I just played through the whole first level (I am at the beginning of level 2 now) and WOAH is this game great. I mean, I have and have played some of Turok 2, Turok Rage Wars, and Turok 3, but this one's fantastic... a bit different from the later ones. It's not as insanely hard as Turok 2, and I do like the jungle setting too. There are lots of great touches like how music changes when you go under water or in a cave, etc. The huge, exploration-heavy levels are of course the best thing about the game, and I love that stuff, particularly with the game's good onscreen automap. I like FPSes where you're not just running from room to room shooting people, but spend more of your time exploring and finding things and solving puzzles than you do shooting... and this game is definitely like that, like a Jedi Knight 1 sort of. Turok 2 is like this but it goes farther with it, too far, and ends up just being impossibly hard. Turok 3 is much more linear and railed, and tries instead for a more Half-Life (or Jedi Knight, minus some of the exploration) style of the game being a sequence of canned encounters... great game too, and it does still have exploration, but different from either of the first two. Rage Wars of course is an arena shooter, Quake 3/Unreal Tournament style.
It does have a lot of platform jumping, which is of course tough in first person (Jedi Knight helped with this problem by having a third person camera you could use, so though the game had a good bit of jumping, it was easier than Turok...), but you get used to it I think.
Oh, and did I mention that the sound effects and graphics are both great, better than I expected? The dinosaur howls can be creepy sometimes when you're low on health, where are they going to come from next...
Really, fantastic game so far.
Have you heard of that new Perfect Dark project? I hear it'll be amazing!
Perfect Dark? Remember, when Turok came out in early 1997 Goldeneye was still at least six months off, never mind Perfect Dark... :)
You are the come-back king!
I can't wait for Dolphin to be revealed.
Anybody heard about this Konami game called Metal Gear Solid? I'm not really that interested, since it's on the PSX, but it might be okay.
They're making a sequel! Have you seen the demo videos? That rain is awesome!
My favorite things about Turok are probably completely unimportant to everyone else.
A.) The A.I. of the 'Leapers' still gets me to this day. They act differently in the dark, only attacking when they hear noise or are able to smell you. They can climb most surfaces, create traps for you, lead you in to monsters and attack in packs. Not to mention that if you dive in the water, they will simply swim after you. Their dynamic A.I. still impresses me. This is also the first game I witnessed creatures fighting other creatures on their own accord and trying to CAUSE a fight can be tactically beneficial. The A.I. is shown off even more with things like the epic boss fights and that beautiful old school feeling of "I KICKED ITS ASS" which has all but been erased from today's gaming is here in spades.
B.) The epic scope. The creatures in the game, there are many times even to this day the robots and dinosaurs you face have a feeling of being large and threatening even with the immense downgrade in physics and graphics compared to today's behemoths, their scale is perfect and the combat they create is memorable - learning how to take them down and when to run. The 'feel' of attacking certain enemies is tactile, it feels like you're shooting them, or its just spraying off their armor. The areas are varied and immense.
C.) Next time you get to play, notice things like the blood spraying off the dinosaurs (or yourself), take a look at the rockets being fired at you. Its hand rendered 2-D, but it creates a 3-D effect that actually generates depth. Dont believe me? Use the invincibility to slow everything down and allow an enemy to fire rockets at you, such as the triceratops. Or fire the alien rail-gun and walk in to the rings it generates. There is awesome feeling of depth that hasn't been done in many games, it can be seen while peering around corners or over ledges. Its amazing, but its either extremely difficult to do with today's games, or it was a fluke of N64 graphical generation. Either way, it looks really cool.
D.) The sequel actually improved on everything and should be on everyone's must play list. Its only lacking feature: The feeling of being lost and alone in a surreal world isn't as prevalent, but in exchange you are getting a much better game overall. You get jungles there too, dont worry. And a frisbee of death... and a gun that shoots brain-bores and a flame thrower and well, real time lighting, actual 'flinching' of the models (hit their shoulder, it causes their arm to move) and nearly perfect hit detection... on a game that is like 60 years old. It needs to be on Virtual Console, but until then it needs a true gamer's attention on a N64.
Quote:D.) The sequel actually improved on everything and should be on everyone's must play list. Its only lacking feature: The feeling of being lost and alone in a surreal world isn't as prevalent, but in exchange you are getting a much better game overall. You get jungles there too, dont worry. And a frisbee of death... and a gun that shoots brain-bores and a flame thrower and well, real time lighting, actual 'flinching' of the models (hit their shoulder, it causes their arm to move) and nearly perfect hit detection... on a game that is like 60 years old. It needs to be on Virtual Console, but until then it needs a true gamer's attention on a N64.
I got Turok 2 (and Rage Wars) several years ago. I thought Turok 2 was pretty good, except the difficulty level was ridiculous because of how insanely far apart the save points are, and that the saves save your health, lives, etc... I got to a point where I had no lives left and very low health, so progress was pretty much impossible. There's no easy way to heal. And with each save taking up an utterly ridiculous 90 blocks of memory card space, you can't just save to multiple files like you can with Turoks 1 or 3, each of which have saves under 20 blocks.
I know that Turok 1 also has very far apart save points, limited lives, etc., but it's just not quite as hard as Turok 2, and the save points, as far apart as they are, aren't quite as far apart... and the levels are a little easier to navigate, too. Turok 1's levels are great, huge expanses to explore. Turok 2 just upped everything in scale, added more puzzles, more side areas, and more, which is fantastic, I love that stuff... it's just that the results are so punishingly hard that the game becomes too much of a chore to keep playing. Or at least that was what I thought.
As for Turok 3, as I said there I like the game, and I really like that finally it's a Turok game where dying doesn't have a good chance of setting you back a half hour or more, but it is much more linear-ish. You explore in each area, but each area is clearly separated from the last, and you go from each to the next as you complete each set piece. Good game, but I don't know if it's better than the first two or not... easier to play, but is the less ambitious scope a negative, even though it makes the game so much less frustrating? I haven't gotten that far in Turok 3 either though, I only got it either last year or early this year.
Turok 1 though, I really am impressed. The graphics are good, the atmosphere is fantastic, the level designs are great, there are lots of things to find, and more. The exploration is really the best thing about the game, the shooting's about average (and as always I hate having to aim with console gamepads...). For an FPS it's really good.
Quote:A.) The A.I. of the 'Leapers' still gets me to this day. They act differently in the dark, only attacking when they hear noise or are able to smell you. They can climb most surfaces, create traps for you, lead you in to monsters and attack in packs. Not to mention that if you dive in the water, they will simply swim after you. Their dynamic A.I. still impresses me. This is also the first game I witnessed creatures fighting other creatures on their own accord and trying to CAUSE a fight can be tactically beneficial. The A.I. is shown off even more with things like the epic boss fights and that beautiful old school feeling of "I KICKED ITS ASS" which has all but been erased from today's gaming is here in spades.
That is pretty impressive. I don't know if I noticed, but the caves definitely are creepy, not knowing which way they are coming at you from...
Quote:B.) The epic scope. The creatures in the game, there are many times even to this day the robots and dinosaurs you face have a feeling of being large and threatening even with the immense downgrade in physics and graphics compared to today's behemoths, their scale is perfect and the combat they create is memorable - learning how to take them down and when to run. The 'feel' of attacking certain enemies is tactile, it feels like you're shooting them, or its just spraying off their armor. The areas are varied and immense.
Oh absolutely, the epic scope of the levels, the world, and the enemies is definitely one of the best things about the game. And, of course, it's 100% loading-free, and the levels are immense and seamless.
Retro Studios was founded by an ex-member of Acclaim and a couple of people who worked on the N64 Turok games did work on Metroid Prime, so perhaps some elements of it continued there...
Yup, notice the 'feel' of the weapons like the grenade launcher. Its just fun to use, it was designed by people who were designing real weapons and robotics who got in to game writing for some unknown reason :D not that i'm complaining. They all evolved in to Retro.
Part of the team split after Turok 2 and created Shadowman which is also giiiiigantic and doesn't care to give you good pacing between saving and and halfway points.
Man, Shadowman and those Turok games were great. And now, allow me to completely contradict that by bitching about them.
I've never completed any one of them, which might come as a failure of me as a gamer, but Falcon makes a good point about Turok 2 being a chore. I had a lot of fun dicking around in that game, putting in cheats and tearing shit up, feeling a grin spread across my nerdy, acne-ridden adolescent face every time I shot a hole (literally shot a fucking hole) through one of those Purlin fuckers.
But I also wanted to be diligent and actually play throuh the game as-intended, cheat-free. I got... to the 2nd level, out of 8. I had a blast warping to the other levels, listening to the creepy overview of them by that hot space chick (Aidan?) who fell right out of a Joss Whedon production, and the evil creatures that lurked there, then blasting them all to Turok-hell, but try as I might, the game could never hold my attention long enough that I could get there the legitimate way. The 2nd level was fun, but I think I ended up getting lost, frustrated, and putting the damn thing down. I think the missions fucked me over as well, I was maybe missing one goal out of 5 or 6, so whoops! Can't complete the level! Go back for a second time and see what you missed! ^_^ Yeah, just what I want to fucking do, retread the past two fucking hours I spent lost and getting my ass continually beaten down by space beasties. Fuck you, Iguana.
Turok 1 was a lot of fun, I think I'd be more interested in plopping that one in than its sequel. Shhyeah, right, right after I plop in Ecco the Dolphin: Defender of the Future and the dozens of other games I get nostalgic about for 5 minutes and long to play again. To Ecco's credit, I made it to the final boss but could never beat him. Fantastic game, but I digress.
Turok 3 was cool, but I never did more than rent it. I already had its first 3 predecessors (Rage Wars being the 3rd for those who don't remember), and eh, a third epic adventure seemed superfluous. I give it points for having cool cinematics and atmosphere and for killing off Joshua in the beginning.
Turok: Rage Wars is probably my favorite and the game I got the most play time out of, both single and multiplayer (though obviously single-player was nothing more than death matches). Cool arenas, good weapons, lots of laughs and shouts and bursts of anger, but the good kind. Good music, too. The super-power aspect of the game made things fun too, not annoying and cheap like super-powers done poorly in other shooters and fighters.
I mentioned Shadowman in the beginning of this post as well. That was another game I had a lot of fun with. I think my file is corrupted by now, those shitty 3rd party N64 save packs never held up well, did they? I wish there was a way to get a good one nowadays. But then, I know it's a worthless wish, because I'm sure history would repeat itself, I'd grab 15 or so dark souls, and my ADD and internet-addiction would grab hold of me again. Seems I'm more inclined to talk and read about games than play them. Shadowman had a pretty badass story, though, the kind of dark shit that was rare to see on N64. I almost wish I had the patience for it, but then, maybe the game should have done a little more so I'm not wandering around the same fucking corridor for the 19th time in the past 3 hours saying "Where the fuck do I go now? WHERE?!? ARRRRGHH"