Turok 2 Is Better Than The First Plain And Simple.
Fireseed. Joshua Fireseed.
Doesn’t sound as classy as James Bond’s greeting, eh? And that’s one thing this game unfortunately lacks: class. Think of GoldenEye, but “Americanized”, and you’ll get the picture. Althoug a nice stoogereno now and then mcstongs the funaroon.
Turok 2 was billed as the GoldenEye killer. Does it warrant such a reputation? Does it warrant such hype? (Hell, even IGN jumped on the Turok bandwagon!) In a word, no. Turok 2 is a good game, but nothing exceptional, and certainly nothing classic. It has moments of great appeal, but also has gameplay areas that are severely lacking.
Gameplay : Turok 2 stars Joshua Fireseed, who’s taken on the role of Turok from his predecessor, Tal’set. As usual in these sorts of games, Joshua is this macho man type of guy who’s sent to prevent some dumb crackpot named the Primagen from destroying the universe. Aided by this sumptuous chick named Adon, Turok travels through six big, confusing worlds trying to defeat the hordes of enemies, save a few children and prisoners who are (for some reason that we’ll never know) just imprisoned in the middle of nowhere, and prevent the Pillars of Light from being destroyed. It’s the standard wacko plot. Suffice to say that Turok has a lot of shooting to do.
Playing as Turok is certainly enjoyable – for a period. Then, you realize that, well, the only point of playing this game is killing various creatures. Now, this is the object of all first-person shooters; however, most try to put some realistic objectives in: ‘save all hostages’, ‘defuse bomb’, ‘eliminate Xenia’, and so on. Turok’s objectives are quite blatantly invitations to look for trouble: ‘free prisoners’ (that is, follow the sound of the victims’ yells through spooky swamps while various monsters pop out at you), ‘protect totem’ (oh no, there seem to be a dozen Endtrails guarding the energy totem! Why, here’s a shotgun!), and other instructions that might as well read ‘shoot that ugly mofo in front of you’.
“But who cares?” you ask, “After all, this game’s about shooting and killing!” Well, Turok 2 accomplishes this part nicely. There are a wide variety of weapons, from the traditional pistols through to futuristic weapons which drill through craniums or plant fragmentation mines all over the place. Oh, and don’t forget the death animations! “Lookee that, that durn raptor got its head shot off and now it’s staggerin’ all over the place! Hyuk!” This is admittedly pretty fun at the start, but the fun of killing quickly (or maybe slowly, depending on the player) wears off as you have to explore everywhere to find a bunch of keys to open the gateway to the next level, where the cycle continues.
This brings me to my main beef with the game: it’s not enjoyable. The first few hours certainly are, as you get to experiment with all sorts of weapons and you meet scary enemies. However, the fun kinda stops after you’ve exterminated all the baddies and have to sift through the area for ammo, health, keys, and other items so that you won’t be wiped out in the next section. To make things worse, save points are incredibly sparse, so you’ll often have to go 45 minutes to an hour before you make it to the next save point! The whole damn selling point of Turok was that it was fun and gory, and yet it just takes itself too seriously and is too hard to let most gamers really have any fun. There’s too much emphasis on survival (instead of fun; who can afford to have fun when you have to conserve every bullet?) and tedious exploration, and the confusing levels don’t help too much.
Turok does however get some things right. The non-linearity of the game is interesting. You don’t have to go to the levels in sequence, and your tedious key collecting is rewarded later on since you can access several new levels in the order that you choose. What’s more, you return to the earlier levels late in the game to collect items. This is an obvious but effective way of extending the game’s life and hey, guess what, it’s fun! You’ve got all the advanced weapons now and you’re facing relatively weak enemies, so FINALLY you can let relax and let loose with the trigger. Unfortunately it might be a case of too little, too late. If the whole game had played more like this and less like a scavenger hunt, it might’ve been genuinely good.
Graphics : It’s sad to see that Turok 2’s main claim to fame was its graphics and animations, but then again they really were awesome, even without the extra enhancement added by the expansion pack. The enemies are very well drawn and look very realistic, not to mention very scary. The guns all have nice effects, and the death animations bring out the psychopath in all of us. The thing is that the omnipresent fog, used so that the game’s vast environments don’t overwhelm the N64’s processor, is a bit too prominent and crosses the line between being atmospheric and annoying.
Even with the fog, Turok’s framerate takes a hit. It’s usually acceptable, but when there are more than two enemies on the screen everything starts to stutter. The fact that some of the weapons, such as the Scorpion Launcher, Firestorm Cannon, and Flamethrower are very graphics-intensive, doesn’t help. Usually, Acclaim keeps the enemy number down, but at the end of every world you’ll have to defend an energy totem from a dozen or so angry enemies. Sheer blasting fun, you would think, except that the framerate gets so bad you’ll be looking at a PowerPoint presentation. Not only does this really hurt the atmosphere and realism, but it also makes near-impossible to aim.
Sound : The graphics got all the hype, but in the end it’s the sound that really comes through. The creepy orchestral score stays in the background for most of the game, soft, pulsating, nervous. Only when you get to a critical point in the action does the music flare up, but when it does, it’s fantastic, inspiring and scary at the same time. The sound effects are also very nice; guns sound nicely futuristic, and the low growls, moans and mutterings of enemies will really freak you out. The music and impressive ambience set you up, and the spirit-rending shrieks of the two raptors that just jumped in front of you do the rest.
The voice acting is also excellent. Adon sounds nice in her introductions and the dramatic level intros provide an oddly realistic sense of urgency and dread. It’s a pity that you can’t skip any of the cutscenes, though, because they take a long time. Most of them are very good the first time around, and the initial Oblivion cutscene – showing mysterious warriors and menacing whispers – really gets your adrenaline pumping for the first big melee of the game. It’s a pity that the actual gameplay is ordinary, because the sound does its job perfectly.
Turok 2’s multiplayer was supposed to dethrone Goldeneye’s. Well, that statement is a load of mcstoogearen, and so is Turok’s multiplayer. Let’s take it point by point:
There’s no music. Well, this isn’t vital for a multiplayer game, but it kind of gets repetitive when the only sounds are gunshots and the “whoosh” of guns reappearing.
The gun selection is meager; eight weapons is all you get. That’s right, no flamethrower, prox frag mine launcher, pistol, shotgun, etc. Also, many of the weapons that are available are toned down versions, so don’t expect that many awesome animations in multiplayer. Shame, really, since awesome animations are what the game’s built around.
The guns are unbalanced. The crossbow is the only weapon that can kill in one hit (with a head shot), so experts will bypass the assault rifles for the crossbow. Newbies, on the other hand, will gravitate towards the rocket and grenade launchers, which do 30% damage in one solid hit, and the Cerebral Bore, which takes half your life off and is almost impossible to evade. Most of the other weapons will be ignored – who has time to snipe with the Plasma rifle, when someone can simply lock onto you with the Cerebral Bore and fire away? Not to mention the fact that the assault rifles do comparatively low amounts of damage.
The levels look bad. The design is okay, but you select the one kind of wall texture. Kinda repetitive, no? Plus, there are few awesome sniping spots or cubbyholes, and no large open spaces like GoldenEye’s temple where explosives can come into effect. All the venues look exactly like paintball or laser-tag arenas – there are no arenas such as GE’s Caverns or Caves or Perfect Dark’s Ravine. Thus, the scenery is bland and there are no real water spots (the “water” level is more confusing than fun) or non-90 degree angles.
Another thing that plagues both the multiplayer and the single player is the fact that there is no reloading. This means that you can just stockpile ammo (or turn on the infinite ammo cheat) and hold Mr. Z down. Not only can this be somewhat cheap, but it also hurts the realism factor.
So basically, the multiplayer’s not fun. Memorize arena. Get cerebral bore. Find opponent. Lock on. Kill. Repeat.
Sorry Acclaim. It’s obvious that you (for once) have put great effort into a game, and true, Turok 2 has great potential. Sadly, several mistakes such as a bland multiplayer, framerate “issues” and a hard saving system hurt Turok’s ratings. While the game is scarily realistic and the visuals and audio shine throughout, the game just isn’t fun enough. Just one major improvement – better multiplayer, better objectives, or less framerate problems – would really give this game a boost, but unfortunately, Turok 2: Seeds of Evil will never be regarded as anything more than “good”.