It’s not often that those of us outside North America get to play a game first - but that’s exactly the situation with the new Turok demo. OK, so it’s not a full game - but let us have our fun for once. The demo arrived on Xbox Live for Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan and United Kingdom. Sorry to those of you in the US and Canada, we have no information regarding when you will be getting your hands on this one.
Propaganda Games have are considering removing the team killing achievement in Turok. The company is playing it safe, however, and will most likely release a patch post-release if things get out of hand. Propaganda’s vice president Josh Holmes explained in an interview the reason for the achievement’s inclusion:
What we found was that players playing their first match in Turok - almost every player - was (accidentally) killing himself, a team mate and an enemy with a grenade or a Stick Bomb gun and so we thought ‘hey, we should give them an achievement for that’, as kind of a joke.
Doesn’t sound like a very reassuring comment about Turok’s gameplay mechanics.
Touchstone and Propaganda games are offering a special pre-order demo disc of Turok for those who pre-order the game at Best Buy, GameStop, Walmart.com and Game Crazy. The demo is out a whole 2 months before the final game is released on February 5th. Sorry PS3 owners - the demo is only on the 360 at the present time.
A new trailer showing off Turok’s multiplayer shows some pretty amazing knife work. The game is certainly looking pretty and the dinohunter mode of play looks like it will really mix things up. We still can’t get over the sweet variable filleting animations though… so cool.
Some gamers are up in arms over Propaganda Games’ plans to include an achievement that encourages team killing in Turok. The achievement requires you to “kill at least 1 creature, 1 enemy, 1 teammate, and yourself in the same round of a public match”. Given the uproar over team killing being enabled in the Team Fortress 2 beta - even without an incentive to do so - we’re expecting mass tantrums when Turok launches. Could this be the first time achievements end up driving multiple-platform owners away from the Xbox 360 version?
Turok has always been a console-only shooter, which sucks, because everyone should have the opportunity to kill dinosaurs. Things have changed though, with Touchstone announcing they are bringing the latest offering to the PC. Aspyr Studios, who have a solid name in PC ports, are handing the PC version. The PS3 and 360 versions are due out February 5, but the best fix we can get on the PC version is Spring 2008.
The upcoming Turok game is set to feature a star studded lineup of voice actors. Timothy Olyphant (Deadwood, Hitman), Powers Boothe (Deadwood, Sin City), Ron Perlman (Hellboy and a million other projects), William Fichtner (Prison Break, Invasion) and Donnie Wahlberg (New Kids on the Block) are among the actors working on the game, due out on February 5 for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
The plot for the game revolves around the player taking control of Joseph Turok (voiced by Gregory Norman Cruz), who has set down on a strange planet with his team known as Whiskey Company, comprising of Cowboy (Timothy Olyphant), Slade (Ron Perlman), Shepard (Donnie Wahlberg) and Logan (William Fichtner). Turok’s mission is to take down his fromer mentor, Roland Kane (Powers Boothe) and his army, the Mendel-Gruman Corporation. Of course, there will be lots of dinosaurs.
“The actors who lent their voices to Turok are a testament to both the magnitude of the project and the interest of top-notch talent,” said Josh Holmes, vice president and general manager of Propaganda Games. “The characters in the story are paramount to the experience and we have assembled an outstanding cast to assure high quality performances across the board.”
