Zero Punctuation: Turok

[UncleAsriel]

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?

 

[Coeliel]

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

@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

 

[Mad Pony]

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.

 

[Hamster at Dawn]

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.

 

[General Mostly Electrified Steel]

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.

 

[Mad Pony]

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.

 

[k_rafftry]

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

 

[Surggical_Scar]

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.

 

[Tzachitx]

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

Also, is he throwing darts at Tim Buckley? Why?

 

[override367]

Yea Ron Perlman is pretty much the penultimate game voice actor (Fallout 2 [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mcJAI6oRYY&feature=related]), so I'll agree with Yahtzee here

 

[thebrink]

freaking hilarious, best ZP in weeks.

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

 

[bulletproof12]

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

 

[Wave-360]

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.

 

[bamforth]

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.