Turok - Demo Impressions.

The Turok games are one of those cases where it would probably have been better leaving it alone after the success of the first game. Of course, video games are still a business and any successful game is more than likely to get a sequel. Turok spawned a franchise, and while the first is widely seen as one of the best games for the N64 the franchise flopped when the fourth installment (Turok: Evolution) was released on Playstation 2 and various consoles in 2002. Since then, thankfully, nothing has been released. Well, until now of course.

Buena Vista Games (yup, that's Disney) acquired the rights back in 2005 and have eventually managed to produce a game using the Unreal Engine 3. However, this is no Gears of War. They've gone back to basics and simply called the game Turok, whether that's an attempt to start afresh remains to be seen. The demo weighs in at about 1.2GB on Xbox Live but, unless you've got nothing better to do, it's probably not worth it.

Turok comes at a time when the 360 has enough decent FPS games to keep you occupied without shunting another one on you. If the game offered something completely original and unique then maybe it could stand on it's own but, at least in the demo, there's nothing more than a generic FPS with pretty dinosaurs. Sure, it looks good (not great but good) but what are fancy graphics if the game underneath it all is nothing special? Some people may say you can't judge the full game off the demo but a demo is supposed to show off the games strong points and, if that's what it's doing, then there's nothing particularly strong about this game.

The dinosaurs seem a bit thick but I have to admit it's pretty neat when they charge at you from all sides. However, sometimes you get knocked down so many times (since you often don't see them coming until the last minute, and if you do you don't see the one coming from the other side) that the screen turns blurry and red like you've just been poked in both eyes. It can be a very frustrating experience. You can get the dinosaurs to fight each other and the generic futuristic soldiers that appear (who totally suck at getting into cover by the way) but this doesn't really appear in the demo. What's the point in these features if you can't try them out before hand? Surely that's what a demo is for? Propaganda Games really needs to read these tips on how to make a decent demo.

Another gripe I have is the crossbow. I can deal with not being able to aim down the sight on the rest of the weapons but simply zooming in a bit when you aim the crossbow (which doesn't even zoom in any more than the other weapons) is unacceptable. For a start this is supposed to be the future, and even when crossbows were first invented they had a sight to aim down. Using the weapons just isn't fun, even dual-wielding has been done to death. Apparently the game will have some unique weapons but the demo shows nothing more than your generic shotgun and machine guns.

I wasn't expecting much from Turok and I didn't get much. Demo's are supposed to make me feel excited about the game and leave me wanting the full game to come out as soon as possible (like Bioshock) but Turok doesn't even come close to this. If you like generic FPS games with a few dinosaurs thrown in then you'll probably enjoy Turok but, for everyone else, there's so much more games of much better quality that you could be spending your hard earned cash on.

Turok will be released for the PC, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 on February 5 in the US and February 8 in the UK. The demo is now available for download on Xbox Live.