Turok

Turok - (Xbox 360, PS3)
Developer: Propaganda Games
Format: Xbox 360, PS3
Genre: Arcade

Should this game have been left to die with the dinosaurs?

As a concept, Turok, the first person shooter with added dinosaurs, has been around for longer than the last Ice Age. After previously receiving a full release on the now antiquated N64 and subsequent PC, PlayStation and even Gameboy Advance ports, it's now the turn of the next-gen platforms and frankly, we're a little under whelmed.

You fill the combat boots of one Joseph Turok, a former black ops commando, now part of an elite special forces squad, known as Whiskey Company, which is on a mission to take down Roland Kane and his army, the Mendel-Gruman Corporation. As Whiskey Company's ship approaches the planet inhabited by Mendel-Gruman, the ship is shot down. Turok is stranded on the planet and must locate other crash survivors while confronting Mendel-Gruman soldiers and a variety of dinosaurs and other ravenous creatures.

Comparisons between Halo are obvious from the start - marines, or at least big muscle-bound American types crash landing on a lush, vegetated planet. Where have we seen that before? The gameplay then very quickly slips into a Gears of War moment as you start traversing the jungle with a fellow merc in tow, whilst fighting a small army of leather-clad special agents - before a T-Rex burst into the frame to disrupt proceedings. So far so good, ish. Problems start to rise quicker than the bubbles of a game breathing its last gasp of creativity whilst sinking into the murky depths of mediocrity.