Hands-on with Turok’s single player demo

As promised, here’s my hands-on impression of Turok’s single player demo. The demo is extremely short, but it is fun. I suggest anyone interested in playing the game to pre-order it so you can get the demo. And once you’re done, go cancel your pre-order and make a GameSpot’s managers life hell.

Hit the jump to read about the stab-orific game. 

The demo has your character, Joseph Turok, and buddy Slade starting off in a dark cave. You have just crashed landed on the alien planet while trying to hunt down a man named Kane, a former mentor turned evil. You will start of with a Knife, Bow, and two machine guns — all of which can be accessed by using the D-pad. You will always have your Bow and Knife but you can switch out your guns at anytime with whatever other weapon you can find on the levels. You can also mix and match your weapons so, as an example, you can dual wield a shotgun and machine gun.

As you make your way through the dark cave, you keep hearing Dinosaur noises all around you until you finally run into one. Before you can shoot him though, a raptor tackles Turok from behind and Turok gets knocked down as more raptors come out from various places in the cave. The health system is similar to Rainbow Six: Vegas so if you’re taking to many hits, just find a place to hide and wait for Turok to regain his health. 

As you progress, you will get separated from Slade and encounter more raptors as well as a couple of enemy soldiers. I played through the demo twice and the first time, the lone soldier lived through the raptor fight because I engaged the Dinosaurs. The second time through, I knew to just hang back and let the raptors do their thing. Shortly before this fight, I found a shotgun that shoots out a flare as a secondary fire. The flare will essentially hypnotize dinosaurs giving the player a chance to shoot the Dinos while they’re distracted. You can also shoot a flare onto one raptor which will make other raptors attack the raptor stuck with the flare on its body. The same is applied to soldiers — shoot them with a flare and the raptors will gun straight for that person. 

You eventually make your way out of the caves and meet up with Slade again in the jungle. More Dinosaurs are shown such as little Dinosaurs that won’t attack you unless your provoke them. Of course, I had to provoke them because killing them is extremely hilarious with the Knife. Turok grabs the little Dinos by the neck, raises them up, and slices their throat. Then he just tosses them to the ground.  

A new Dinosaur makes an appearance at this point called a Diloposaurus. It’s three times the size of a raptor and three times as hard to take down. None of the predators in the game like each other so you will see plenty of dinosaur fight each other to which you can just hang back and watch the carnage unfold.  

After this fight, you run into another of your comrades, Reese, the sniper of the group. You also come across your downed ship as well as a bunch of enemy soldier checking out the wreckage. Slade and Reese hang back while Turok goes on the hunt to silently take out the soldiers. There are a few guards patrolling the area while one is just standing around oblivious to his surrounding. So of course the most logical thing to do is sneak up behind him and use your knife to slice open his chest! After you take him out, it’s a little harder to sneak up on the other guards. Lucky for Turok, there are a couple of raptors near by enjoying some Dino meat. You could just leave the raptors alone and not worry about them. Or do what I did and shoot one of them in the ass with an arrow to get them angry and attack the patrolling soldiers. Of course, the raptors will go after you after they’ve taken out a few of the soldiers.
A helicopter then descends after you kill a couple of more guys promoting Slade and Reese to come out of hiding and back Turok up. Reese will always make his way to perfect sniping spots while Slade will be right next to Turok in the fire fights. After killing a dozen or so more soldiers, the demo ends.

So far, the visuals are fantastic and the level of detail in the jungle is stunning. The grass will move as you or an enemy makes their way through it, raptors will work in teams to take you out and the enemy soldiers are tough to take down. 

The Turok team did show off some of the later levels at the multiplayer event that I can’t wait to try. Mainly, fighting the T-Rex:

This is so going to be an awesome fight. There will be close to about 20 different types of Dinosaurs (if memory serves me right), both predators and herbivorous. There will also be Dinosaurs that the team completely made up in the mix too.

Turok will be out Februrary 5th and you if you pre-order the game, you will get the same demo I just talked about as well as a free T-shirt.