In Turok: Dinosaur Hunter (Turok) a native American man got sucked into another dimension in order to protect the lost land from evil. Here time, space, and other realms merge, making for the perfect excuse to have the player hunt dinosaurs with a lot of fancy weaponry. This includes such boring, but practical items as a knife, a bow, and the flashy fusion canon.
The music is memorable, even if the ambient sounds are rather terrible. The composer went for a lot of fast-paced drum beats and tribal-style music.
Most people will remember Turok from the Nintendo 64 (N64) system, which was a very well-received shooter with huge levels and quite good graphics. Since the N64 is ancient and looks like crap these days, Night Dive somehow got the rights for the original game and yes, Seeds of Evil is on the way as well. Anyhow, this is not a port as one might think. They went the extra length and upgraded and upscaled the graphics, with modern resolutions and some tweaks here and there to the levels. This means that water jumping might not be plausible anymore. All the cheats have been included as well, aside from pen and ink mode, which is a shame. A cross-hair and the ability to adjust the field of view is a very nice addition. It must be mentioned that enemies have become quite aggressive and even more so on hard mode, and they can spot you from long distances. Sometimes a human hits a dinosaur and the latter will retaliate. Regardless, the hard mode does not mean more health, just more bullets, and speed.
The most noticeable difference is that everything is crisp and that imposing fog has been pushed far into the background. After all, a decent PC has more processing power. Although this is Turok, there’s at least one very stupid thing; the plot. It’s virtually nonexistent and the last boss has one of the lamest names imaginable.
The goal of each level is to find the keys, which Turok can drink from. Don’t ask, just don’t. Aside from that there is also a piece of the Chrono Scepter on each level. It’s a super weapon that will rip the last boss a new one. Not that it’s needed. Now that it’s on Steam there are some achievements as well. The controls are very well thought out and incredibly intuitive. The game uses a modern control scheme, so it works with a gamepad, keyboard, and mouse. Gameplay is quite simple indeed. You can run, jump, swim and shoot things while moving extremely fast. Due to the arcade nature of the game, the player has extra lives as well, which can be replenished by picking up some floating triangles. When he collects 100, your character shouts: “I’m TUROK!” to no one in particular.
At least I enjoyed Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, and that’s not just nostalgia talking. Due to violence and the simple retro graphics, this game is not for everyone. Not that the little blood there is and the silly death animations stopped me as a kid. It’s just something to keep in mind. Incidentally, the game is now on Steam and if interested, you can follow the link below:
Njål Sand is a Norwegian Cosplayer with opinions on video games, and a passionate for creating content on YouTube about living in Norway, and gaming!