Turok: Evolution

Hey! Welcome to my horrible ranting about my very favourite video game. I've decided that it's time you, the potentially non-existant reader got to know me better. So. Here we go! Turok: Evolution is the fourth (fifth?) in the Turok Series. The plot is simple. You are an indian, Turok, and you have been sucked into another dimension. Your job is to fight dinos, and dinosoid bad guys. Simple. Right? That's the basic plot for all Turok games, except Turok: Rage Wars, which has no plot. To basicly sum it up: Turok is the only game in which you are an Indian, riding a flying dino, firing missles, at tanks.

Keep your hands off me, you damn dirty ape!

Okay. To start out, you're in a jungle. The first thing you notice is the sheer realism. The bushes move as you walk through them, the butterflies ignore you, the Stegosaurs chop grass, and the snipers shoot you if you move. Fortunatly, as it's the first level, you can kick some serious butt. What I particularly enjoy about this game is that EVERYTHING can die. Including most of the trees. Feel free to snipe the Pterodactyls, to kill the small, harmless plant-eaters. Shoot the rampaging Triceratops only to find that she was protecting a baby. Kill it, too. Shoot the dancing monkeys, shoot the frogs, the lizards, the crocodiles, the babboons, the raptors, the gators, the deer, the Brontosaur, the Allied Soldiers. Shoot them all! None of it effects whether you win or lose! Unlike all those "hostage" games. Sure, most of them can't fight back! That's the fun part! Just beware the raptors, tiny dinos, and the saber-toothed tigers. Those fight back even if they aren't strictly enemies. Oh, and when you get a flame-thrower, make sure you burn everything. Everything burns real good.

Now, where's the Crocodile Hunter when you need him?

As you progress, you fight various kinds of dinosaurs. Just shoot 'em and don't let 'em get too close. At one vary weird point, a herd of babboons hunts you down. Raptors are the smartest of your unarmed foes. They travel in packs, and often lay traps and ambushes for you. Good thing you have a gun, huh? Your armed enemies vary from the insanely intelligent, to the ones who enjoy running in a circle during a fire fight. Sometimes they fall back to strategic positions, and other times they jump off of cliffs. Just take them by surprise, and you should have no problems. My favorite tactic is to use the poisoned arrows. They make your enemy start barfing...and then they die. And the swarmer missles dissolve your enemies limbs, one by one, ending with the head. You get one nuke, that is only usuable in one level. Oh, and the Sleg (armed bad guys) lose limbs pretty easy. It's fun.

You eventually leave the jungle, have a few plot developments, and jump on a Pterydactyl and go flying. The controls are simple enough, and it sure is fun to use your 50mm machine guns on the slow moving dino herds. Your enemies are tanks, planes, mounted guns and ships. Most are easy to take out. The flying is generally one way only, since the canyon walls are to narrow to turn without splattering your brains on the wall. Every so often, things widen out, allowing you to do circles and stuff. During one of the last flight levels, you take out an enourmous Ultrasaurus.

After that, you pretty much leave the jungle, for now. You do stealthy, sneaky stuff. Like sneaking into a fortress, rescuing an old dude, and helping the army defeat the bad guys in a futuristic city. Then, the city blows up and you hop back on your dinosaur and try to avoid falling buildings. It's a rush. You return to some lost city, fight more raptors, giant bird things, and the odd T-Rex. An old enemy comes back to be the final boss (riding a tricked out T-Rex, no less) and you kill him. The End. Now. Wasn't that a great game?

Email: flamingchickens333@hotmail.com