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Dom Robinson reviews
Acclaim
- Price: £39.99
- Players: 1-2
Turok Evolutionapparently takes you back to Turok’s early days as a fight with your enemy,Captain Tobias Bruckner, in Texas 1886, sees you fall into a rift throwing youback into the Lost Lands where you’re rescued by the River Village, archenemies of Lord Tyrannus who has appointed Bruckner as his new general (see…the baddy came back with you)
I was a big fan of the original PC game with its then-cutting edge 3Dfx graphicsand wide, expansive and well-detailed levels with a number of interestingpuzzles to be solved. The sequel lost it somewhat, as the levels were too bigand I found myself roaming around in circles after a few of them and gave itup. Inbetween outings for the dinosaur hunter have seen the light of day onthe N64 and the Gameboy… and now this is meant to be a new dawn for Turokas he appears on all the major consoles.
Early on in the PR marketing campaign I received an easter egg (as in, eggsthat dinosaurs lay, although this one was yummy chocolate in a green wrapper -try teaching a Triceratops to do that!), but sadly the end product beingreviewed here turned out to be rather less sumptuous.
Firstly, you instantly lose the feeling of a “go anywhere” play area becauseyou can’t… go anywhere, that is. Stray too far and you get hemmed in by’walls’ of shrubbery which, when mixed together, makes you feel less like you’rein a jungle and more like you’re on a film set with a load of cartoon cut-outs,such is the effect given by the scenery. If you’ve ever seen the video forMorgan’s “Flying High”, then you’ll know what I mean.
Also, the soundtrack loops, so the music heats up at regular moments rarelycorresponding with what’s onscreen thus losing its emphasis as a result.
As I mentioned earlier, I enjoyed the original PC game, even though it did attimes feel like a great game engine in need of a better game. However, at leastit gave you a feeling of being there, partly because they looked so spacious.In comparison, here it’s just tons of confusing greenery after another andafter too much of it… it gets boring.
Another problem? Go too long on a level and die then you have to restart fromscratch as you can’t save mid-level. However, while an early flying level wasbroken up into smaller chunks as you got to the next part, the picture stiltedand then stopped and then you were told that the next part of the level wasloading. It was almost starting to resembleDaikatana, dareI mention that turkey’s name.
If I need go on, there’s also slowdown and pop-up along the way. Sorry, butthere’s just too many things wrong and not enough right as if the developershaven’t learned from the problems of the past.
SOUND EFFECTS AND MUSIC
PLAYABILITY
ENJOYMENT
OVERALL
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.