Turok on Steam

This review contains minor spoilers and self opinions.

As one of the first FPS of its generation, Turok surprised us with big enemies, big guns, big levels, lots of secrets to find and nice graphics back in early 1997. Turok has shown that the FPS genre is not limited to the Quake formula, expanding its genre with big open levels, keys, lives and a HUB, for exemple.

GAMEPLAY: In Turok, you are first presented in a forest. No intro, no cutscenes. The only story known is some great evil is taking the forest apart and you the Dinosaur Hunter should stop it. And that's about it.
In 10-30 minutes of progress through the first forest, you find out a place called The HUB where you can access any level at any time, go back to past levels and search for secrets that he left behind or keys to proceed to the future levels. This system may be nice, forcing the player to explore the level instead of just go through corridors which is very common in today's FPS, but if you miss a single key in a level you have to try the level again and again and again until you find it. It happened only once to me and believe me, it's annoying.
You can't save the game everywhere. Instead you find especific places to save through the levels.
The weapon variety is great. You start the game with a single knife and a bow. As you proceed the levels you have access to better weapons such as the pistol, the shotgun and weapons go all the way to high tech plasma rifles. The Chronoscepter is the ultimate weapon of the game that you can acquire it collecting its pieces throughout the levels of the game. Turok has a great balance with its weapons even as you proceed to the end of the game, making the player use almost every weapon he has until the end. It's fun and it works pretty well.
The enemies are the weak point of the game. Turok has a low variety of enemies through its levels. The enemies change while you progress, yes, but their attacks are exactly the same even if the models are different, which is unpleasent and sometimes boring. The boss' battles are weak too. If you are expecting a intense and hard experience against the bosses, you chose the wrong game to play. Their attacks have a clear pattern and the boss get very easy when you find out its patterns. Running around in circles and shooting them until the end works well with every boss.
Still, the level design of the game is very well made. The levels are big. Not only that, they also have nice challenges with plataforms, lava, holes, fake holes, buttons to access secret passages, portals, fire, water and until the end of the game you will discovering new challenges which make the levels very interesting and different from each other. Overall, the level design is what highlight the game into a satisfying experience.
GRAPHICS: Back in 1997, the graphics were great. The jungle, the animals, the fire, the water, the terrain, the weapons design, the animations, everything was made to turn Turok into a realistic and intense experience. So much that, that the Nintendo 64 had a close fog to the player and had problems with lag when the screen was full of enemies which could be annoying sometimes. The enemies models are ugly with a single expression and their animations are very simple. This didn't bother me at all though, since it's still a 1997 game and I wasn't expecting much from it since most games from its time was like this. However, the weapons are very well designed and works nice together with the glowing, colored and sometimes realistic sprites. The textures have a decent resolution and it's not much detailed, I could point it as a passive point of the game's graphics.
SOUND: The sounds are okay. The sound effects are not bad at all but it's not something to notice much through the game. The weak point is that the enemies voices get really repetitive as you progress but it's not much to be bothered though.
The music of the entire game is a bit intense with beat and drums and changes with every level you progress. They are not that memorable though.
LASTING APPEAL: Since you need keys to progress the game, you will find yourself searching for every key through every level in the game if you want to get to the end of it. If you want to take the game a little further, you can search for every Chronoscepter piece too and unlock the ~ultimate weapon~ of the game. It took me 6 hours to finish the game, find every Chronoscepter piece and find half of the secrets. If you progress a little slower you can take up to 8 hours to do all this but not much more than this. The game offers cheats and about 20 secrets to find to extend the lasting appeal, but, unlike its successor, the lack of multiplayer can be unsatisfying to some people like me that likes to enjoy this kind of game with friends. All of this shouldn't go much more than 8-10 hours of playing time, but thankfully we're not paying a full price for this like back in the day.
PORT: Night Dive Studios made an excelent job reviving Turok. The game features new graphics enhancements like bloom, light shafts, reflections and SSAO which can be weird for some (I personally disable them) and pleasent to others. It works fluid 60 FPS everytime in HD resolution on my GTX 460 with no problems and no patches needed. The fog are way extended and if you don't like it you can use the old N64 fog too. The keyboard + mouse works exactly the way you expect them to work and the gamepad is now adapted to be modern-like FPS, making the Turok experience even better than the Nintendo 64 one.

CONCLUSION: Turok is a great shooter even for today's standards. The variety of weapons, levels and challenges sums up to make Turok a nice and intense experience. The graphics are simple and not much something to notice to but Night Dive Studios remaster brings new graphics features which can make Turok an entirely new experience from before with no lag, HD resolution and fluid animations. The controls are simple and work exactly the way you expect them to with gamepad support. If you don't like them you can change it anytime in the pause/input menu. The game is about 7-10 hours long with every secret found. The price is just about right too. If you liked the old 1997 Turok, buy it and enjoy this great remastered version.

tl;dr: Great remaster of the 1997 classic. If you enjoy fast-paced action, lots of guns and challenging levels, buy this.

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Alice Sakurai

179 products in account

3 reviews

Recommended

5.9 hrs on record

Posted: January 7

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SparkyNinja

156 products in account

4 reviews

13.9 hrs on record

20 bucks is a tad much but I got it when it was on sale. If you think about it, this is the same price Nintendo is charging many of it's N64 games on their digital console. Those games don't have any graphics updates or anything (as far as I know).

This brought back many memories. When I first played Turok on N64 I was probably just old enough to enjoy the game mechanics (I mostly plugged the cheats in, got all weapons and blew everything up). However I lacked the discipline to be able to navigate a lot of the large worlds and play the game it was meant to be played. Doing that felt great. It brought back a lot of good memories and felt good to beat the game the way it was meant to be played.

I knew what I was getting. Don't expect a huge new re-made game. Expect Turok: Dinosaur Hunter and you won't be disappointed.

EsX_Cobra

78 products in account

1 review

10.6 hrs on record

Nostalgia mode on.

And my grain of sand comes saying that despite it is remastered, it actually keep and enchance the gameplay without hurting anything, at least so far to me.

Dar✖ide | Kojima Kirby

315 products in account

6 reviews

8.1 hrs on record

Posted: January 6

Seeing this game on Steam is something I never imagined would be here. Brings a tear to my eye and hope for the future of Turok. As for this game, don't even get me started. Night Dive Studios did an amazing job porting this game to PC the right way. Everything that a PC game should have, is there. Mind you, this game is old, N64 old. So they could only do so much for the graphics, although there's a handful of options, more than you would expect from a game this old. The game plays like a charm. Super responsive controls unlike the original PC/N64 version. My only gripe is that they didn't add a "save anytime/anywhere" function. It's vanilla as can be as only being able to save between levels, just like the Original. That's both a bad and good thing; Bad, because these levels are HUGE and not everybody has the patience to beat a level in one sitting and good, because it adds to the challenge.

Turok is an amazing game and the steep price shouldn't hold you back. There's idiots out there that pay $120 for a game with little content. *cough*Star Wars Battlefront *cough* I can't wait to see how they fix the FPS issue with Turok 2: Seeds of Evil because that game suffered from very bad frame drops in the N64 and PC port.

I highly recommend this game!

The Bang Master

322 products in account

6.9 hrs on record

Being a gamer who plays shooters on PC primarily, it's nice to be able to play an old favourite of mine. I have Turok, and Turok 2 on N64, and it's nice to play them with my desired control method.

What draws me to these games is their originality (native americans fighting dinosaurs, aliens, cosmic horrors.) and the colourful and epic weapons. The levels are pretty big and fairly linear, so you won't find yourself getting too lost, the enemies have decent AI (they roll to the side to dodge bullets etc etc) and if you shoot them in the right way they clasp at their neck gasping for air before dying.

The platform sections can be a bit irritating, but, they had those back in the halcyon days of FPS games, so I can't grumble too much about it.

All in all, a must buy if you loved the originals. and for those who haven't played a Turok game, give it a whirl if you're sick of the same cookie cutter 'realistic' modern military shooters.

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January 5

Update #2 is available now!

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