Turok

A game at odds with itself. Cool gunplay is marred by quirks like hactic enemy respawn and hit detection. Interesting exploration ideas realized through saving and teleporting systems that often make the process tedious. The platforming is tolerable due to zero fall damage and passable traversing mechanics, but never quite fun because of frequent death pits (which are bad by themselves and just rage-inducing in conjunction with the level structure and the mentioned saving system). And technical difficulties don't help, obviously. The mods can alleviate some of the shortcomings (I highly recommend Turok+ and Better Ammo). And all the technical achievements - both by original team and the people behind remaster - deserve a fair amount of praise. But ultimately, too often this game just doesn't feel right. On the other hand, it's really a blast when it does.

I have not played this updated PC version, but I did play the Nintendo 64 (N64) version, and I had a look at the original PC release. I won't speak about the added technical aspects, with one exception: the lifting of the infamous "fog effect" when looking into the distance. The "fog effect" was originally in place to make up for not getting the most out of the N64's capabilities for tri-linear mipmapping, load management, z-buffering, and other technical terms. (The PC port didn't fare much better.) However... it served to give the original Turok's settings a sort of mysterious atmosphere, forcing the player to pay attention to the sounds of approaching enemies, and the whirs of incoming projectiles. I think lifting the fog might actually hurt the difficulty level and atmosphere of Turok. You could not rely on your eyes alone, lest you be ambushed by raptors... or perhaps raptors with cybernetic enhancements and plasma cannons! Turok was much lauded when it first arrived, since there wasn't much else like it in early 1997, as far as fully 3D FPS titles go. Instead of tromping around dank dungeons, dystopian cities, or demonic hellholes, you carefully traverse jungles, temples, and alien constructs. You can't just go from point A to point B on a flat plane, you often have to jump and climb cliffs and hills, or even swim through caves. Your weaponry ranges from the primitive (bows and arrows) to the mundane (handguns and rifles) to the awesome (automatic shotguns and miniguns) to the ridiculous (two different flavors of handheld laser mini-nuke launchers). As you may have gathered from reading all of this... the game's premise is cool, but it's focus and pacing is all over the place. It can be tough to figure out where to go next, and the platforming can be frustrating at times. It suffers from flaws common to early 3D FPS titles. If you are not deterred by the lack of direction and focus, though, Turok is an ambitious entry in early 3D FPS history.

This was one of the first FPSs with polygonal graphics back in the '90s. I used to play on an old N64 and since then it hasn't lost any of his charm. The only flaw is the lack of a save options (the player can only do it automatically at checkpoints), which make the game way harder.

Turok is a fast paced FPS with a slew of weapons that all feel satisfying to use. Level design is non-linear, giving the game somewhat of an open world feel. Enemy variety is interesting, as you fight dinosaurs, demons, plants, aliens, and cyborgs, among other things. If you love Doom and Duke Nukem, chances are you'll love Turok.

I first got into PC gaming as an adult, and my first real "3D accelerator" card was a 3DFX Voodoo Banshee, from Diamond, which came with "Turok - Dinosaur Hunter" as a bundled extra. So, in reality, this game was my first-ever experience with actual 3D gaming. I've still got the original CDs, but the game won't run on any modern system without a LOT of effort. (The sequel, by the way, cannot run PERIOD on anything later than WinXP SP1, as far as I can tell!) "Night Dive Studios" has been buying rights to older games, reworking them (with a significant amount of actual REWRITING OF SOFTWARE in the process in some cases... as in this one) to make old games servicable for contemporary end-users. This game is a perfect example of what they're doing. The "reworked" version of Turok works perfectly on any WinXP, Win7, Win8 or Win10 machine, it seems (though I doubt it would work on Win3x or Win9x machine, which was the original target!) They've done a great job, and it's worth the price. This game is large, and the game world is quite rich and immersive. Yep, it's not 2016-era tech, but it's a blast anyway, if you can get past your condescension levels... and I've been having a great time re-visiting "The Lost World" again after all these years. (FYI... completing the game is challenging, because there's a LOT of stuff you have to find, and you can't complete the game without finding EVERY item you need... and it's entirely possible to complete a level without getting everything you need. Expect to have to go back to each level at least once, unless you have a "strategy guide" with maps showing every single secret, or the like. )