Reviews
When Acclaim hit hard times last generation they took with them the intellectual rights to the Turok series, based loosely on the Dell comics of the 1950’s. After a lukewarm reception to its own sequel, Turok: Evolution (which was an evolution in name only), many saw the franchise as being dead and buried forever. This caused considerable dismay amongst fans of the previously stellar N64 offerings that also bore the Turok name. Thankfully, Disney Interactive Studio’s publishing arm, Touchstone, threw its hat in the ring and deftly snapped up the rights to the series, propelling it forwad with this new, unrelated sequel, simply named Turok. With this change of heart, Propaganda Games (owned by Touchstone) was given the hard task of resurrecting the dead franchise for this new generation of consoles. The benefit of such a task being that it has enabled the new development house a clean slate with which to work at re-inventing the dinosaur hunter’s legacy, whilst keeping within the minor restrictions of the series’ main drawcard. As such, the main protagonist is still Native American, one Joseph Turok… He still wields both knife and bow as mandatory weaponry and yes… he still hunts dinosaurs aplenty in this offering. What has changed though is the storyline (or more to the point, there actually is one), and it drives the games central narrative in a far more futuristic setting.
The game opens with the mohawk toting Joseph awakening from cryo-stasis aboard a spaceship. He's accompanied by a group of burly team mates known as Whiskey Company. Joseph is the new recruit. Their current mission is to descend to an undisclosed planet and target one Roland Kane, the leader of an army of mercenaries known as Wolfpack. Turok himself is infamous within his new ranks due to his murky past as a previous member of the Wolfpack. It is revealed that Kane, once Joseph's mentor, is using the planet in some genetic terraforming experiment which has transformed it into his own slice of Jurassic Park, complete with abundant prehistoric wildlife. Though the plotline is somewhat basic for a generic shooter of this ilk, it is revealed in an effective fashion. Propaganda use flashbacks to Turok’s Wolfpack days and in-engine cutscenes of dialogue between current Whiskey Company members to set the scene before the dino-hunt begins in earnest.
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