Turok: Dinosaur Hunter

Developer: Iguana Entertainment Publisher: Acclaim

Released: March 4, 1997 Rated: M 8/10

Even if it’s not immediately apparent how impressive Turok: Dinosaur Hunter is for its time, you only need to look at the rest of the N64’s admittedly FPS-heavy release schedule for the remainder of 1997. Turok was the first game in the genre to hit the system, and yet, games that came out on the system after it include Doom 64, Quake, Hexen, Duke Nukem 64, and of course, Goldeneye 007. Trendsetting Bond titles aside, I think we can clearly see that we were still firmly in the classic era of the genre, and a game like Turok, with its expansive 3D environments, awe-inspiring boss design, intricate layout, and even its integral yet maligned sprinkling of platforming provided a spectacular evolution of the genre, and a showcase title for its young console.

In spite of a Silent Hill-esque level of distance fog — the kind that makes emerging raptors and hunters look like they’re teleporting in from another dimension — Turok is a gorgeous game. As long as everything’s close enough to see it, the lush jungles, dank catacombs, and sterile corridors are beautifully encompassing. The established lore and settings of the Valiant comic books the game is based on certainly offer a strong blueprint for the settings and the excellent design work of enemies, weaponry, and story, but it was still up to Iguana to get their implementation right, and it’s their success here that makes Turok so memorable.

The thing about Turok and its immediate sequel is mostly that it’s a bit difficult to make headway in Turok by just starting a new game from level one. Though it’s fun to see the massive labyrinthian levels twist and shift around you as you teleport to and fro, hitting switches to open gates and move platforms, and gathering the multitude of keys that are supposed to be your main method of progressing, the real fun of Turok is still accessible via the old school back door method of cheat codes. Much akin to firing up the PS2 Grand Theft Auto titles and spawning tanks and rocket launchers to explore the big sandbox world, hopping into the opening level with a full arsenal of weapons is still an absolute blast. Freezing basic raptors with the particle accelerator until they explode in tiny bits or obliterating the Longhunter’s humvee with a blast from the doom-bringing Chronoscepter is immensely satisfying and can lose you hours just exploring.

One of the funniest things about Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, that might be lost on folks nowadays, is its controls. The default control scheme not only involves using the C-buttons to move and strafe and the control stick to aim, but has the Y-axis on the stick inverted. This does help things age quite nicely, replicating the modern two-stick setup and helping things feel a lot more precise for a game that doesn’t have as much aim assist as other FPSs of the time. Goldeneye, on the other hand, defaults to a single stick scheme, and I think this is partly responsible for it “aging poorly,” in some people’s opinion. Why do I feel like I have to spend so much time talking about this? This was my first ever FPS, and I have frustrated every person I’ve ever played a shooter with locally while I pause and change the settings to match what I learned two decades ago.

Being based on a Valiant Comics franchise, as most of Acclaim’s original titles of this era were, Turok’s aesthetic can come off as a bit of “‘90s kid ADHD fantasy” vibes, throwing just about every trope within reach at you with its setting and enemies. We have the titular dinosaurs, including the laser-eye augmented T-Rex towards the very end, human enemies like modern day poachers and ancient jungle warriors, bugs (including a giant praying mantis), aliens, hulking beasts, and cyborgs. This is explained in the lore as the setting of The Lost Land, where various inhabitants across dimensions converge via world-connecting portals. It’s not surprising in the least that a somewhat underground and fairly adult comic franchise has all this on offer, and linked together by satisfying gameplay over a long, exploration-heavy campaign, it’s not bad, either, but certainly something you might need to be prepared for, particularly with the deathly serious tone and considerable serving of violence over all of it.

Turok: Dinosaur Hunter spends most of its time bouncing back and forth between action-hero violence fantasy and brain-wracking labyrinth, but leaves you plenty of gameplay options to avoid the latter if you want to do so. As the first in its genre on a system that would see several much more classic examples join it and offer quite a few shooters overall, the first Turok starts out much more ambitious than most subsequent FPS titles. With only its own sequels and era-defining releases like Goldeneye truly able to match its output in scope and mechanics, Turok is an early classic that captures a lot of what the N64’s generation would become for console-oriented FPS and it’s a must-play in spite of some things that may date it or the continuing ambitions of its sequels.

Continuing Legacy

Turok’s only release in the generation following the N64 was the prequel, Evolution, which received a lukewarm reception, enough to cancel another follow-up before Acclaim’s bankruptcy in 2004. A similarly-received reboot on PS3 and Xbox 360 in 2008 seemed to spell the end for the franchise, but acknowledgement of Turok’s early success has lived on in Nightdive Studios’ remasters of all three main trilogy games.