So just how hard is it to screw up a game about stabbing dinosaurs? Not that hard, apparently.

Let me preface all of this by saying that Turok has a steep hill to climb. The bar for shooters has been raised tremendously in the past year with games like Halo 3, Half-Life 2: Episode Two, and Call of Duty 4. I personally think that Call of Duty 4 is the best shooter ever made and probably one of the best games ever made. This is what Turok has to live up to.

The demo loses points right away for starting off in a cave. As far as I’m concerned, that’s no better than a sewer. Along with your partner Slade, you need to find a way out. Slade is quite possibly the biggest dickhead ever, but he’s voiced by Ron Perlman, so it’s all a-ok in my book.

The environment looks very bland, but I really can’t imagine a cave looking that spectacular. The texture leaves a lot to be desired and there were things scattered about – such as bones – which just looked downright bad.

You can dual wield guns, which is always good, and you can switch through your weapons with the D-pad. Up will always be your bow and down your knife.

We encountered our first raptor when Slade shot a flare from his shotgun. This is where I became the most excited and was also the most let down. I immediately whipped out my knife and jumped into the action. I charged towards the raptor knife in hand, like only a true badass would. Once I got close, a prompt came up on screen telling me to hit the right trigger, so I did. Turok stabbed his knife through the top of the creature’s head, ripped it back out, and then kicked the dead creature to the floor.

That was it. Before the thing even had a chance, I pulled off a context-sensitive one-hit-kill and dropped it like a sack of hammers. By this point, more raptors had swarmed in on us. One of them knocked me down, which gave me a neat little sense of panic. I got back to my feet, rushed towards the raptor, and once again planted my knife in it. Now I had easily taken down two dinosaurs while only losing a trivial amount of health, which regenerated quickly. For the first 2/3s of the demo, I didn’t use anything other than my knife. Even when taking on humans with guns, I simply rushed them and insta-killed them, and then waited a few seconds for my health to regenerate.

After a while, it felt more like a stabbing simulator than a shooter. Of course, I didn’t have to use my knife, but why waste my ammo when I don’t need to? What’s worse, having to endure the killing animations over and over again – of which there were only a few – really pulls you out of the game.

Another gripe I had was with the stealth. There’s no actual system to it, so you just have to crouch in the bushes and hope you’re not spotted. Many times enemies will stand right in front of you and look in your direction, but you’ll still go unnoticed.

Fortunately, the level began crawling with baddies and it became rather difficult to not use firearms. The enemy A.I. was terrible, with guys just standing out in the open and blasting away. However, the lack of any sort of cover system made it a fair fight, as I had to do the same. At one point I lobbed a grenade into a pack of enemies, where they seemed to just stand there and stare at it before being blown away. They clearly acknowledged its presence, yet they made no attempt to escape.

A year or so ago, Turok would have been a mediocre shooter. In light of recent games, it’s just bad. Stabbing enemies is fun for a while, but the animations and actual act itself get tiresome quickly. I also had a lot of fun taking out enemies with my bow, but it’s not nearly enough to carry the game.

With only a couple weeks to go until the finished game, I can’t imagine much of anything will change. Color me disappointed.

Tags: Microsoft, turok, Xbox 360

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