I'll begin by stating the blindingly obvious. The first person market is crowded, competitive and close to saturated. You know this. I know this. Acclaim must know this! For an game to be successful it's not enough to simply be good, chances are it will need luck and a fair wind behind it. Acclaim's PC release of last years console version of Turok Evolution doesn't need luck. Turok Evolution needs a miracle. It is dire.

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Most gamers have probably heard of the Turok series, thanks to its strong debut back on the N64. Nowadays though I don't think it is unfair to say that it is not held in the highest of regard, particularly among PC gamers. Turok Evolution is probably, and hopefully, the final nail in the coffin of this franchise. Were it simply a mediocre shooter to be forgotten amidst the jungle of others it might not be so bad. But no, they've released a clearly out of date buggy mess. From the very moment the game loads up it was bug, followed by bug, followed by a hopping dinosaur, then more bugs.

And how long did it take for me to find the first bug? About twenty seconds. I loaded up the game and entered the first level and what do I find? My mouse is reversed, so pushing up causes the cursor to move down and vice versa. Not a bug I grant you, but c'mon, how many FPS's have their default controls set up that way? This tells me then that I'm not just dealing with a console port, but probably a rushed bad one. Little did I know how bad.

I press 'Esc' to get to the menu. Nothing. Huh? Let's try a function key. Nope. The little 'tilde' sign that normally brings up a console. Keep fishing Richard. So after twenty seconds of slapping the keyboard I find it, and silly old me, it was of course the 'Enter' key. Yes the 'Enter' key brings up the menu like in, oh that's right, no other game ever. Anyway so I click on 'Options', then 'Control Setup' and bingo, the first bug. Wooohoo! The result of selecting 'control setup' was that it took me to a black screen of which the only way out was the old faithful 'three fingered salute' (Ctrl-Alt-Del).

"Could have just been my settings." I thought. Hmmm, let's see, change resolution, turn off antistrophic filtering, already have latest drivers, okay let's try again... excellent, a repeatable game breaking bug. Awesome. Luckily the inverting the mouse option was in the advanced options menu (?) which strangely did work so I could play.