The makers of Tron: Evolution and Turok are no more. Disney confirmed the (not too surprising) closure of Vancouver-based dev Propaganda Games today, saying “The studio has completed all work associated with its most recent project.”
Justin Robson is one prolific chap. Twas only yesterweek we had a swatch at his Fable Retrospective, but now he casts his scathing eye across Turok Evolution – a game that, by all rights, came very close to killing a once stellar franchise stone dead. More »
Disney is the latest in a long list of companies planning to pare down its workforce, with cuts and consolidations affecting Disney Interactive Studios. Layoffs are said to have already hit Turok developer Propaganda.
In the midst of a bunch of people talking/getting excited about a Turok movie, Variety’s Ben Fritz makes a very valid point: just because people are talking about it, doesn’t mean it’s getting made. As anyone who’s followed the fortunes of, say, Watchmen, or Halo will know, turning a movie from an idea into, well, a movie, is a lot harder than it looks. As Fritz says, “only a fraction of [meetings]turn into good scripts and a fraction of those actually get made as movies”. And that goes double for ones based on a Disney property that Disney have nothing to do with, as is the case with this current “project”.
Disney not making Turok movie [Variety]
Turok, the dinosaur hunting Native American hero, now 50-plus years in existence, is getting the silver screen treatment according to MTV’s movie blog. Set to star Adam Beach as the titular dino-stabber, the movie is still a long way off, with the lead actor telling MTV Movies “We’re about to set up meetings to develop a script and put it out there” with an estimated release “a couple years” from now.
Turok PC Pushed Pack To June: Originally slated for a May 29 release, the PC version of Touchstone’s Turok is now set for June 26, according to Funtastic’s latest schedule. No reason has been provided for the delay. More »
It’s set to arrive many, many months after its debut on consoles, but distributor Funtastic has confirmed a May 29 release date for the prehistoric/sci-fi shooter. Or knifer, if you happen to be my brother.
I’m already quite keen to give Mass Effect another whirl when it hits PCs, because I firmly believe the platform to be the home of role-playing games. I feel the same way about first-person shooters – nothing beats a mouse and keyboard.
I’m also touching base with Funtastic to see if the PC version will have extra content over the console games. Stay tuned. More »
Touchstone is just tickled pink that Turok has shipped over a million copies worldwide, and to thank all of those players who dropped cash on the re-envisioned franchise, they’re giving us a chance to spend some more money on tomorrow’s Velociraptor Pack (because it sounds cool), which contains five new multiplayer maps for the price of 400 Microsoft Points or 5 PlayStation 3 “Dollars”.
Spoiler alert! Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw doesn’t like Turok. But instead of editorially ripping that game a new one, this episode of Zero Punctuation simply uses it as an example of everything that’s wrong with console first person shooters. Not the least of which are Aliens-esque character rehashes, the “grizzled, sassy multi-ethnic military types often wearing—or at least located somewhere inside—suits of powered armour” otherwise known as Space Marines. It’s a doozy, mostly because of Yahtzee waxing nostalgic about the “backwoods pig rapists” of Redneck Rampage. Give it a play.
Zero Punctuation: Turok [The Escapist]
Up until now, I couldn’t get enough Xbox 360 vs. PlayStation 3 side-by-sides. But after this direct HDMI feed from Turok, my mind is mush. The opening blacks look far better on the 360, but you lose sight of any contrast difference by the middle of the clip comparisons. Sometimes the PS3 has better textures, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes the PS3′s full RGB gamut offers colors that pop a bit more, sometimes it doesn’t. Bottom line: if you have Turok for either of these next gen systems, you’re doing fine. And it seems that publishers are getting far better about their cross-platform quality control.
UPDATE: It would appear that there was no control for the 7.5 IRE black level difference between US and Japanese NTSC standards.
