Turok (PC)

The most popular genre of them all, the First Person Shooter, ruled the roost last year with a bunch of AAA games like Call of Duty 4, Halo 3, BioShock, Half Life Episode 2 and so on. This year, on the other hand, hasn’t been too kind to this genre till date, but we’re sure that the situation will drastically improve towards the end of the year, with some impressive titles like Resistance 2, Brothers in Arms: Road to Hell’s Highway, Far Cry 2, Killzone 2, Project Origin (sequel to F.E.A.R.) etc coming our way.

Unfortunately in the meantime we PC gamers have to make do with mediocre ports of (just) above average games. Earlier in the year we had reviewed Turok, a mindless yet enjoyable shooter that was rough around the edges and was as generic as hell... but hey, at least it allowed you to brutally stab the crap out of humongous dinosaurs, which has to amount for something, right?

In case you missed it on the Xbox360 or the PS3 the first time, the game has now been released for the PC as well. Now, as far as content is concerned, Turok is identical with its console brethren, so if you haven’t caught our review in the past, head right here to read all about dinosaur cruelty.

Considering that both PC and console versions of Turok have exactly the same content, you’d expect a similar score for this port as well, but unfortunately it reeks of sloppiness and laziness by developer Aspyr Media (the console versions were developed by Propaganda Games).

For starters, the game has pretty steep system requirements even though its visuals are nothing to rave about after you’ve experienced the gorgeousness of Crysis or Call of Duty 4. Even if your PC exceeds the recommended system requirements, the game still stutters like a bitch... sometimes even when climbing a ladder. But most times it will crap out on you in the heat of an intense battle against humans or fast-moving critters, making you die over and over again.

The game also suffers from some painfully long loading times that are synonymous with certain sandbox/free roaming games. Now Turok is as linear as it gets, so having such lengthy load times for a corridor shooter is just not acceptable. Also, I checked the official site for a patch and came up with nothing, so I don’t think the devs are all that interested in supporting this game either.

On the plus side the game feels at home with the WSAD control scheme, and an MRP of Rs 699 isn’t all that bad either. If you missed this game the first time and have a high-end PC with nothing to play at the moment, give Turok a whirl; it won’t impress the crap out of you, but it should amuse you for a while.