marines that look like rejects from the Predator movies who are stranded on a planet infested with dinosaurs and a bunch of gas-mask wearing thugs who want to kill you. Not to mention large plot holes and a B-list cast of voice actors, and you have basically Predator 3 without a Xenomorph and in it\\\'s place a T-Rex. I will say this though about the voice overs, the cast seems to know that this is a campy, retro action 80\\\'s movie, and has fun with it, and that makes the voice acting good in my book.

Graphically the game does little to push the 360, except the dinosaurs look great close up, if you want them to be that close. Everything else is generic jungle texture number 4. The game is honestly fairly standard; you go into linear areas, fight waves of baddies with guns and knives, rinse and repeat. Thankfully, the dinosaurs are a challenge, as they will genuinely try to strafe you and sneak up behind you. The human adversaries are really dumb, and it\\\'s usually more fun to see the carnage from afar, when the raptors attack the human baddies in a fun and frantic 3-way fight. It\\\'s like a zombie fighting a shark while your trying to swim away.

One other interesting thing is the control scheme, which opts to do manual aiming, something that is nearly unheard of now a days because of the auto-aim options out there. This actually makes the game a challenge, but it will turn off a lot of hardcore shooting fans who are not used to this mode of play. It is ok though, because the best weapon in the game, in all honesty, is your bowie knife. You can sneak up on any enemy, man or beast, and perform a one button kill with it. It makes shooting so unecessary unless you need to, like fight a T-Rex or something bigger. It makes the game too easy. It also doesn\\\'t help when we get stealth missions that are laughably bad. I wish shooters would stop with the wanna-be Metal Gear moments.

Finally, multiplayer is standard and the only original thing about it is the dinosaur bots in the maps. They throw a lot of wrenches into the plans you make, but overall never affect the battle as a whole.

So with that, we get a small, wimpering return of a franchise that began over ten years ago. I applaud Propaganda studios for developing this, and attempting to rekindle the series. But I can\\\'t help but think about what happens when we try and play God with dinosaurs. The game is essentially unnecessary, to be honest. It is a lot better than the last "proper" Turok game, but it is no where near the goodness that was "Seeds of Evil." All in all, I think Turok should stay extinct, because even if it is ressurected, it will never achieve the same "Acclaim" (like that pun?) again.

Final Score- C