Turok 2: Seeds Of Evil Review

8.5

Format PC

Developer Iguana

Publisher Acclaim

Genre Unknown

Open the door, get on the floor, everybody walk the dinosaur. Then shoot it in the face. Bothering reptiles: Charlie Brooker

For Nintendo 64 owners, December '98 must have seemed like Christmas. In fact, come to think of it, it was Christmas, but even if the Yuletide season had been cancelled they'd still have had two good reasons to celebrate.

Following a lengthy gaming drought, Zelda: Ocarina Of Time and Turok 2: Seeds of Evil, two of the best console games in the history of everything, arrived on the shelves just in time for Christ's birthday. Us PC owners were too busy playing Half-Life to notice, of course, but more on that later.

Anyway, following a brief interlude, publishers Acclaim have brought Turok 2 to the PC, where it can flourish in all its high-resolution glory. And it's still a very, very good game. But...

First things first

If you have even the remotest whiff of interest in the storyline behind Turok 2, there's something a bit wrong with you. This is an action game, pure and simple. Still, for those of you anal enough to care, the basic premise is that you (yes, you) are Joshua Fireseed, aka Turok the Dinosaur Hunter, a Native American who's as hard as nails, and you've been sent into some place called the Lost Land to wipe out the evil forces of the Primagen.

That's the dull bit. The interesting bit is this: you get to kill loads and loads of vaguely humanoid dinosaur creatures by using a bewildering array of fancy weaponry. Some of the guns on offer are weird and futuristic, some are hideously violent (see panel on the opposite page), and the majority of them cause all manner of intensely pretty lighting and smoke effects to dance about the screen in a beguiling fashion. It's like One Million Years BC spliced together with Saving Private Ryan and fed through a mid-seventies Top Of The Pops effects desk. Kind of.

For the most part, Turok 2 is a compelling mix of action and exploration. But there are some glaring problems. Which we'll examine at length, starting now.

Dino drawbacks

One word: fog. Fog, fog, fog, fog, fog. It sounds like a swear word, and as far as 3D games go it should be. You've played Half-Life, right? You know how you can see waaaay into the distance? And Quake II: not much pop-up there, is there? Anyone who's played multiplayer QII could write an essay on the joy of long-distance railgun fragging. It's called depth of field. And its something sorely lacking from Turok 2.

The problem is this: the game was designed for the Nintendo 64, which, powerful though it is, can't really cope with huge 3D environments. To solve this problem, the programmers have split each level into bite-size chunks (linked together with 'portals') and introduced heavy fogging - which means you can't see structures or enemies until they're relatively close. To be fair, you soon get used to the fogging, but many seasoned PC gamers will find it unforgivable, not to mention laughable.

The other problem concerns the gameplay itself. Rather like that other classic N64 shooter GoldenEye, Turok 2 requires you to complete a set of mission objectives before exiting each level. Nothing wrong in that - except when you find yourself reaching the final portal, only to be told that you must go back and scour the entire stage again, looking for the objects you failed to discover first time around. That isn't a challenge, that's a chore. It's boring. It's dull. It should never have been allowed to happen.

At the end of the day...

Look, we don't want to sound too negative. Check out the score: like we said, Turok 2 is a very, very good game. We do feel that Iguana could have spent more time utilising the PC's strong points (by joining the levels together a la Half-Life and removing the fogging, for example), but despite this they've still come up with an engrossing, exciting game packed with plenty of surprises.It's also pretty damn huge, and will keep you rivetted from beginning to end. It may be more console-oriented than the likes of Half-Life, but in the occasionally musty world of PC games a little arcade immediacy is no bad thing. Anyone should lap up Turok 2. Except perhaps dinosaurs.