Guns, Gore, and Dinosaurs — A Turok 2 Review
Recently — thanks, for the most part, to Steam’s Summer Sale — I’ve delved back into the world of the old school, classic first-person shooters. Namely, games like Half-Life, Deus Ex, and Red Faction to list only a few. As part of this nostalgia-filled retro romp, I’ve been writing reviews alongside my playthroughs of each game.
The first game I reviewed was the aforementioned Red Faction. Now, I’ve stepped a few years back in time — back to 1998 to be exact. A year when an unanticipated thrill ride landed on store shelves and took the gaming world by storm. You know exactly which game I’m talking about. That’s right — Turok 2: Seeds of Evil.
Sorry, did you think I was talking about a different game? Half-Life? Never heard of it.
I am Turok!
Turok 2 was released in October of 1998, ahead of the holiday season. It was initially launched on the Nintendo 64, then saw a PC release in December. On the N64, the game was a smash hit. Yet, the game never made much of a splash (and received lukewarm reviews) for its PC port.
Before I get too far ahead of myself here, it’s important to mention that I’ve been playing NightDive’s recent remaster of Turok 2, so it’s not, strictly speaking, the purest experience; however, NightDive changed little of the core gameplay itself.
The biggest changes in the remaster are graphical — adding bloom lighting, motion blur, expanded resolution support, and the like. It runs as smooth as butter and looks gorgeous on modern systems. That being as it may, I’ve deliberately chosen to play the game with only a handful of the shiny new visual improvements in a vain hope of recapturing as much of the authentic retro feel as possible. With that out of the way, let’s get back to the Turok 2 experience.
Oh, Turok you sweet, sweet dinosaur-killing, dimension-hopping Native American with a penchant for gratuitous violence. What a guy and what a video game series. Turok 2 is the better of the original Turok trilogy; and we are going to agree, from this point forward, that the abysmal Turok reboots from both 2002 and 2008 don’t exist. They aren’t real. They can’t hurt us.
The Fight To Stop The Primagen
Unlike the first Turok game, the second features a new Turok, the badass-but-maybe-kinda-racistly-named Joshua Fireseed, who, this time around, teleports across various dimensions or planets or something and fights a multitude of different enemies to stop the diabolical plot of something called the Primagen. It’s all fucking bonkers.
There’s a plot in this game somewhere, but it’s pointless and nobody ever said, “I sure do wish this game about a Native American dinosaur killer who traverses space-time had less action and a deeper plot!” That’s not at all what you came for. No, you came to Turok 2 for a ridiculous, gory, and fun shooter — which is exactly the experience that you get.
You see, Turok 2 comes from a time and place in gaming history when developers sat down to design a new first-person shooter and challenged themselves to come up with crazy cool weapons, over-the-top enemies, and imaginative level designs. Nobody stopped to ask if the story made sense or if the game was too unrealistic. At least that’s how I think Iguana Entertainment, an arm of the now-defunct Acclaim, approached Turok 2, because they checked off every single one those marks.
Crazy cool weapons — CHECK
Over-the-top enemies — CHECK
Imaginative level designs — Ehhhh kinda CHECK
Let’s dive in and begin with the bottom (and the weakest) item on the list: level design.
Lackluster Level Design
So, here’s the deal. Turok 2 features some excellent set-piece moments, not only for its time but even by today’s standards. There are many precarious moments, like scampering up ladders and darting across narrow ledges as distant enemies try to snipe the player. Or, brief but well-done “vehicular” sections that require the player to ride on the back of a massive, rocket launcher equipped dinosaur. Yet, on a larger scale, the level design can be frustrating.
As was the case for many classic shooters, Turok 2’s level design can be unintuitive. Key objectives are sometimes down easy to miss pathways, and the player will receive a “mission failed” message if they try to finish the level without first clearing all objectives. Additionally, certain areas can only be accessed by acquiring special abilities from subsequent levels. What this means is the player will spend a lot of time backtracking.
All of the backtracking could have felt fun if most enemies respawned, or if new areas were more than simple grab-and-go sections. Instead, once the player clears a level, it remains mostly empty, and the go-back-to-move-forward sections offer no new challenge. Worse yet, the levels tend to feel progressively repetitive, and it becomes confusing which way is toward the beginning of the level and which way is toward the end of the level.
This becomes an annoyance after the player has spent the past half-hour retreading an otherwise finished level in search of an overlooked area. Unfortunately, what could have been an opportunity to create a sense of organic exploration becomes a shitty game of Go-Back-And-Find-That-Spot-You-Missed. But, as far as negatives go, that’s it for Turok 2. Everything else is spectacular, including the enemies.
Baddies of The Primal Lands
What’s cooler than massive hybrid dinosoids equipped with energy weapons or humanoid raptors with razor claws? How about glowing molten lava dinosaur-men, or stumpy, musclebound swamp creatures with giant plasma swords, or even mantis-like aliens with futuristic gadgets. That’s right, you get all of that, and more, in Turok 2. Most importantly, these nasty fuckers are more than just eye-candy — they know how to fight.
Turok 2 deserves much more credit for its enemy design. Early in the game, dinosoids will hang back and shoot at the player before occasionally detonating themselves in an attempt to take the player with them after receiving mortal injuries. Other enemy types might rush the player, slamming the ground with area-of-effect attacks. The variety in combat is awesome and requires the player to adapt to new enemy types on each level.
While a large variety of enemies is important, it has to also feel satisfying to kill this myriad of opponents, right? Absolutely — and this game nails the combat down, too.
Blasting an enemy with an explosive sends them flying dramatically into the air, only to come crashing back down in a rain of their own blood. Shotgun fire easily removes heads, leaving behind a crimson geyser as a decapitated enemy falls to its knees. Limbs often react in much the same manner. It’s an absolute blood bath.
Combat in Turok 2 is visceral, outlandish, and undeniably gratuitous. It’s also exactly what you’d expect from a game featuring dinosaur hybrids fighting alongside aliens: good old fashioned fun.
Fun Guns Of Turok 2
You may have already deduced from the previous paragraphs that the weapons in this game are magnificent. Seriously, my compliments to the chef, because they cooked-up one hell of a good time — and, I mean, isn’t that the point of a shooter, to have weapons that are fun to shoot?
Back in the heyday of first-person shooters, there was an arms race. Developers competed to create the wildest, craziest, most insanely awesome guns. Guns that shot bolts of lightning, hunks of molten shrapnel, even globs of acidic goo. You had memorable classics like Doom’s BFG and Super Shotgun or the Devastator from Duke Nukem 3D. These weapons had a singular purpose: to wreck shit and look cool doing it. Well, in this old school arms race, the nation of Turok 2 also built itself an impressive arsenal.
You’ve got weapons like the Tek Bow, equipped with a fancy scope and capable of firing both regular arrows and explosive arrows over long distances. You’ve got the Shredder, a tech’d out shotgun upgrade that fires multiple rounds simultaneously at hypervelocity, creating hard-hitting shrapnel ricochets. Then there’s the dreaded Cerebral Bore, a weapon that locks on to enemies and fires a homing projectile that bores into their skull before finally detonating. My personal favorite is Razor Wind — a spinning, circular blade that, when thrown, travels at high speed, slices through enemies, bounces off walls, and finally return backs to the player coated in blood.
There are over twenty weapons in Turok 2, and all of them handle well. Most weapons have an appropriate range, have an obvious “weight”, and receive some recoil if they fire projectiles. Even the standard version of the shotgun handles surprisingly well.
It was common for shotguns in the first few waves of polygonal shooters to feel weak. Unless you were literally on top of an enemy, shotguns tended to be no more useful than tossing a handful of fucking gummy bears. Fortunately, designers behind Turok 2 realized standard buckshot has an effective range of up to 35 yards, so the shotgun serves as a solid mid-range weapon against most enemies.
A Must-Buy Classic
Overall, Turok 2 is phenomenal. It’s exactly the type of game you’d expect from the 90s. That is fast-paced, violent, and constantly trying to both challenge and excite gamers. Graphically, the game has aged, but I still think it has a bright, almost cheerful color palette, coupled with hilariously outlandish levels of gore. NightDive’s remaster has only made all of these elements better.
If you’re a fan of shooters, retro games, or just love the idea of going absolutely ballistic on dinosaurs, swamp apes, and bug-people, I think you’ll love this game. To put it even simpler, if you’re a serious gamer, then Turok 2: Seeds of Evil is a must-have.
