Take their DNA. Hunt the galaxy

Turok: Dinosaur Hunter was a single-player first-person shooter based on a set of comic books, adapted to video games on the Nintendo 64 in 1997, with six further games in the series spanning the decades since then. Turok Origins is a new action-adventure game created by Saber Interactive, playable solo or with up to three other players in drop-in, drop-out co-op, set in the same Native American culture-infused world as the original games, inhabited by dangerous dinosaurs and alien threats.

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Turok is a single player or co-op experience.

Character Selection and Team Dynamics

In my brief hands-on, I was put into a group with two members of the press, and we each got to select a character with different classes. There was a tank, capable of protecting the group with holographic shields, a damage dealer, who had various damaging abilities, and a support-based class with abilities to enhance the team. I selected the tank class and was allowed to select my loadout. This gave me a selection of weapons to put in my three gun slots, as well as a choice as to what abilities were equipped. Unfortunately, the abilities were restricted for the demo, so I didn’t get to see what type of builds I could come up with. With my class and loadout selected, I was met with a cutscene.

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Here you can see the tank placing a shield for the team while the other has poisoned the boss.

Combat Flow

Although I wasn’t too sure what was going on in the story, I was immediately impressed with the graphics and voice acting. I didn’t know what to expect when I accepted the preview, other than it had multiplayer, but I wasn’t expecting a full-fledged story. From what I got to witness, it definitely piqued my interest, and I look forward to finding out more about it upon release.

After the cutscene, I got control of the character. Straight away, I noticed that I could switch between first and third person, and switch which shoulder the camera appeared over in the latter. Once I was done testing the controls, I followed the team to the objective marker, which was a generic defeat a bunch of enemies mission, before moving to the next objective to do more of the same. This step repeated a few times with slight changes to the objective, such as securing an area or defeating a different type of enemy.

The team and I completed the few objectives we were given, and then we were met with the boss of the mission: a huge T-Rex-like dinosaur. When the battle began, I scanned the boss to find its weak point was, which was its head. The boss itself was quite well designed, with several bite and tail attacks as well as an attack that fired missiles across the battlefield.

Evading this was difficult, and had me running around to avoid the red markers on the ground that came down quickly. I got hit, and was set on fire briefly, which drained my health. But the team stuck together, reviving each other when needed, and eventually, we took down the monster. After defeating the dinosaur, I had the option to extract its DNA, giving me an ability. This is where the demo ended, so unfortunately, I didn’t get to see what it was.

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Use your abilties to take down the enemies down more efficiently.

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Avoid the projectiles while attacking the weak point to maximize damage.

From my brief experience, I enjoyed the game for the most part. The story seems interesting, the gameplay was fun and visceral, and I like that you can play solo or with a group of friends. One thing I am curious about is how much variation there is in the objectives, because what I played could get tiring after a while. But Turok is definitely on my watch list, and I look forward to playing it some more.