Introduction to Turok 1
Most people will know Turok from the past ages, from the Nintendo 64 era. Let’s take a blast to the past, back to 1997. We are going to cheat a little, since we are going to look at the remastered edition. Let us go back to 2015 and look at the steam remastered edition. Turok is a very good game and I believe it has aged very well. I like the old pixels and the dinosaurs eating my face.
This review will contain spoilers!
The story
You are a time-traveling Native American, your name is Tal’set. You have the mantle of Turok that means you need to protect the earth and the realm of the lost lands. Both are in jeopard. That is why you, Tal’set come into the picture. The Campaigner, the bad guy, has his eyes set on a big price called, the chronoscepter. The Campaigner wants to use the chronoscepter to tear a rift in the space-time continuum. Doctor Who is not around, his TARDIS is nowhere to be seen. It is up to you, Tal’set, to gather the chronoscepter first and defeat the Campaigner to save the earth and the realm of the lost lands.
When Tal’set arrives in the realm of the lost lands, the chronoscepter is still safe but the Campaigner’s goons are all around the lost lands searching for the chronoscepter. You will need to defeat the Campaigner’s goons and find the chronoscepter first. You have to make sure it never falls in the wrong hands again.
When you arrive at the portal section that leads to different pieces of the realm of the lost lands, this is the HUB. You see that the Campaigner wanted to make sure that you could not follow him and his goons to track the chronoscepter. There are eight sections. You need keys to enter each section. You are sure some of the goons with keys are still around in the first section. You do not need a key for the first section. After fighting off goons, dinosaurs, and more dangerous threats you have found enough keys to access new sections. Before you leave for the second section, you will find a maze and with luck, you will find the campaigner’s goons carrying a chronoscepter piece! A few bullets to their brains and you have the first piece of the ultimate weapon in your possession. You have ensured that the Campaigner needs to defeat you to fulfill his evil plans.
The keys that you have acquired allow you to enter the second section. This is a jungle. Here you will need to try and find the next piece of the chronoscepter. After defeating many goons and dinosaurs you find a hidden wall that you can climb on. When you reach the top, you will find a guardian next to the chronoscepter piece. After an intense fight, you stand victorious over the dead guardian. You take the next chronoscepter piece and assemble it with the piece you already had in your possession. You scour the entire jungle to find the keys for the next section of the realm of the lost lands.
When you get back to the HUB, you insert the keys, a portal opens and you will see the third section, it is a city in ruins. You enter knowing not only dinosaurs will try to eat your face but bullets will also fly and try to hit you. A new threat is facing you in the form of undead goons, in the remaster they look like skeletons out of a Lego movie. Showing no fear you enter the ruined city in search of the keys and the chronoscepter piece. Before you know it the dinosaurs and skeletons are in your face. You show them no mercy! As you scour the ruined city for keys, you destroy everyone in your path, living or dead. You will find secrets buried in this city by looking in all the corners you manage to find the keys. Except for the one key that you need. You also have not found the chronoscepter piece.
You face a giant pyramid surrounded by pillars. The bridges have collapsed. You jump across the pillars with ease and cross the pillars while goons fall from the sky. You have a second to wonder why the Campaigner uses techniques from the future. You see some vines hidden in a corner and you decide to climb up. You find the chronoscepter piece alongside a guardian. With your experience from your last battle with a guardian, you will defeat him much easier this time. You take the chronoscepter piece and climb back down, ready to enter the pyramid.
Inside you find a hunter who is allied to the Campaigner. You will try to reason with him and let him see that the Campaigner’s actions are wrong. The hunter throws your arguments in the wind and grabs a laser. The hunter attacks you while suddenly unidentified devices that drive towards you. You have never seen these things, later you learn these are called cars. Because you are a time traveler you are not amazed. With ease, you destroy the cars. Now you will try to defeat the hunter. You take your shotgun and walk slowly up to the hunter while emptying your shotgun. The hunter shoots at you with his lasergun but you dodge all the laser beams. After the dust has settled, the hunter is no more. You stand over his corpse and you decide to take the hunters laser weapon. You also find the last key in his pocket. You return to the HUB and get ready to continue your search for the remaining chronoscepter pieces.
You see a ruined place when you look inside the portal showing the fourth section. You show no fear while you enter the portal. You defeat many goons, both dead or alive, dinosaurs, and more. There is no sign of the chronoscepter piece. In your search, you find some of the needed keys. You decide to go deeper into the ruins. You see many portal pads, They only lead deeper into the ruins. Using your time traveler gut, you enter the correct portal pad. You delve deeper into the ruins. You are amazed by the wonders of the ruins, like the floating water with no start or end. You find another portal pad that leads you to a big room with many waterfalls. You climb up the stairs and see a piece of the chronoscepter! You see no guardians, only four statues. You activate the elevator and go up. You grab the chronoscepter piece and assemble this piece with the other pieces you have found. Suddenly you hear a rumble in the distance. The four statues are coming to life! They attack you! You take out your new laser weapon and fight back. It was not an easy fight but the statues have been defeated.
You have everything that you need. You start to make your way back to the portal pad. You decide to leave the ruins. Some goons stand in your way but they tremble in fear when they see you coming at them with your shotgun. Before you know it you are back at the HUB. You insert the keys to open the portal to go on the hunt for the next chronoscepter piece.
You open the portal to the fifth section and you see that it goes deeper into the catacombs. You enter knowing something is waiting for you at the end. You try and find the way in the catacomb tunnels. It is easy to get lost here. After wandering around a lot and killing everything on sight you find the keys. Except for one key and the chronoscepter piece. You get one clue by killing a dragon priest. The clue leads you to a small tunnel where another dragon priest wants to kill you. After teaching the dragon priest a lesson in decapitation, you pick up the chronoscepter piece and assemble it. You find the way into the deepest part of the catacombs. There you will find a huge statue of a mantis.
The statue comes to life and attacks you. It kicks down the walls and spits acid all around. You dodge the acid attacks while emptying your gun. When its head is down, you jump up on the head and use your knife to stab it in its head. The mantis is no more and you have the key to continue your journey. You travel back to the HUB. Get ready for finding the next chronoscepter piece.
You look at the next portal. In the sixth section, you see trees and huts. It looks very crowded. You enter the portal and start the journey to find the next chronoscepter piece. In this section, you find weird-looking creatures that attack you. You don’t hesitate for a second and blow their heads off with your shotgun. You climb the trees and defeat all the goons in your way. Along the killing, you find the keys. It seems like the Campaigners goons barely tried hiding the keys. You find the next chronoscepter piece near the returning portal. You assemble the chronoscepter piece and return to the HUB where you get ready for collecting the last chronoscepter piece.
You are almost ready to face the Campaigner but you are missing the last piece of the chronoscepter weapon. You can see through the portal into the seventh section, it is a volcanic area filled with dinosaurs, they have been upgraded with lasers. You enter the area ready to shoot anything that comes your way. You search for keys and you find a new kind of dinosaur. It is a triceratops. It is not a friendly dinosaur, a goon has taken control of it. The goon is riding the triceratops like a horse. You decide to put the triceratops out of its misery by killing them both. When you are scouring the land for keys, you find plants that grow ammo. When you try to grab the ammo, the plant comes to life and attacks you. You name the plant Audrey three. Without a second to think you take your knife and cut Audrey three from the root. She screams and shrivels for a second but then she stops moving. Now you can pick up the ammo.
While traveling over the lava, you find the keys but there is no sign of the chronoscepter piece. You kick the goons in the lava out of frustration when suddenly one of the goons does not burn at all. To your surprise, he drowns instead. You research the area and it seems it is not lava but water. Fearlessly you dive in the water and on the other side you will find the last chronoscepter piece. You start the assembly but you notice a little piece is missing. There is only one place where the last piece can be. The Campaigner’s armory.
You quickly return to the HUB. You insert the keys in the elevator. You are going to assault the Campaigner’s armory and get back the last missing piece and stop the Campaigner for good. The armory is well-defended and you can’t enter through the front door. You decide to enter armory through the basement, where many alien-like creatures lurk around every corner. Strong mechanical robots assault you from every side but they are no match against you. The basement is larger than you had imagined. You intend to destroy everything on your path to the armory.
Somewhere hidden away in the Campaigners laboratory you find a fusion cannon. This is an extremely powerful cannon but it takes longer to fire. You decide to take the cannon with you. You keep traveling through the basement and see experiments all around you. You finally reach a large elevator going to the armory. Going up with the elevator you expect the Campaigner is waiting for you. Instead, you find a huge looking dinosaur, called a tyrannosaurus -rex. You get ready for the fight with the T-rex you start emptying your guns one by one while dodging the T-rex’s fire breath. You find yourself cornered and the T-rex is charging at you. He is going to eat you alive! He is running towards you with his mouth open. You load up the fusion cannon. Right before he tries to eat your face, the cannon goes off and the T-rex explodes into a million pixels.
You reload all your guns and walk into the armory. You find the last chronoscepter piece that the Campaigner took. You complete the chronoscepter. Now that the chronoscepter is complete there is only one more thing to do. You ready the chronoscepter to only target Mechanical machines. You face the Campaigner at the top of his base, near a volcano. The Campaigner starts screaming something but you are not listening, you are already charging the Chronoscepter. The Campaigner is half machine and he thinks himself to be immortal. You launch the chronoscepter at him and the campaigner explodes into little pixels.
You have defeated the evil of the lost lands and gathered the chronoscepter! Still, there is one thing left to do. You throw the Chronoscepter into the volcano and you run away just in time from the explosion that it causes. Outside at a safe distance, you jump on a friendly triceratops and watch the explosion. You have finished your task as the Turok. When the time comes you will pass on your mantle of Turok.
Something under the ground, buried deep and long forgotten. Something way worse than the Campaigner. Something worse than the Daleks awakes from the explosion. It starts to regenerate…
The game play
In the Turok 1 remastered game, you walk and shoot enemies in first-person mode. This makes Turok 1 a first-person shooter game. You can only see your equipped weapon. In Turok 1 there is no way to switch to a third-person mode. This game is very linear, it has the same gameplay all over. This is the same for most first-person shooter games.
You have to track down the keys and chronoscepter pieces. You shoot everyone in sight, especially if they have claws or guns. The first level is the HUB. The HUB has several portals that lead to different sections. The further you get into the game, the more crowded it is going to be. Enemies will have stronger guns and more health points. Dinosaurs eventually will be upgraded with lasers. You can always find tek armor to take less damage.
Boss fights can be hard but as long as you don’t get the game over screen the bosses health won’t be restored to full health. When your own health hits zero, you get reset to your last save point. Don’t forget to check all bushes for more health and ammo.
The best part is, of course, the iguana in the beginning, saying “GULP”.
In Turok 1 you start with a simple knife. When you progress in the game you will find better weapons. Here is a list of all the weapons in Turok 1
The knife:
You stab enemies with the knife. You have a chance to get mortality. Mortality will recover your health and increase your max health.
Bow and arrow:
You can use arrows to snipe enemies from far away without getting hit yourself. Later on, you can find tek arrows. You can blow enemies up with the tek arrows.
Pistol:
A small gun, you need to use more bullets to kill enemies. The pistol fires pretty fast but your ammo depletes quickly. This ammo is found everywhere.
Shotgun:
A big gun. A shotgun shoots multiple bullets at each fire, it causes big damage. The counterpart is that it takes a shotgun a longer time to reload. Ammo can be scarce but at times when you don’t need it, it will be everywhere.
Automatic shotgun:
This is an even bigger shotgun. This automatic shotgun needs no time to reload. You can release a giant hailstorm of bullets for as long as you have ammo. This weapon is very useful for boss fights. The ammo is gone quickly and it is scarce. You have two kinds of ammo, regular green ammo and red explosive ammo.
Assault rifle:
The assault rifle uses pistol ammo but shoots much faster compared to the pistol. It also does more damage. You can use the assault rifle when you have to save strong ammo for the shotgun for the bigger enemies.
Alien laser weapon (one bullet at a time):
There are multiple varieties of the alien laser weapons throughout the game. I think this is the best alien weapon. This weapon hits far and hard. Use this weapon when you have the ammo for it. It makes the game a cakewalk.
Minigun:
Did you ever want to fire 500 bullets in 3 seconds? Now you can! It most likely will kill anything in your path.
Rocket launcher:
Use the rocket launcher to blow up everyone, including yourself! You will get a better rocket launcher later in the game that uses four rockets with each fire. This is wonderful for boss fights as long as you don’t blow yourself up.
There will be upgrades for the weapons. You can test them all, it comes down to preference. My personal favorite is the shotgun. Collecting a backpack means that you can carry the double amount of ammo. You will lose the bonus when you die. The same goes for the tek armor, you will lose the bonus when you die or take more hits than the tek armor has.
Pros
- The remastered edition version is very well polished.
- Seeing the pixeled dead body’s bleed and ragdoll is still funny.
- The sections are fun to go through.
- There are two different blue portal areas with bonus loot, ammo, or health.
- The heads are not round but square.
- Each section has its own identity.
- I like shotguns, they are my best friends in this game.
- Dinosaurs! I like dinosaurs, even when they try to eat my face.
Cons
- It can take up to 20 minutes of killing the same enemy before it stops respawning. Your ammo does not respawn.*
- You can’t switch between regular or explosive shotgun ammo.*
- Some of the enemies suddenly can inflict insane damage.
- I would like it if Turok 1 had a multiplayer option.
- There are many instant death pitfalls.
*Both can be fixed with mods if you are willing to use them.
Even after many years, this game is still very good and fun to play. I definitely recommend this game if you like first-person shooters and dinosaurs. This game was in a humble choice in march if you have it and not have played it yet I suggest you do so.
I give this game…… drumroll……
7,5
Thank you for reading my review. I hope you get eaten by the dinosaurs! Did you play Turok 1 or are planning on playing Turok 1?
