Ripten: Turok Xbox 360 Demo Impressions

Dylan Duarte of Ripten gives his impressions of the recent Turok Demo, found on XBox live and PSN.

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

He prefaces it all by stating 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. This is what Turok has to live up to. In his personal opinion, 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 environment looks very bland, but he 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.

Another gripe he 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.

The enemy A.I. was terrible, with guys just standing out in the open and blasting away. At one point, he lobbed a grenade into a pack of enemies, where they seemed to just stand there and stare at it before being 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.He 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, he can’t imagine much of anything will change.