Turok (PC) Review

The titular Native American hero and the strange, dinosaur-inhabited Lost Lands, have always been the central core that the Turok comic book series revolved around; a series spanning for more than 50 years, and under the roof of five different publishers. Typical of Night Dive Studios, the original has only been lightly enhanced, with the most notable visual upgrade - amongst things like Dynamic Lighting, Bloom, and water reflections - being the widescreen support. Besides these, the level design and enemy AI have also been tweaked a bit, some rough edges (bugs) have been ironed out, and the controls are now 100% remappable. For some strange reason, however, the console-esque checkpoint system of the N64 hasn't been replaced with the, now standard, mechanic of being able to save anywhere.

Problem numero uno: the weirdness of the comic book is almost nowhere to be seen. In fact, despite the title being Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, a more appropriate one would be, "Turok: kills many men, and, once in a while, a dinosaur or two." Furthermore, it's one of those games that haven't aged so well, with boring-looking levels that are just a bunch of differently coloured jungles, annoyingly repetitive tribal drum-filled music, and bland enemy design. Sure, the mecha-Tyrannosaurus, which scans the room with a laser eye, as well as the way blood gushes from the throats of shot humans, are cool, but they can't really improve things on the whole.

Gameplay-wise, it's all about the good ol' FPS formula of shooting everything that moves and isn't the main character, stopping only once in a while to collect a required key. Initially, many will be surprised, or even annoyed, by the protagonist's speed (which is, undoubtedly, marginally faster than the speed Doomguy and Serious Sam can reach), as well as by the way the first-person camera bobs around, making the view feels as if piloting a hovercraft. Fortunately, it's not hard to get used to all this, and, to be honest, running like crazy and shooting down baddies is probably the best thing here.

Note that while enemies never appear in large groups, they respawn quite fast, and since ammo is somewhat scarce (as they rarely drop any), there's a wonderful feeling of restlessness, forcing Turok to keep on moving forward in order to avoid facing a foe more than once, spending his much needed ammunition. Gunfights, however, are not without flaws. Besides some minor problems, like an unfair melee hit distance or bullets hitting thin air from time to time, the enemies either fall into the ridiculous strafe-to-avoid category, or the extremely cheap 'rifles-never-miss' one.

No matter how fun they are, all simplistic shooters such as this can soon become very repetitive. Doom took care of that problem with a fantastic level design (and atmosphere), and the Serious Sam series oversimplified stages in exchange for an insane amount of enemies per area. Turok's solution? A tedious array of strikingly linear stages, and lots of mind numbing, plus, to tell the truth quite awkward, platform sessions! As for those who were eagerly waiting for their beloved FPS to come to Steam, they are advised to put pitchforks and torches aside, and take a good look at the price. If £13.39 for an 18-year-old videogame sound good, then this humble reviewer has nothing more to add.