TUROK

This game is annoying. It's such a standard issue, first person shooter with a lame ass plot that it almost makes me angry. When I was first assigned the task of reviewing a newish game title for this issue, I had hoped to find something that was in keeping with the whole Technology theme. So I spent quite a bit of time roaming around my local GameStop debating a number of options.

Then I saw Turok. I thought the concept was cool. Battling Dinosaurs with an arsenal consisting of the finest in bull crap technology sounded right up my alley as it covered off everything from pre-history to Intergalactic space travel. Unfortunately, I think it took about 5 minutes of play time with Turok before I was totally unimpressed and completely aggravated. Playability of this game is awkward at best and the graphics are the caliber of something published 2 years ago.

The plot is weak sauce and this is one of those games that auto-saves at borderline inappropriate times and makes you watch useless dialogue clips over and over again until you reach the next save point. The worst part of Turok's playability is probably the aiming functionality when using weapons. It's stiff and hard to track moving targets and the zoom is next to useless. I guess if I had to find one redeeming quality about this game I would say that some of the Dinosaurs are kind of cool and blowing them up is nice and messy with lots of carnage.

All in all I can't say that I would recommend Turok to the more accomplished first person shooter fan. I'd say you're better off taking your money and buying one of those XO laptops they use in the "One Laptop per Child" program. It would be more fun to put that sucker through a serious beating and see if it's really as tough as they say it is. I would start by using it as a hammer to smash my copy of Turok into a million little pieces.