good overall review, and yes health bars have dies down, however can we really consider gears of war a First person shooter? it seemed like more of a third person shooter to me. also i feel bad about rock band for you.

Great review as always. I am feeling pretty ho hum about most FPS games myself these days. Still looking for the game that will bring that warm fuzzy feeling I use to get playing the original Unreal Tournament.

WOW you just ruined a game for me by saying it sucks because it's not your style of playing a FPS. Thanks a lot.

http://farcry.us.ubi.com/agegate.php?destURL=/index.php

Check out the above website and leave this game alone when it comes out please!!!

beddo:
Turok is a somewhat enjoyable and fairly entertaining game but there are so many issues that bring the quality of the user experience down.

The sensitivity of the look function always seems to be off no matter what setting it's at.

The damage received by the enemy soldiers is very inconsistent making this feel more like a 'game'. For example; in hard mode, one arrow in the body will take most soldiers down but it will take a whole lot of bullets from a chain gun.

Quite often you'll throw an alternate fire pulse grenade at a soldier, they'll watch it roll, pause, shout "grenade", fly 20 feet in the air only to get up like nothing happened! One soldier took three grenades before taking the courtesy of leaving his mortal coil, this generally leaves the user only using grenades as a distraction.

A lot of the weapons feel weak; they are generally omitted as serious options when you have to face a group of three or more.

In some areas you'll be faced with endlessly spawning enemies until you enter a trigger area. While the trigger events add flair to Turok here they do not feel seamless.

I understand that in a game you want to be the hero taking everyone out (something that COD4 often failed in during the SAS missions) however, having numerous able bodied team members sit back and tell you to take down the giant enemy tank while they share Margherita and tales of times gone by becomes somewhat frustrating after your eight attempt. In fact, this happens in numerous sections of the game, company Whisky seems to be the worst 'elite' team of all time.

While being thrown on ground dinosaurs grenades and rockets is a cool feature it starts to become somewhat jarring. Noting the earlier tank battle; you'll run behind a wall where he doesn't have line of sight on you and whammo! A shell has sent you flying into the middle of the field! By the time the smoke and your blurred vision have gone allowing you to see where you are whammo, another shot sends you flying again! You are left completely disorientated not knowing where you are or which way you're facing, the grey rocks all look exactly the same, by the time you realise you're looking down the wrong end of the tank's turret you're screen goes red and you have to try again!

Despite these frustrations, Turok is, as I said, a good game. Recommended if you have a fancy for Dinos and guns.

Beddo you infuriate me, and I'm showing incredible restraint here by using the word "infuriate". The manner in which you reviewed this game is infinitely less interesting than Yahtzee's own review. You're either incredibly ignorant of the way people perceive you or you've the balls the size of sputnik, because if neither of these states were the case then you certainly wouldn't have posted a review of a game within the thread devoted to a review of the very same game.

God only knows how many times before you've used other people's opinions to soapbox your own ideas from. I know it's terribly upsetting to you that people aren't constantly asking your opinion but if I have to read another of your insipid, pseudo-intellectual ramblings I will f'ing lose it. AND I HAVE ONLY READ TWO!

I'm not done though! You name instance after instance of why turok sucks, and then you go ahead and say it's a good game. A GOOD GAME!? What else was good, you schmuck? Super Man 64? Friday the 13th for the 8-Bit Nintendo? How did you feel about DAI KATANA? 10/10 RIGHT?

What I admire about Yahtzee is that he mingles a serious critique of the piece in question with his trademark rapid-fire truncheoning of the game. In his previous review, he made mention of how people don't inquire about his definition of a good game, but I feel he doesn't need to do so because he states his likes in a subtle way. For instance, he praised Assassin's Creed and Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles for trying to do something different Be it with the gameplay (i.e. the interactive portions, the combat and the puzzle solving, etc) or with the storytelling, Yahtzee lauds developers who try to do something that breaks the mold of monotonous and repetitious design processes (lovingly christened "The EA strategy").

In this specific review, Yahtzee skewers the Shooter genre specifically, pointing out common design flaws in console games (Problem #1, #2, #3, #5, #6) as well as stupid conventions in storytelling (#4). Games have the potential for becoming art, yet again and again the stupid epidemic strikes, leading to repetitive gameplay and shallow stories. Yahtzee sees this, and so he assaults the conventions of gaming in an irascible way. His means are venomous, but his ends are more than justifiable - an actual movement towards a future of gaming as art, rather than simple gun-wanking. Sounds good to me.

One thing though, specifically to Yahtzee - praise for Bioshock as a good game? I guess Halo really DID lower your standards! I loved Bioshock (and I've only beaten the demo! ;) )but I can see what you said when you mentioned its shallowness. Why use it as an example of a good game when comparing it to Turok's ripoff storyline?

brawl had several planned release dates in europe, to be precise there have been 4 so far, hopefully this was the last time they postponed it....and it's still 3 month to go from now on(that's half a year between japanese and european release)....ö__Ö what happened to worldwide releases?? i guess we're underpriviliged...

as for the review i have to agree that turok definitely was no good for fps and there's still more like this to come. for programmers and designers: make fps suck less :D

@impact31: there were rumors concerning rockband that ea was thinking about not releasing it in europe (something like it would be too expensive blah blah)...we're happy enough to get it at all >____>

and finally, keep up the good work :D

UncleAsriel:

One thing though, specifically to Yahtzee - praise for Bioshock as a good game? I guess Halo really DID lower your standards! I loved Bioshock (and I've only beaten the demo! ;) )but I can see what you said when you mentioned its shallowness. Why use it as an example of a good game when comparing it to Turok's ripoff storyline?

Why would you even bother this if you haven't played the game through? That's like Yahtzee eating a slice of cake and saying it's delicious and moist, and you firing back, after having taken a whiff of the thing, with the complete opposite.

In my personal opinion, and it seems like Yahtzee might share some of these feelings, Bioshock may not be the pinnacle of game design or creativity, but by god they tried and that's a hell of a lot more than you can say for many developers out there.

This was one of the best reviews yet, the Jurassic Park music made me laugh and the general commentary on FPS was great. I hope Yahtzee reviews Gears of War 2 when it comes out, seeing as he started ZP a bit late to do the first one and I really want to hear what he thinks about it. I know it wont be out till November though at the least.

To post for the sake of posting...

I think these reviews are getting more and more interesting.

You, Ben Croshaw, if you even read these posts, are starting to get your own you-ness. I like this, especially the twisting. What you did with Burnout Avril Lavigne's Girlfriend was the first step onto a slippery, upwards, gravity-defying slope of awesome.

But what was with this? A twist at the end? No, what you need to do is change the direction, constantly, like what I assume Via Domus's electrical engineering super genius plumber thingy minigame is (having neither played the game, nor intending to ever do so).

You, Ben Croshaw, are growing. In ways that can onloy be good.

As General Mostly Electrified Steel, I can only await your further, slippery, slidey ascensions.

Gul, out.

JOE COOL:
WOW you just ruined a game for me by saying it sucks because it's not your style of playing a FPS. Thanks a lot.

http://farcry.us.ubi.com/agegate.php?destURL=/index.php

Check out the above website and leave this game alone when it comes out please!!!

Why would you let someone's opinion of a game ruin it for you? There are people who hate Morrowind, but it was one of those immersive and amazing experiences I've ever had and someone telling me the combat system is junk isn't going to change that.

Woo, warhammer reference (yes, nerdy, whatever). Very good review, I've heard a lot of people complain about turok, and there are a ridiculously large amount of FPSs coming out these days (most of them just milking the money cow). But the question we the gamers need to ask ourselves is this. Why are they making so many FPSs? The answer is simple. Because WE buy them. We complain about the over saturation of the FPS market with run of the mill games, but the thing is if people (probably young-ins who think a game is good just because you get to riddle things with bullets) didn't buy the games, game developers wouldn't make so many of them. But people (aforementioned young-ins/idiots) buy these below par games and so the developers say "hey these sell good, let's make more". Remember most publishers aren't fun hippies with flowers in their hair hoping to spread fun and joy, they're buisiness people, and they've a buisiness to run. Basically, the point I'm trying to get to here is that, if these run of the mill games didn't sell, they wouldn't be made.

But they do... So they are.

Paul(very proud of that rant)5121

Very true, although you didn't touch on the Team-Killing encouragement in Turok, everything else was bang on the money, except you could've simplified it all by simply stating:

'Stop trying to be like Halo.'

And naturally, Ron Perlman is a seal of awseome on just about every film I can think of. Roll on Hellboy II.

Great review as always! Never been a fan of the Turok series, really.

Also, is he throwing darts at Tim Buckley? Why? o.O

Yea Ron Perlman is pretty much the penultimate game voice actor (Fallout 2), so I'll agree with Yahtzee here

freaking hilarious, best ZP in weeks.

and yeah, Ron Perlman seems to have an insane amount of voice work...

i disagree on the consoles cant aim part...unless it has big auto aim then you have to aim really far awayfrom your target and miss the guy hiding behind him. but other then that it was a great review

Nice review... This one felt somewhat different than all the others. This is great though. I always found it retarded that australia gets games last.

is it just me or is Australia a hypocritical country.

I mean they sent murder's, rapists and othere evil doer's to populate the place and now they are scared witless if a game has more than 2 seconeds of on screen blood spiledge.

And it make me feel better a place gets games a bit later tha the uk for once.

THANK you! Even he is sick and fucking tired of you inconsiderate little shits emailing him saying he should review Brawl or Rock Band, when every fiber of his being wishes he was reviewing Rock Band instead of shit like this.

New rule. From now on, when someone asks why he doesn't review a game that isn't out yet, the next five (5) posts have to be flames.

????????

what the hell happened there!

I thought the review would be better if he actually talked about Turok more than faults that have come up consistantly in most console games. It was quite funny but I personally would find it better if he talked about the actual game more than problems. Also the console prolems with the game should be fixed with the upcoming PC version.

Edderz1989:
is it just me or is Australia a hypocritical country.

I mean they sent murder's, rapists and othere evil doer's to populate the place and now they are scared witless if a game has more than 2 seconeds of on screen blood spiledge.

Most of us aren't the descendants of the murderers the rapists the killers the murderers the rapists the killers the murderers the rapists the killers - sorry, won't happen again - and the people in power (or at least who were) are in fact more descended from prostitutes, which is why John Hoawrd spent most of his office sucking George W. Bushes balls. I feel that Rudd will eventually end this, but he still has a long way to go before he can spare the time.

Do you think he counts The Darknesses colour-changing tentacles as lack of a health bar? What about Resistances four stage Yellow bar were you can refill a quarter to compensate for being shot at by a death squad with human colon targetting rounds?

The funny part is the original halo had 5/6 thing yahtzee said ,the other two are mediocre

Sweet,Blood got a mention, which, in my opinion is Monoliths only decent game in the past 11 years. lazy fucks

Very nice!

Thanks! Like others mentioned before this review was kinda different, somehow more agressive and "deeper" than the last ones. Great work!!!

@tzachitx: Excuse me, but could you tell me what this "new" Turok has in common with the N64/GC ones beside the name?

Indigo_Dingo:

Edderz1989:
is it just me or is Australia a hypocritical country.

I mean they sent murder's, rapists and othere evil doer's to populate the place and now they are scared witless if a game has more than 2 seconeds of on screen blood spiledge.

Most of us aren't the descendants of the murderers the rapists the killers the murderers the rapists the killers the murderers the rapists the killers - sorry, won't happen again - and the people in power (or at least who were) are in fact more descended from prostitutes, which is why John Hoawrd spent most of his office sucking George W. Bushes balls. I feel that Rudd will eventually end this, but he still has a long way to go before he can spare the time.

LMAO!

Very well put mate.

If you're actually reading this, Mr Croshaw, I'd just like you to know you've become my most intense love-hate object of the last decade.

Being a fan of Zero Punctuation can be best defined, I think, as 10,076 minutes and 40 seconds per week of utter torture followed by 3 minutes and 20 seconds of unparalleled bliss. But just like sex, the fleeting moments of ecstasy are worth waiting at least a week for.

I just want to see when Yahtzee finally gets around to reviewing Fantasy World Dizzy (as it's obviously his favourite game ever); in fact, let's ditch these boring consoles and go back to the true 8 bit machines.

Though a little late, a fuck-mothering transcript:

Australia, as most intelligent people know, is populated by the descendants of convicts sentenced to exile for cutting purses and throats on the streets of Londontown. As for the people whose purses and throats were cut, their descendants all now work in the games industry, and conspire to continue the punishment of Australians by stapling an arbitrary number of months onto every single motherfucking release date. So while we're waiting for stuff like No More Heroes or Rock Band to finally deign to show their faces down here, let's take out our frustrations on some shitty dinosaur game.

I'm actually rather glad that a really unequivocally bad FPS has been shat out in front of me, because there are a lot of problems with first-person shooters these days, and Turok plays like an itemized list of them. So rather than do what I usually do, i.e., crucify the game with big, blunt, rusty nails shaped like penises, let's instead use Turok as an example to go through a few of the mistakes first-person shooters keep persistently making. Perhaps I could persuade developers to stop making them, then maybe I could persuade the tide to turn back, and ride a winged marshmallow to the sherbet kingdom.

1. Use console controls responsibly. When I am aiming at something, and I nudge the right analog stick slightly, this is usually because I want to be aiming at something slightly to the side of whatever I'm aiming at now. It does not mean I want my entire body to rotate 90 degrees, and I especially don't want that to happen when a velociraptor is running straight at my face brandishing a dessert fork. Of course, the absence of mouse control will always cripple console FPS's, but the good console FPS will compensate for it with, say, smoother aiming, or auto-targeting, but since, as we've already established, Turok is not a good console FPS, aiming at things is like trying to play darts after letting your arms fall asleep.

2. Bring back health meters. I don't know when the games industry in general fell out with health meters; maybe someone threw a big party for video game interfaces, and Mr. Health Meter got drunk and acted like a tit, so now everyone shuns him. Whatever, games just don't have health meters any more. When you're hurt, you just heal up by sitting in the corner, sucking your thumb for a few seconds, which makes things a little patronizingly simple, but is very accommodating towards players who happen to be the three-year-old children of syphilitic lepers. What's so bad about health meters, anyway? OK, they're not what you'd call realistic, but I kind of thought we'd abandoned realism around the time Space Marines were stabbing dinosaurs on the planet Zog.

3. Give grenades halfway decent splash damage.

4. Stop ripping off "Aliens". "Aliens" was a good film, I'm glad we're all in agreement there, but it seems you can't walk ten paces in today's first-person shooter market without tripping over grizzled, sassy, multi-ethnic military types, often wearing (or at least located somewhere inside) suits of powered armor each the size of four brick shithouses stacked together. Turok goes the extra mile by ripping off the entire cryopod scene from "Aliens" verbatim, except with Sigourney Weaver replaced with an overly masculine stupid haircut. No change there then (har har har, raucous laughter). When you consider that the original Turok games were about a time-traveling red Indian, this new installment has had to really work hard to rip of "Aliens". They had to lock the established setting and storyline in a wardrobe and throw it off a cliff. They've approached ripping off "Aliens" with the same determination that most developers would approach making a game that's actually good, and that's sort of admirable, I guess, in a retarded kind of way.

5. Stop zooming into the backs of people's heads to show we're taking control of them.

6. Stop blowing all your money on big-name voice actors who then totally phone it in. So Turok has this grumpy friend who looks like a cross between Gimli, son of Gloin, and Popeye the Sailorman, and whose voice indicates that he is A) incapable of human emotion, and B) a recent victim of cranial drill intrusion. Out of curiosity, I went on IMDB to learn what amateur dramatics wannabe voiced this gobshite, and found it to be none other than Ron Fuck-Mothering Perlman. A Ron Perlman I could only assume who realized early on what kind of dross he was working with, and vowed to bring that across in his performance, and if Ron Perlman thought Turok was shit, who are you to argue? Did you ever warm the frozen hearts of audiences worldwide in "City of Lost Children"? No? Well, shut up then.

7. Conclusion. Most of these problems with modern FPS's can be explained with four words: "Let's be like Halo." But I remember a time when FPS's didn't all march in step behind that inexplicably popular festival of mediocrity; when FPS's weren't all about soldiers or Space Marines; when they could be about undead cowboys, or backwards pig rapists, or wisecracking misogynistic wankers. I remember a time when FPS's had a sense of humor about themselves, and could have colors other than Gunmetal Grey and Dogshit Brown. I remember titles like Exhumed, and Chasm, and Witchhaven 2, although on reflection I'd rather forget about them.

This was the very worst on in my opinion. Low on humor and just a bit of bitching about the way modern FPSs are heading. I just kind of went WTF and didn't even grin. He's should stay away from FPSs if he doesn't want progress and to remain in the early nintindo era.