I've decided to start adding the soundtrack link if available at the start of a review. I can't speak for everyone, but I know reading with music isn't exactly distracting, and if it helps cover more ground for reviewing the product... why not? So here's the music link. Now moving on...
Turok is a weird deal for me. It was one of the first ever console FPS games to exist, and yet for it's primitive time it managed to start off incredibly well in the 90's on the Nintendo 64. It pushed the tech, tried some interesting concepts, and threw players into a violent and chaotic cyber dinosaur world with a dash of native-american warrior theme to the mix. It did incredibly well for it's time, especially with Turok 2: Seeds of Evil being the best remembered. For the franchise's moment in the spotlight, there came an animated movie, multiple series of comics, novels, action figures, a multiplayer spin-off (before online play! Just think about that.), and holy crap someone redid the the music in a massive symphony recently! ...yet truth be told, I'm sure so many have never even heard of it before, because it just sort of died in the post-N64 world.
With Seeds of Evil specifically, I'm a weird nostalgic guy who wishes I could have told you more about the game, as it was probably my first FPS ever. I never actually played it beyond the first level, because it was just too weird and difficult for 6-7 year old me. The music, the atmosphere, the sound effects, the monster designs, they were all amazing enough to send later internet-using-me digging up all sorts of facts, lore, and wiki pages on the game and fascinated with it (I even discovered I had somehow wound up with a primagen action figure, probably something my dad randomly got). But that damn level design was so convoluted and weird that even in returning trips (never the less my first time, barely able to use a controller), I've never actually gotten beyond the first level. Despite this, hearing of a remaster by NightDive was nothing short of a very exciting headline to come across. They slapped a 45% discount on it's launch, and promised some improvements over map navigation, and I'm back in. However.... does playing it actually hold up to the cult hype? Was this worth remaking, or is it still held back by the primitive designs it was built upon?
Well this story is nonsense...
Okay, so the premise casts you as Joshua Fireseed, the current warrior in a bloodline of native-american warriors gifted with the title of Turok. You find yourself just conviniently discussing the first level plot with an alien women named Adon. She informs you an alien called the Primagen is causing problems in the world, and he needs to be destroyed by taking back and restoring six energy totems. Unfortunately he's convinced Dinosoids (genetically crafted dinosaur soldiers, because of course) to help alongside all the native militaries of the lands that hold the energy totems, so you go through each six levels to track down the energy totems, as well as the keys so you can make your way to fighting the Primagen. Each level has an introduction briefly discussing the horrible natives of the level, why they're mean, and then go fourth. More discretely, a sub-plot is happening where monsters who worship an entity called Oblivion are after you. There's more lore if you can dig it up and read on it, but that's about as far as the direct game itself will take you.
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| Cool scenes like this make for a great FPS setting |
Very videogamey and contrived, but allow me to point out some things: You're fighting in a world of genetic dino soldiers, cyber bug aliens, a deity-like being of destruction called Oblivion who is praised by high-tech monsters who call themselves the Flesh Eaters, a telepathic alien antagonist who accidentally created a multiverse, zombies who come out of portals that are depicted with souls reaching out of them, and you start off fighting the battle with a bow and work your way up to drill missiles that scan for brains and exploding plasma laser rifles. Your very first enemy encounter has you go down a long dark hallway, only to see a half-raptor monster leaping at you. You'll struggle to figure out your bow, taking claws and frantically running back until you shoot it enough to find it rolling on the ground and twitching in any various gory animations. Then you'll know where this game's priorities went; The game is all about just making this ridiculous, campy, and creature driven world. There's no rules on time lines, or realism. It had an 80's "make it cool for toys" type of idealism. It's no wonder the Turok franchise's world is sort of burned into my mind, it's too amazing and crazy to forget, compared to the bland formulas of typical stories and settings. While the story is kind of lacking, it's almost like the devs treated this as a toy set of just stupid and immature fun, and with these crazy creature-horror designs and super weapons, I welcome that in any FPS.
How Remastered is it?
NightDive studios deserves a lot of credit, because they don't just do your standard remasters. They actually go in touching up the game to be playable by modern standards in the gameplay just as much as they do visuals. However of course they did in fact touch up the visuals, and even on an intel laptop, I managed to see a good amount of that extra shine. Not everything, but I ran it with a basic FXAA, managed to use better shadows, extended draw distance, 90 FOV, and was running things smoothly most of the time. I also played with the blur effects, as there's an option for object motion blur where say... a spinning Raptoid attack will have a blur effect when set on medium. There were a couple things like water reflections, that I left off, but it's clear that they added a good bit of options for an old N64 game. The only two things I know of that are subtracted, is the feature to change enemies blood, as well as the old school look spring method of aiming... which let's be honest, you'd have to hate yourself and be dead-set on playing this game at it's worst to want look spring aiming back. The graphics aren't incredible, but they hold up well enough that it's a smooth retro game session to boot up, and honestly there've been discussions before suggesting T2's textures were better than PS2's Turok Evolution to begin with. So this isn't a bad looking game for what it is, just don't go in expecting it to be on par with modern games. My only gripe for the remastering visuals, is they goofed up and added a sun in The Lair of The Blind Ones level, which is set almost entirely underground, yet you can see the sun glitch through at certain angles. Nitpicking, but still a very silly change.
Gameplay has also seen an overhaul, and if I were to be honest, I wouldn't be playing this if I hadn't heard about it's changes since they involve making maps actually doable. Supposedly a very few number of cryptic hall paths have been changed in the design, but I'm clearly not the person to ask about that. Then the objectives and switches were given a special icon of interest, so you don't walk past important switches. I've found the icon sometimes doesn't work as consistently as you'd expect, but it does the job for the most part. There's also a new crosshair option, the ability to change movement bobbing to weapon only bobbing, you can now warp between portal checkpoints as a sort of fast travel, there's modern saving & quick saving abilities, and AI touched up on a little bit, as well as a bit of extra blood (not that there was ever a shortage of it). Even multiplayer has been brought back for online play, with a new elimination mode (though I can't speak for it's quality). You can also change soundtracks between the louder but clear old PC version, and the bassier compressed Nintendo 64 one. For the purists out there, just about everything can be either turned off, or ignored. If you hate saves, then you can still depend on the life system. If you hate fast travel, you don't have to go into the portals for fast travel. If you want less HUD and no crosshair, tick the right boxes in the options menu. For everyone else though, these additions are amazing for adding either accessibility to a modern audience, or just making the game smoother for fans.
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| Icons like this are now there to help you |
...but what's it play like anyway?
However I know this audience doesn't even know what the core game is like to begin with, so I guess it's weird that I'm only just now getting around to it. Well, Turok 2 worked like an old FPS in it's base mechanics and principles. You had static numerical health, a large set of crazy weapons and alterations of the weapon types, and the gameplay was a mix of exploration, key hunts, shooting up crazy enemies with patterns and wild abilities, and occasionally there was some platforming involved. The maps are really complex in design, more so than any 3D FPS I can think of. It was linear, yet felt like an open world. We're talking about six levels, where each one could take you an hour or more easily. I personally found myself spending up to as much as 3 hours on the second level. You have to complete several objectives on most levels, like rescuing people, or blowing up enemy equipment, and along the way picking up the keys that allow entry to future levels. Then proceed onto finding the exit portal. Finally, you have a mini-wave defense thing where you've got to kill enemies off before they can overwhelm and destroy the energy totem of that level. This all adds up to be quite an adventure, and it's not hard to be lost even with a few of the modern readjustments. Some people revel in it and love the sense of adventure and depth it has, while others may even find this to be game ending for them. I'll say the fact that I'm reviewing this (instead of being stuck on level 1) means it's a good improvement, and there's more of a drive here than there was for the hollow original, Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, but it's not perfect.
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| Keys are one of many absurd amount of collecibles |
Here's where the game get's a little stupid with itself at a level design point. You're not only navigating these massive levels, where the tech for the time reduced most complex designs to corridors with roughly the same texture, but on top of that there's this mandatory multi-tier collect-o-thon going on. You have to collect 3 or so keys, find every objective, find the exit portal, and it's all done through networks of tunnels, halls, hidden switches for doors, and enemies who may or may not respawn once you're backtracking the area. Oh and then there's the Primagen keys... hang on, you're in for a ride with this explanation. Every level has a primagen key, and to get one you'll usually need to get every special Turok ability. To get the ability you need to 1) Find a feather usually hidden somewhere. 2) find the switch to open a warp portal 3) Find the warp portal itself, sometimes backtracking if the switch came after it. Then you get to trade the feather with the ability. *Sidenote: hope the portal is the right one, because it looks just like the Flesh Eater portal which is an entirely optional collect-o-thon system of it's own. 4) Every ability was designed to work with the prior level, so you have to go back to the last level, find right spot, and get the key from that level, then go back home and put the key in place. Now ain't that some super-contrived, hoop-jumping bullshit on top of an already over-complicated madhouse of level design. That's not to take it out on NightDive though, this is 1998 Iguana Entertainment's design. NightDive gave us the easy way with fast travel, because they were also probably thinking "screw this shit!" when testing and remastering the game.
However where I think the game shines it's best, is the FPS element (whenever you're not fighting spiders at least. fuck those enemies). For starters, the ammo and weapon choice is some of the most finely balanced I think I've seen in a long while. On medium, it hits that perfect sweetspot where you've always got ammo for something, but what it is and who you need it for varies so wildly and unpredictably that you're on the edge of your seat with nearly every encounter. You only have about 10 shots of explosive shotgun ammo, 20 for regular shotgun, and 10 for explosive tekbow, so every piece of it is counted for in your head as you go through the ranks. Pistol holds up to 50, which looks nice and secure up until you realize how fast enemies chew it all up. You wind up getting in a habit of looking for headshots, balancing the ideas of retrievable arrows with quick and efficient, but very limited, explosives. Then on top of all that, the gunplay just rocks, and you always have enough extras half-way through the game that you can afford to expend a little for the sake of how good it feels to gib an endtrail, or even just pop a weak little raptoid and watch them juggle in the air. The game seemingly encourages you to roast spiders and leapers where it hands you the flamethrower ammo, and there are small segments at times where you pick up a key, and a lockdown trap activates where you're surrounded with respawing shotgun ammo, and a bunch of raptors, and it just puts a smile on your face. On that note, so to does the detailed enemy animations, where even the mildest hit will have most flinching, and deaths end in dramatic topples, gutteral gargling, monster screeching in pain, or that last twitching breath before they flatline. That sort was quite ahead of it's time. The gunplay is just full of it's own sense of violent but crazy character, and it's no wonder that Turok seems to be known for it pretty well.
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| Gunplay is so good! |
So when everything comes together, Turok is still a weird game that feels odd to play, or stranger to recommend. On the FPS side, it really does everything almost too good to be true. The setting is filled with crazy awesome sensibilities, the music is gripping and on powerful effect with it's drumming and trumpet symphony sound, the sounds are distinctive and appropriate, the gunplay is gory, unpredictable, and engaging, and then the map design has you truly working to get around and explore things. However, sometimes the level design is just a bit too demanding, and you're practically forced into a corner where beating it means you're practically doing a full completionist run (the only thing optional, are the flesh eater portals). You have to have this almost OCD mentality of checking every single corner, and that's what will break the game for some people. Don't forget the damn primagen keys either, where they went collectible-inception on people and made a portal for a collectible to get another collectible, on another level, to add to a list of collectible tokens you need to get to the last boss. I'm sorry to some of the people that believe this is the best way because it's "hardcore", but Turok 2 gets ridiculous with it. I get why some people love this stuff. Doom and Duke Nukem 3D are well loved for their maze-like maps, some people love the thrill of charting this stuff out, but you can do all that with optional rewards, and also without forcing some padded out backtracking nonsense. I don't hate the map design for being complex, I hate it for being superficially padded. The new Tomb Raider games are an exceptional example of how Turok could do this right, with a semi-open linear path full of all sorts of awesome prizes, loops, and side objectives. I obviously know they couldn't do that so easily back in 1998, but I'm reviewing this for a 2017 audience, not a 1998 one. This mission design didn't hold up the best.
Conclusion:
The Turok 2 remaster was a great project thanks to NightDive's hard work and care put into it. The classic game is a fun shooter with one of the coolest imaginative universes in gaming, distinctive music, and known for it's crazy gore and gunplay. A few will even thank it for it's complex and exploration driven levels. However it wasn't until the remaster that it was accessible under modern audiences, with the sloppy PC port long ignored, and the N64 version being stuck with that forsaken spring aim. I think Turok 2 was forgotten a little too easily, and it's good to see it back. Now everyone blast lizard people again, with enhanced settings, more ways to navigate the insane maps, and adjustments that balance and perfect the core formula of the game to it's best ability. There's even online multiplayer, and they kept the cheat code menu and that angry iguana logo. The level design is still a bit too complicated, and objectives can be contrived, there are parts of the game alongside it's lacking story that prove it's still confined to some designs of the 90's. However it's gunplay and intense journey to stop the primagen from ruling the Lost Lands, make for an first-person adventure that I'd recommend every FPS fan give a chance. It won't be to everyone's liking, but it was certainly a good enough game worth salvaging. To that end, NightDive did a good enough job making the definitive version of a cult classic, and I'm personally happy to play the game again. I hope they continue this trend, and find themselves working on future Turok games. Hint: Evolution, someday? Maybe? Please!?
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| The best time to step through the portal as Turok |
LINKS
OST: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnxI7Yu5yl0
Symphony: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tz-QMgIU0B8
Primagen toy: https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8513/8508868542_54360c45a0_b.jpg
Raptoid animation: https://youtu.be/Xk3cmax0doo?t=1m18s
PS2 Evo vs N64 T2: [Evo] http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/turok/images/1/14/Turok-evolution-20050331035245317-1082877.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20140313232743 [T2] https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--c3B73yxN--/c_scale,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800/oiv9viqpmfjvc8rchujm.png1
PICTURES:
Zombie - https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/155778251306738796/C40B0C4DB368D9DF6A5C33B7EA758444195BDD1E/
Dark marker point - https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/155778490551819092/B502C57B5C71FA6D3A3E17E17CAF9AF22338820B/
ALT marker - https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/155777951179393490/AF8735B35C42EAC66AD1BD3D761F963F42A736A5/
Key objective - https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/82594465637358415/AEC30BBABE0851262B0929A7172D5BE1815BFEE7/
Dead Raptor - https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/155778251306738629/A7ED653A93B79BF3F9DAA6C5CCD797643FD19E60/
Gunplay Image - https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/87098056441377438/5F609ADA62762F49E2C9695875AFDC022F0823ED/
Joshua Fireseed Portal - https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/90475754516924153/3B9B63079AC297EDBF5186BC27158ADEAD59BE6B/
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