Turok: Dinosaur Hunter

This game is now being turned into a movie by Adam Beach and Hayden "Darth Vader" Christensen. Too bad. It will most likely completely destroy any dignity left upon it after all those awful sequels.

Turok remains one of the best for the Nintendo 64 gaming system. Yes, I play video games, because where else can you live out your movie heroes? You should get one.

Turok gets 5/5 stars from me...

John Ulmer

This was one of the first games I played on the N64, and one of my favorites. It not only launched the Turok franchise but also altered the landscape for first-person shooters.

Based on the comic book of the same name, a Native American warrior named Tal'Set aka Turok embarks on a quest throughout the Lost Land to stop the evil Campaigner from obtaining an ancient weapon called the Chronosceptor and using it to conquer the universe.

Your main objective is to collect keys to unlock the other 8 large worlds and eventually infiltrate the Campaigners fortress to confront him. The game's formula is a masterful combination of Doom's hardcore first-person shooting and Tomb Raider's exploring, platforming, and puzzle solving. Turok greatly helped expand on the first person shooter formula established by Doom and Duke Nukem. Not only was this one of the first fully 3D first person shooters, but gave the player bigger levels to traverse and explore, like jungles, fields, temples, caves, and finally the Campaigners sci-fi styled fortress in the finale.

As the games title suggests, you'll kill dinosaurs such as Velociraptors, Dimetrodon, and Triceratops. Eventually, you'll even battle a cyborg T-Rex as a boss. But there are plenty of other enemies to fight, like poachers, savage tribesmen, giant insects, demons, robots, and even aliens.

The graphics were revolutionary for the time for an FPS, with completely rendered 3D environments. Each stage was fully detailed and textured, with trees, boulders, jungle huts, and ancient ruins. The sprites for Turok and the enemies were fully polygonal, well-designed and had fluid, life-like movements.

You'll wield ordinary weapons hunting knife, pistol, shotgun, and assault rifle. Later, you'll wield much more badass weapons, like a mini-gun, pulse rifle, fusion cannon, and, if you collect all of the pieces, the powerful Chronosceptor itself that makes the final boss a snap.

All of the sounds were amazing for the time, with loud and intense gunfire and explosions, realistic enemy sounds like poachers grunting or shouting, raptor snarls, Purlinn roars, and giant insects screeching. The ambient sounds of the levels were great too, like chittering monkeys in the jungle or water dripping in caves. The music had a mysterious and ancient feel to it with heavy use of percussion and woodwind.

But given its release early in 3D games history, flaws were inevitable. The distance fog made combat and navigating the levels difficult at times and it allowed enemies to appear seemingly out of nowhere to ambush you. The platforming can be pretty frustrating, and sometimes you'll be forced to jump over bottomless pits onto narrow platforms, requiring precise timing. Some of the levels had frustrating layouts that were easy to get lost in, like the Catacombs. Yes, there was a map to help you out, but you really had to know your bearings to avoid losing your way.

In the end, Turok Dinosaur Hunter was and still is a masterpiece N64 and is still enjoyable today on the PC via Steam.

Turok is one of my favourite games on the N64, it has shooting, gore and object finding. The weapons are normal and sci-fi looking and the enemies are a mix of people and dinosaurs. The graphics may seem cheap compared to the modern games but I still enjoy playing it. One problem is that the keys to enter the next level can be hard to find and annoying at parts but besides that Turok: Dinosuar Hunter is a good game to play.

I also recommend the sequels to this game, Turok 2: Seeds of Evil, Turok 3: Shadow of Oblivion, Turok: Rage Wars, Turok: Evolution.

Check this game out at the local video game shop, you can get it at a bargain than it's original price that I heard was £70.

I rented this game a lot when it came out because for one it was pretty fun, but also because the Nintendo 64 just did not have a huge array of games at this point for its system. Cartridges seem to take longer to make compared to CD's. This one has you playing as the title character Turok and you are a guy who hunts dinosaurs...in this one first person style. I can explore this vast land and can kill my fair share of dinosaurs, though I also have to say I never came close to winning this one. The first time I rented it I could not save, because you needed a save card for it. I do not understand why, seeing as how it is a cartridge and by this time you could save on cartridges no problem. Just look at all those Super NES games! The next few times I could walk around in some areas, but others I would be killed very quickly. I gave up on ever winning this one when I got slaughtered not by a dinosaur, but some dude in his pickup truck. I would later try one other Turok game, but it too was a bit to challenging. Not quite as bad as this one as I at least knew what to do in that one, here you are kind of wandering around trying to figure what to do. How was I supposed to know you could find pieces of things you need in very obscure places? Why is a dude in a truck so much tougher than the dinosaurs? Why did they have to make a game that should of been a great time and make it so difficult by hiding things you need so well and making the game so hard to figure out? I am guessing this game had a strategy guide that would be very beneficial to a person playing this. As it is, it is fun to pass a few hours, but unless you are a top notch game player do not expect to get to far without some type of aid.

I only found out about the comic book(and have not read it) after completing the game, but I understand that they have little to do with each other. This takes place in The Lost Land, a different dimension in which all the stuff the developers thought up and didn't want to abandon could co-exist, and you must fight your way through many enemies, to finally rescue the world... or something. Of course, you wouldn't know any of that unless you read it somewhere(well, it is in the manual), such as on-line, because the game makes less than any attempt at telling you(but hey, at least the story does make the whole deal with being able to resurrect(the game lets you have extra lives, the way FPSs that went before it did) make sense and able to be explained within the context of it). The Lost Land is divided up into about eight different(even though several of them are similar to one another) areas, and you have to find the keys to all but the very first one, searching through each but the last for them. The game is an FPS, or First Person Shooter, and is steps(not leaps) beyond Doom. It features elements of adventure and platform games, a 360 degree camera, and things you'd expect to be in an FPS. There are some Boss fights. Adversaries are plentiful, and there are many different kinds. The AI is fair. Among said elements of other game types are a number of jumping puzzles, and vast areas to explore(mainly in search of the keys, of which, on average, there are three per level). Those two, in particular the first, coupled with the fact that the game only allows saving your progress at specific points(which there aren't that many of), are likely to cause all but the most stoic of players frustration, possibly even of tremendous potency. The difficulty level is reasonable, if not always even. Sound is OK, no real major ups or downs, all in all. Graphics are rather well-done, all the way through, and the fog helps create atmosphere. There are few bugs or glitches in the game, but some "clipping" issues can be another source of irritation. Level design is pretty good, be prepared to spend a lot of time(considering how short the game is) running around, looking for where to go. Whether or not that's a positive or a negative thing is up to the individual player. You'll go through catacombs, a tree-top village and a forest. You will face and fight many other opponents in addition to the dinosaurs the appearance of which explain the title. Being an FPS released in the late nineties(as opposed to the early nineties, which was when the sub-genre of action gaming started), the game lets you jump and swim, and there are elevators and the like, in addition to the entirely free camera. One thing this has that not too terribly many FPSs have, at the very least at the time this was released, is climbing walls. Not all walls let you do this, but some, you can scale. There are ladders, as well, and the system for going up or down either isn't half bad. Jumping, while I personally could have done without quite so much of it, tends to be supported well by its system, if the furthest jump(which is, of course, important to master for any area that requires its use) demands something of a combination of keys pressed(especially for a game which doesn't fall into another sub-genre of action, fighting), if it could have been worse. Design is interesting and notably versatile. The weapons are nicely done, and some are *really* entertaining to use. None are downright boring, although an early one or two will get trumped by later finds. There are modern, old and even futuristic arms in your well-stocked arsenal. There tend to be one of each basic kind, but some are similar to one another, in fact, the whole "energy powered and energy unleashing gun" is done several times. The game-play is fun, and can be intense. One noteworthy aspect is that you can go back through earlier areas throughout the very most part of the game, if the progression through the levels, as far as I've been able to tell, remains entirely linear(not within the levels themselves, at least not necessarily, more in the *order* of the eight levels). I didn't care for the way so many foes re-spawn, and at times soon, some even about immediately, after, that, to me, takes away the point of fighting them at all(as opposed to just running past them). In addition to saving your game, you will also find checkpoints, and if you die in the game, you will resurrect at the last passed checkpoint, or the last place you did save, whichever was the more recent of the two. There are sci-fi aspects in this, including dimensional portals, but it's mostly fantasy, and decent if you want to play a game populated by the well-known pre-historic creatures who graciously lend their name to the title of this video-game(the middle word, in case you remained outside the always pleasant state of certainty). This doesn't have terribly much blood or gore for the type of game it is, but some deaths are somewhat disturbing. I've read conflicting information from two separate sources, so I'm unsure of the background of the Turok character featured herein(and in spite of my tireless prodding, the only words he ever uttered during the time I spent controlling him remained "I... am Turok", which, albeit it does do a nice job of cementing his identity or title, whichever it is, or both, it in no way answers any other question the player might have), but what I can say is that he is a Native American(to be PC), and he's in The Lost Land. I recommend this to fans of action, First Person Shooters, science fiction and fantasy. But mostly the first two. 7/10