Turok 3: Shadow of Oblivion
>Released on August 30, 2000, by Acclaim Studios Austin, Turok 3: Shadow of Oblivion sends a new Turok into one last Lost Lands fray, this time to stop the threat of the world-consuming Oblivion forever.
The Personal Story:
After all the hype for Turok 2 in 1998, and my, at the time,
failure to play that particular game well (I have since mastered it), I was pretty Turoked-out. By the time Turok 3 was released, I
had graduated high school and moved on to other things. The
Nintendo 64 was reaching its twilight, and I was giving far more
attention to my Sega Dreamcast than to the good ole fun machine. I
read IGN 64's lukewarm review for Turok 3, felt strange that Turok
3 even existed, never gave it another thought. Years later, I
pulled my Nintendo 64 out of storage and had the revelation that
it is the greatest video game system ever made. I finally played
all the way through Turok and Turok 2, and enjoyed both
experiences immensely. I knew the moment I finished 2, I would
have to complete the trilogy, but finding info on Turok 3 was a
bit like doing research on a party I missed...and that few
attended. Apparently, the video-gaming world had been far more
concerned with the newly released Playstation 2 than taking
another trip to the Lost Lands. Still, I managed to locate a copy
of Turok 3 for myself. Time to find out what I missed.
Graphics: The first moments of Turok 3 gameplay are graphically stunning. As seen in the final picture of this exhibit, the player begins in a fully furnished apartment, the roof smashed, rain falling through, lightning striking and illuminating the room. A vortex to another dimension spins in the sky, and large moving tentacles hang from the skyscraper across the street. A flying police car passes back and forth outside the window, lights blazing, as a futuristic ground vehicle, based on the body of a Star Wars AT-ST walker, stalks the streets below. This may be the single greatest graphical moment in Nintendo 64 history. So much detail and color, so much going on onscreen at the same time, such dynamic lighting, and so much movement. This moment blows many Nintendo 64 games out of the water, and the rest of this dystopian future stage is of near equally high quality. However, as good as the level itself looks, the game quickly begins to feel like a straight to DVD-sequel to Turok 2. Turok 2 featured incredibly high-quality textures, and amazingly high-detailed, life-like enemies, who, when slaughtered, died in drawn-out, gruesome, and high-detailed fashion. When shot, the mostly unmemorable villains of Turok 3 just fall over swiftly and fade away. Even the first Turok had some grisly death animations, yet Turok 3 takes no joy in what was once a series highlight. Turok 2 also featured some excellent texture work. Turok 3 features outstanding textures at points, as well, but many levels also include some inexcusably blurry and pixelated work. The Lost Lands Junkyard stage in particular features some really ugly moments, as well as some unpleasing color schemes. Like its predecessor, Turok 3 also features moments of graphical slowdown, particularly in a lava stage, where Turok must ride an air vent. This does unfortunately hamper the gameplay in that particular moment of Turok 3. However, the amount of actual, game-hampering slowdown in Turok 3 was greatly exaggerated by many journalistic reviews of the game, upon its release. It actually doesn't happen very often. Overall, Turok 3's graphics are maddeningly inconsistent. The first and last stages are particularly beautiful, with the high quality texturing, sharp-detailed, dynamically-lit areas expected of a third-generation Nintendo 64 game. However, other stages are loaded with ugly textures, and the limited animation routines throughout are more of what one would expect from a first-generation title. Finally, it should be mentioned that the Turok series' ever-present distance fog is almost absent here in Turok 3. There are some moments where the player can see for miles. This is, outside of one major factor mentioned below, Turok 3's greatest improvement over the first two games.
Sound: Turok 3 features a dynamic, symphonic (synthesized) soundtrack that changes as the player enters different areas of each of the game's five enormous stages. The music fits each region well, and the changes are pretty seamless, but there is nothing here the player will hum, or even remember the next day. Still, Turok 3's soundtrack gets the job done, blood-pumping during a fast-paced shootout, slowing down introspectively when things are calm. It's pleasing to the ears, and the sound quality of each track is top notch. Sound-effects are as mixed a bag as Turok 3's graphics. Enemy bullets ping around the sound-channel realistically, and monstrous roars are suitably scary, though they are sometimes recycled from past Turok games. Footsteps and incidental sounds are great, but a few of Turok's weapons, particularly the shotgun, sound strangely limp and weak. Finally, Turok 3, befitting its status as a major third-generation title, and as the last game Acclaim released on the Nintendo 64, features loads of character speech by amateur voice-actors, as well as a multitude of cutscenes. While Turok 3 was created before celebrity or professional voice-acting was commonplace in video games, the speech in the game is still quite nice, and does a great job of further immersing the player in Turok 3's world.
Gameplay: What makes a Turok game? Is it a pre-historic setting? Is it grisly death animations? Tribal warfare? Dinosaurs? You're not going to find much of that here. Turok 3: Shadow of Oblivion looks and plays differently from past Turok titles. If anything, it is more visually reminiscent and close in design to the original Half-Life, the classic PC first-person shooter. Turok 3 even features a military scientific base level that looks like a direct rip-off of Half-Life's Black Mesa, replete with a tentacled-boss (also, the stage continues the strange trend that every Nintendo 64 first-person shooter released in the year 2000 must feature a deep-water submarine pen...Perfect Dark, The World Is Not Enough...). Many members of the original Turok team had left Acclaim Studios by this point, which may explain the shift in visuals and design. This may also explain why the gameplay's fun-factor, like every other element in Turok 3, is inconsistent. The opening dystopian future stage is the best designed and most fun to play, with interactive events throughout (for example, being led through the sewers by a civilian who ends up being gobbled to bits, all in real-time), and various modes of gameplay, as Turok fights through the streets, swings across rooftops, evades fast-moving trains in a race through subway tunnels, and slugs it out with a grotesque, enormous level boss (as mentioned above, many of the in-level enemies are unimpressive, but Turok 3's bosses are a sight to see). The game is at its best when the stages are more varied and interactive. Otherwise, lacking the over-the-top violence and spectacular weapons of previous entries, Turok 3 is just an average first-person shooter. However, it must be said that Turok 3 includes, in addition to the lack of distance fog mentioned above, a major plus that previous entries do not: the ability to save anywhere. Previous Turok games often forced the player to play for hours and walk for miles without a save-point in sight. One could put a night into the game, die before finding a save-point, and have to do the whole thing over again the next night. Turok 3's save-anywhere function removes a world of inconvenience. In addition to the single-player mission, Turok 3 includes a decent four-player deathmatch multi-player mode. While the multi-player can be fun, just as Turok 2's can be, Turok 3 features the same, frequently-mentioned flaw as all but one of the Nintendo 64''s first-person shooter death-match featuring games: it isn't Goldeneye.
Lasting Value: The stages in Turok 3 are smaller in size than Turok 2's labyrinthian death-traps. They often hit the sweet-spot in length--long enough to be a challenge, but not long enough to be exhausting. Unfortunately, there are only five of them, taking on average an hour to beat. This means the game can be completed in only five hours. Turok 2 took 25 to complete. Turok 3 does feature the option to play through as two different characters. As Danielle, the player can jump higher and access higher sections of each stage with a grapling hook. As the smaller Joseph, the player has the ability to creep through tiny passages, as well as see through pitch-dark tunnels with night vision. Because of this, certain areas of the game are only accessible to one of the characters, and the player must play through as both to see all of Turok 3's world. Still, playing through as each character only adds up to ten hours of gameplay. There are cheats, but as Turok 3 lacks the heavy fire-power and thorough death-animations of Turok 2, running around with every weapon and blasting apart foes after already beating the game doesn't hold as much appeal. The four-player deathmatch mode adds to Turok 3's total value and play-time, but only for so long as the player and friends can keep the Goldeneye cartridge out of the system. In the end, Turok 3 is a game worth-playing, but it pales in the reflection of its legendary predecessors.
Graphics: The first moments of Turok 3 gameplay are graphically stunning. As seen in the final picture of this exhibit, the player begins in a fully furnished apartment, the roof smashed, rain falling through, lightning striking and illuminating the room. A vortex to another dimension spins in the sky, and large moving tentacles hang from the skyscraper across the street. A flying police car passes back and forth outside the window, lights blazing, as a futuristic ground vehicle, based on the body of a Star Wars AT-ST walker, stalks the streets below. This may be the single greatest graphical moment in Nintendo 64 history. So much detail and color, so much going on onscreen at the same time, such dynamic lighting, and so much movement. This moment blows many Nintendo 64 games out of the water, and the rest of this dystopian future stage is of near equally high quality. However, as good as the level itself looks, the game quickly begins to feel like a straight to DVD-sequel to Turok 2. Turok 2 featured incredibly high-quality textures, and amazingly high-detailed, life-like enemies, who, when slaughtered, died in drawn-out, gruesome, and high-detailed fashion. When shot, the mostly unmemorable villains of Turok 3 just fall over swiftly and fade away. Even the first Turok had some grisly death animations, yet Turok 3 takes no joy in what was once a series highlight. Turok 2 also featured some excellent texture work. Turok 3 features outstanding textures at points, as well, but many levels also include some inexcusably blurry and pixelated work. The Lost Lands Junkyard stage in particular features some really ugly moments, as well as some unpleasing color schemes. Like its predecessor, Turok 3 also features moments of graphical slowdown, particularly in a lava stage, where Turok must ride an air vent. This does unfortunately hamper the gameplay in that particular moment of Turok 3. However, the amount of actual, game-hampering slowdown in Turok 3 was greatly exaggerated by many journalistic reviews of the game, upon its release. It actually doesn't happen very often. Overall, Turok 3's graphics are maddeningly inconsistent. The first and last stages are particularly beautiful, with the high quality texturing, sharp-detailed, dynamically-lit areas expected of a third-generation Nintendo 64 game. However, other stages are loaded with ugly textures, and the limited animation routines throughout are more of what one would expect from a first-generation title. Finally, it should be mentioned that the Turok series' ever-present distance fog is almost absent here in Turok 3. There are some moments where the player can see for miles. This is, outside of one major factor mentioned below, Turok 3's greatest improvement over the first two games.
Sound: Turok 3 features a dynamic, symphonic (synthesized) soundtrack that changes as the player enters different areas of each of the game's five enormous stages. The music fits each region well, and the changes are pretty seamless, but there is nothing here the player will hum, or even remember the next day. Still, Turok 3's soundtrack gets the job done, blood-pumping during a fast-paced shootout, slowing down introspectively when things are calm. It's pleasing to the ears, and the sound quality of each track is top notch. Sound-effects are as mixed a bag as Turok 3's graphics. Enemy bullets ping around the sound-channel realistically, and monstrous roars are suitably scary, though they are sometimes recycled from past Turok games. Footsteps and incidental sounds are great, but a few of Turok's weapons, particularly the shotgun, sound strangely limp and weak. Finally, Turok 3, befitting its status as a major third-generation title, and as the last game Acclaim released on the Nintendo 64, features loads of character speech by amateur voice-actors, as well as a multitude of cutscenes. While Turok 3 was created before celebrity or professional voice-acting was commonplace in video games, the speech in the game is still quite nice, and does a great job of further immersing the player in Turok 3's world.
Gameplay: What makes a Turok game? Is it a pre-historic setting? Is it grisly death animations? Tribal warfare? Dinosaurs? You're not going to find much of that here. Turok 3: Shadow of Oblivion looks and plays differently from past Turok titles. If anything, it is more visually reminiscent and close in design to the original Half-Life, the classic PC first-person shooter. Turok 3 even features a military scientific base level that looks like a direct rip-off of Half-Life's Black Mesa, replete with a tentacled-boss (also, the stage continues the strange trend that every Nintendo 64 first-person shooter released in the year 2000 must feature a deep-water submarine pen...Perfect Dark, The World Is Not Enough...). Many members of the original Turok team had left Acclaim Studios by this point, which may explain the shift in visuals and design. This may also explain why the gameplay's fun-factor, like every other element in Turok 3, is inconsistent. The opening dystopian future stage is the best designed and most fun to play, with interactive events throughout (for example, being led through the sewers by a civilian who ends up being gobbled to bits, all in real-time), and various modes of gameplay, as Turok fights through the streets, swings across rooftops, evades fast-moving trains in a race through subway tunnels, and slugs it out with a grotesque, enormous level boss (as mentioned above, many of the in-level enemies are unimpressive, but Turok 3's bosses are a sight to see). The game is at its best when the stages are more varied and interactive. Otherwise, lacking the over-the-top violence and spectacular weapons of previous entries, Turok 3 is just an average first-person shooter. However, it must be said that Turok 3 includes, in addition to the lack of distance fog mentioned above, a major plus that previous entries do not: the ability to save anywhere. Previous Turok games often forced the player to play for hours and walk for miles without a save-point in sight. One could put a night into the game, die before finding a save-point, and have to do the whole thing over again the next night. Turok 3's save-anywhere function removes a world of inconvenience. In addition to the single-player mission, Turok 3 includes a decent four-player deathmatch multi-player mode. While the multi-player can be fun, just as Turok 2's can be, Turok 3 features the same, frequently-mentioned flaw as all but one of the Nintendo 64''s first-person shooter death-match featuring games: it isn't Goldeneye.
Lasting Value: The stages in Turok 3 are smaller in size than Turok 2's labyrinthian death-traps. They often hit the sweet-spot in length--long enough to be a challenge, but not long enough to be exhausting. Unfortunately, there are only five of them, taking on average an hour to beat. This means the game can be completed in only five hours. Turok 2 took 25 to complete. Turok 3 does feature the option to play through as two different characters. As Danielle, the player can jump higher and access higher sections of each stage with a grapling hook. As the smaller Joseph, the player has the ability to creep through tiny passages, as well as see through pitch-dark tunnels with night vision. Because of this, certain areas of the game are only accessible to one of the characters, and the player must play through as both to see all of Turok 3's world. Still, playing through as each character only adds up to ten hours of gameplay. There are cheats, but as Turok 3 lacks the heavy fire-power and thorough death-animations of Turok 2, running around with every weapon and blasting apart foes after already beating the game doesn't hold as much appeal. The four-player deathmatch mode adds to Turok 3's total value and play-time, but only for so long as the player and friends can keep the Goldeneye cartridge out of the system. In the end, Turok 3 is a game worth-playing, but it pales in the reflection of its legendary predecessors.
8.0
Graphics
Frustratingly inconsistent. Sharp, incredibly-detailed
third-generation Nintendo 64 worlds, brought down by some poorly
textured areas and limited character animations.
7.5
Music and Sound
An effective if unmemorable dynamic score. Hit and miss sound
effects. Nearly an hour of recorded speech spruces up Turok 3's
audio package, though.
8.0
Gameplay
Once the interactivity of the earlier stages begins to wane, an
average shooter reveals itself. Quite fun to play, but nothing
remarkable.
6.5
Lasting Value
Short single-player mission, though replaying it with
another character stretches the experience. Four-player
deathmatch is a decent way to pass time with friends.
7.9 FINAL SCORE
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