Turok the Terrible?

Gaming Pundits have been on the record saying, in recent months, that 2007 had such a glut of fine FPS games, that you would really need to stand out to make it big in 2008.

So far Turok has been selling like boobies despite being a mediorce FPS, with dreadful usability and playability issues. I'm not sure the FPS appetite can be easily sated despite middling reviews. I guess we'll see how Conflict: Denied Ops fares over the next few weeks.

So what has Turok done particularly wrong that makes it (for me anyway) the worst shooter of 2008, and to be fair, if it was released 5 years ago, the worst shooter of 2003. It hasn't really done anything new, and in many ways brings the genre back about 10 or 15 years.

WTF #1 : Control wrested away from the player, not returned to same point it was left off

So many games are guilty of this and it really drives me crazy. Usually we see a milder form of this in any Japanese made game where a level loads and we are forced to view a panorama of the whole thing before we can move. I was particularly dismayed to see it used every 3 seconds in the DMC 4 demo when 'yet another forcefield' popped up to block progress.

Turok brings this abuse to new heights. The cutscenes we are often forced to watch (Hitting Y on 360 controller skips some of them) takes control away from the player in the worst way possible.

When the cutscene is done the character is often in a totally different location and the camera has been set to a completely different perspective than where it was when we last had control. To top it all off, it does this when you are in a firefight surrounded by enemies.

WTF!?! This has to be the most annoying thing I have seen done in a game in a long time. A game should ease you into and out of cutscenes, and should never punish you for having to watch them by putting into a certain-death scenario after they end. Turok does this all the time, the worst instance is the Spider-Tank mission.

Proposed Solution: Ease the player into and out of cutscenes. NEVER insert cutscenes into the middle of a firefight in an FPS. Always return the player to a place where they have some context. It's no good getting stunned, cutscened and dumped into a killing field, it may be quasi realistic, but in a bad way.

WTF #2 : One way, set-piece play throughout

Ok, for the purposes of playability and design there are times you will need to use set pieces and one-way areas in a game. I think most gamers would accept the need for them. But they should be used sparingly.

The entirety of Turok is one-way gates (the infamous drop-off) that funnel you from set-piece to set-piece.

The result ends up that you have to play through the game the way the designers intend you to, and any elements of stealth, strategy or cunning are erased by the fact the the next wave of enemies will spawn in the same places (often behind you) at the same point in the game, no matter what. This propels you through the game in a meat grinder fashion, and would be (almost) excusable if the plot or gameplay somehow made up for the aggravation.

Proposed Solution: Give us the illusion of choice and free will, even if you have no intention of giving it to us.

Who cares is I can backtrack through an empty level? It's better than always getting trapped by a cliff and knowing the second I get trapped, another set piece will kick off.


WTF #3 : No brightness for you

Turok brings us back to the dark ages (literally) where you can't control the in-game gamma. As a result you are forced to constantly fight in pitch black conditions and ruin your eyes trying to make out what is going on on your 42" HDTV.

I can't really make out why Turok and his merry band of space marines haven't the iq to find a pair of NVG goggles or at the least a bloody flashlight.

Like so many usability problems in games, it is particularly frustrating because it makes no sense whatsoever.

Proposed Solution: Add a gamma adjustment to options screen. Find a way to preserve the technology behind the lightbulb so future generations of space faring marines have some way to see when it is dark.

WTF #4 : Button mashing is the most viable strategy

In an FPS this is never good, in Turok it's brutal. The all-too-frequent dino's are really annoying. They move really fast as you would expect, and in the jungle you have little chance of surviving against them. Ironically the shotgun is grossly underpowered even at extremely close ranges which makes it absolutely useless. The other gun-type-weapons, by and large are useless as well the bow which is generally too slow when you fighting 2 or more raptors at once (and you usually are). The most effective way to fight the raptors in these situations is to save your ammo, bring out the knife, and run around randomly hitting the attack button until they are all dead.

Proposed solution: If the most effective way to beat a part your FPS is to run around randomly hitting the attack button then that whole concept of gameplay probably isn't any fun and should be removed from the game.

The dinos really do nothing for the story or the gameplay, so why have them? The T-Rex battle might have been fun if it didn't involve hiding in a little cave and blasting the thing silly until I ran out of ammo.


WTF #3 : Difficulty arising more from playability than actual game difficulty

If you regularly crank up the difficulty on any FPS on your first run through, you will find Turok constantly annoying in the 'hard' mode and I couldn't imagine stomaching the 'hardest' mode at all.

When you first load up Turok on hard you might be surprised at just how many bullets he can take before going down. To say that player health is generous is an understatement... that is until you start playing through the game and all the other problems crop up.

In Turok it's often too dark to see where you are or what you're shooting at, especially when you're up to your eyeballs in the reeds and surrounded by extremely fast dinos and angry mercenaries. Add the camera problems and the fact the there is never anywhere to retreat to, and you end up with a craptastic experience.

Proposed Solution: Difficulty should come from AI, pacing, balancing and environment, not from controls, camera or stupid design choices around weapons and enemies. Basically if you need loads of health on 'hard' to have a chance at making it through the game there's a problem. Look to Halo 2 legendary difficulty for inspiration.


Summary:

Turok has loads of problems. I wouldn't recommend buying it, and I am still some hours away from finishing it. The only motivation I have for finishing this game is that I spent 60 bucks on it, and my only consolation is that I will soon trade it in for another game.

I'm trying to think of something positive to say about the experience, but I really can't think of anything. The bow is a great weapon, but having a nice modern compound bow takes a lot of the fun out of it. It like a really crappy, really quiet gun. In fact with the silencer the SMG does the same job without any of the drawbacks. The explosive arrows are ok, but rarely useful.

So there you have it. Turok could have been a decent game if they didn't make so many horrible choices in design.