Stuff I Grew Up With/Video Game Corner: Turok 2: Seeds of Evil (1998)

Apparently, the second Turok game was announced even before Turok: Dinosaur Hunter was released. I, however, didn't know that a sequel was coming until I saw it listed in Nintendo Power's pak watch, a section in each issue where they listed upcoming games. Having really enjoyed the first game, I was looking forward to it. When the first shots from the game were featured in the magazine, I couldn't believe what I was seeing. This game looked like it was going to make the first one look dated by ten years, even though it had only been over one year. The shot of two raptors stalking around a temple and another one showing the jungle environment was so realistic that I just couldn't wait to play this game. I finally got it for Christmas in 1998 and not only was I amazed at how much more advanced it looked but how it had a completely different feel to it. To put it bluntly, this game took what made the first one great and cranked it up to ten!

I knew I was in for a game with a completely different attitude when the opening animation for Iguana Entertainment came on. It showed the same scenario: a large iguana laying on the moniker for the company. He hears some rustling in the nearby jungle and, as in the first game, an arrow nearly misses him. Many more come flying at him and he takes cover. But that's where I got a big surprise. The iguana jumps back up on the logo but this time, he's holding two huge, double-barreled guns! He takes at aim at who's been shooting at him and fires back. It then acts like what would happen when you're playing the game and you get attacked by an enemy until you finally die. When the hunter dies, the iguana gives a big, tooth-filled laugh before the game switches to the title screen. That animatic let me know what I was in for when it came to this game. In a strange way, it's even sort of a prelude to the types of enemies you would end up fighting.

When I started the actual game, it made itself distinct from the original right off the bat. Whereas the original had no in-game story to speak of and you would have to read either the instruction booklet or strategy guide to find out what it is, this game begins with a cinema scene that establishes the story. The newest Turok, a young man named Joshua, arrives through a portal into a suspended dimension where a blue-skinned woman named Adon reveals that the Elders of the Lost Lands, the Lazarus Concordance, have instructed her to guide him on his latest mission. For many, many years, an alien creature called the Primagen has been trapped in his crashed ship by five Energy Totems. However, he has recently been awakened (strategy guides and other media say that it was because of the destruction of the Campaigner and the Chronosceptor at the end of the first game but the game itself never makes this clear) and has mobilized many races of evil creatures to destroy the Energy Totems so he can be set free.

The fact that there was actually voice acting in this game really surprised me, since the original had almost no dialogue to speak of. Not only did this opening cinematic establish the new tone and feel of the sequel, it also established that the gameplay itself would be quite different. Whereas the main goals of the original game's levels were simply to collect all the keys hidden within and make it to the end, the requirements for completing the levels in this one were a lot more complex. Besides collecting keys to the next level, you're also given objectives that you must complete in order to move on. These objectives ranged from rescuing prisoners to destroying ammunition facilities to activating beacons and so on. Also, at the end of each level, you take part in a challenge where you have to protect the level's Energy Totem from an onslaught of enemies.

I keep saying that this game's tone and feel is much different than the first and you may be wondering what I mean by that. It's simple: not only is this game more advanced and sophisticated than its predecessor, it's also much darker. Sure, the levels in the first game had some eerie sections to them but this game is not only darker but downright scary! The level designs are really creepy, especially the Death Marshes and the Lair of the Blind Ones. Those two in particular really creep me out because they both take place at night and both involve creepy forests with owls hooting off in the distance and other eerie sounds. In the first level, the Port of Adia, if you turn the music off, you can actually hear screaming and horses neighing in the distance, to indicate that the Dinosoids are still slaughtering people nearby. In the River of Souls level, with the music off, you can hear the moaning of the nearby Soul Gates and the undead materializing out of it. It's really creepy. The music itself, of course, also adds to the creep factor in many levels. The music for the Lair of the Blind Ones is the creepiest to me because of how soft and slow it is. Before each level, Adon tells you about it and what lies hiding within each one. Once again, the backstory for the Lair of the Blind Ones is bone-chilling. She says that little is known of the Blind Ones and that there are legends of them rising up from underground at night and carrying helpless people back with them. Really spooky. The game is also dark purely in its look. The normal brightness level is so dark that I honestly have to turn the brightness up so I can see what I'm doing. Also, it makes you wary of what lies around each corner, waiting in the darkness. That coupled with the general sense of dread all the other factors I've mentioned create make Turok 2 quite a bloodcurdling game.

This game is also a whole lot more violent and gruesome than its predecessor. Yeah, the original Turok did have blood but it wasn't like it was flying everywhere or billowing out of dead bodies. This game, however, is a gorefest in every sense of the word. Unlike the first game, it has a dismemberment system programmed into it, where you can blow off an enemy's limbs if you hit it in a particular spot with enough firepower. Heads can get blown off as well as arms, legs, and even whole torsos. The bodies tend to flop around a lot when they lose their heads or torsos. Also, when the dead body lies on the ground after such extreme deaths, blood continues gushing out in pools until the body disappears. It's crazy. I can understand why this got an M-rating, unlike the original. As with the original, there was an option to either turn the blood off or change its color from red to green. I guess monsters gushing out green blood is not as offensive to some people as it is when the blood's red.

One of the best aspects of Turok 2 was its large arsenal weapons to choose from. Some are upgrades or counterparts to weapons from the original and some are brand-new. Replacing the original game's knife as your basic first weapon is the talon, a leather strap with short, stubby claws attached to them, useful for killing small enemies. An upgrade to the talon is the warblade, a leather strap with two huge, serrated blades attached to it. The basic bow arrow is back in play but this time, you can actually see arrows sticking out of enemies bodies when you hit them. Also back are the explosive Tek arrows and the Tek bow has a sniper mode to it now. There's also a flare-gun which isn't a weapon but is useful for lighting dark areas. The basic .9mm pistol would often take a few shots to put an enemy down but it was often very good for head-shots. The Mag 60 is an upgrade to the pistol that fires three shots at once and is actually quite effective at killing large enemies. Once again, you have a shotgun that uses either normal or explosive shells... and also once again, the weapon is useful except for its slow reload which can get you killed. The Shredder is an upgrade for the shotgun; it has a long barrel and fires fast, laser-like shots that bounce off everywhere in a spray-like manner when they hit something. The tranquilizer gun was not one of the best weapons because the enemy it was used against never stayed asleep for very long and would be really angry when he woke up. It didn't work against really big enemies anyway so it was best used only if you needed to get away from an enemy and had no other options. The charge dart rifle is an upgrade to the tranquilizer gun that fires electric shocks that zap the enemy will making it stand in place for almost an entire minute and unlike the tranquilizer, enough shots could actually kill an enemy. The grenade launcher returns as well but like before, the grenades can bounce back and damage you if you're not careful. Another returning weapon is the Plasma Rifle, which does more damage than before and has a sniper scope now (despite the fact that it doesn't work that well from a distance). The cerebral bore is undoubtedly the grossest weapon in the game. When the crosshair locks onto an enemy, firing the weapon sends out a blue that attached itself to the enemy's head, drill down into it, spew up a fountain of blood and brain matter, and explode for the coup de grace, blowing the head off. (Definitely inspired by the spheres from the Phantasm movies.) Don't get nastier than that! It's not effective against all enemies but watching it in action is definitely a sight to behold. Also brutal is the Scorpion Missile Launcher, which first fires two rockets that blow the enemy into the air and then another two that blow the body to pieces! The flame thrower does what you expect. It's actually funny to set an enemy on fire and watch him run around, flailing his arms to try to put the fire out. The Firestorm cannon is basically this game's version of the mini-gun from the original and it's just as useful: great for mowing down a bunch of enemies. The PFM (Proximity Fragmentation Mine) Layer sounds like it would be cool. It shoots sensory mines that explode whenever an enemy gets too close. Unfortunately, the mines sometimes don't detonate when they're supposed to and the strategy guides claim that the mines can slice off enemies' legs but that usually doesn't happen. Sunfire pods are small glowing spheres that make a bright flash when tossed and can temporarily blind nearby enemies. They're actually deadly against the Blind Ones, whom have spent their entire lives underground and haven't seen the sun in centuries. In the first part of Level Two, you ride a Styracosaurus called the Riding Gun that is equipped with a gun and rocket launcher. While powerful, it's sluggish and hard to turn, which can leave you open to attack. The Razorwind is a Frisbee-like throwing weapon with blades all around it that can slice through a row of enemies. The ultimate weapon, the Nuke, is the game's answer to the Chronosceptor and is also like a far more powerful version of the Particle Accelerator from the first game. It fires a ball of plasma energy that grows bigger and bigger until it explodes, which freezes any nearby enemies and then they too eventually explode. There are also two weapons used underwater: a harpoon gun and a small torpedo launcher. Since there are only two enemies you can run into underwater, however, they don't come into play that often.

While the enemies in the original Turok were fairly standard in their designs and species, this game introduces some of the most bizarre and downright frightening monsters you've ever faced in a video game. There are many different types of enemies as well. Your main enemies throughout most of the game are the Dinosoids, which comprise of both regular dinosaurs and advanced, humanoid-like dinosaur hybrids. The two most common of this type are Raptoids and Endtrails. Raptoids are humanoid raptors that, while not very strong, are intelligent enough to dodge your attacks whenever possible and are quite quick. They're especially hard to hit out in the open. Endtrails are even worse. They're a ten-foot tall human-like dinosaur with alligator-like skin and they have a range of weapon from grenades to laser blasts to their sharp claws. Some can even turn invisible like the Predator. They tend to be the type of enemy you run into the most throughout the game. There are also normal raptors, although these are quite different from those in the first game. They're much slimmer and VERY quick. My only complaint is the developers made them emit cute squeaks and they only act fierce when they attack up-close. The mournful screams they make when they die kind of makes me sorry I killed one. (I also don't like that they look very different in the actual game than they did in all the publicity photos, which looked much cooler.) Fireborns are a burning type of Dinosoid that you encounter deep within the Lair of the Blind Ones. They're similar to the Endtrails but nowhere near as dangerous and not as hard to kill. Their design is very cool, however. You've got Compys, those little dinosaurs that hang around corpses but will attack you at the drop of a hat. Just use the War-Blade and slash them to pieces. Finally, the leapers, those little hopping reptiles from the first game are back and while they're easy to kill, they're faster than before and can do more damage.

The Purr-Linn, those scaly ape-like monsters, are back as well (I love their design in this game much better than before) and, as before, there are several different types. The most basic is the type called the Warclub, which often bursts out of traps in the ground and tries to either smack you around or hit you with big boulders. They go down easily with explosive shells, though. Another type is the Gunner, which carries a Gatling gun that fires rocks from a backpack. These are no stronger than the Warclubs but their Gatling guns can rip you apart quickly if you don't take cover. Worst of all is the Juggernaut, a Purr-Linn dressed in a lot of armor and carries around a large sword that can shoot energy blasts at you. While headshots work against them, they tend to use the sword to block your shots. Very deadly and hard to kill. Also lurking in the Death Marshes where the Purr-Linn live are big hornets that fly out of large nests and attack you in groups of four. Their nests are easily destroyed and they don't take much health when they sting but their small size can make them difficult to kill.

Living in their lair beneath the surface of the ground are the Blind Ones, dangerous creatures who have lost their ability to see but can still pack a punch. There are two basic types: Sentinels and Guardians. The Sentinels pack massive axes, some makeshift armor, and even throw grenades. The tubby Guardians can move quite fast and have a crossbow that they can use with deadly accuracy. However, their weakness is Sunfire pods, which set them on fire when used whereas they just blind other enemies. The Blind Ones also have some other nasty creatures inhabiting their lair. There are small spiders that come out of nests that aren't that deadly (you can take them out with the War-Blade) but every once in a while, you run into enormous spiders that spit venom at you and can bite you. They also tend to make like Spider-Man and use their silk to rise up to the ceiling and drop somewhere else (usually behind you). They also take quite a few shots to kill so they're trouble in every sense of the word. Guardians also sometimes summon Skimmers, big centipede-like things that come out of the ground. You can kill them with one swipe of the War-Blade but their fast movements can make them hard to hit. One of the weirdest inhabitants of the Blind Ones' lair are Nalas, bizarre little things with huge arms and tiny legs, one eye, and long tongues. They attack mainly by spitting acid and while they can easily be killed, they can wear out your health if you don't act fast. Finally, there are Cave Worms (which you can also encounter in the Death Marshes), which are huge grub-like worms with long tongues. They're not too hard to hit because of their large size but they take a few shots to kill and can smack the crap out of you with their tongues.

There's a race of intelligent, humanoid insects called Mantids whose hive is a technologically-advanced fortress. The first ones you encounter are drones, four-armed, erect green insects equipped with jet packs and blasters. These guys are a pain! They fly around like crazy, often landing behind you and their lasers and claws do a lot of damage. They're also just plain hard to hit as well. Workers are smaller Mantids who keep control of the breeding chambers. Strategy guides often say that they won't attack unless you disturb the nearby eggs. I can tell you that's a lie! These guys attack you the minute they see you. They're not hard to kill, though. Little mites are what come out of the largest of the eggs you encounter as well as in the heart of the nests. They're not very dangerous; mainly just annoying and can be killed easily. The least common are the soldiers and that's a good thing because these massive Mantids are heavily armored and their blasters do a lot of damage. A few blasts to the face will put one down but, as I said, that's easier said than done.

In Level Two, you run into undead monsters pouring out of Soul Gates. There are two types: Deadmen and Zombies. Deadmen are the smaller type but they tend to feign death when you shoot them but then get right back up and keep attacking. Even if you blow them in half, they can still attack you! Zombies are much bigger and even worse because they hurl fireballs at you and can slice you up with their claws. Their slow speed, though, is what makes them easy to deal with from a distance. Worst of all the undead enemies in the level are the three Sisters of Despair whom you must destroy in order to complete the mission. They fly around like crazy, making them hard to aim at, and their magic spells do a lot of damage. If you don't get killed by them at least once, you're the man!

Aboard the Primagen's Lightship, you run into his cyborg minions. There are troopers, which are freaky mechanical monsters with weird faces and are armed with powerful assault rifles. One precise shot will put them down but it's hard to do so before they put you down. Elite guards are bigger versions of the troopers with a lot more armor and more powerful weapons. Their heads are where to aim in order to take them down quickly. Bio-Bots are really fast, turtle-like cyborgs that either jet up into your face and slice you or use their laser blasters to hit you from afar.

Finally, in many levels of the game are portals that lead to a dimension where you encounter the most frightening enemies in the game, a race of hideous creatures called the Flesh-Eaters. These freaks are demons from your worst nightmares and, like the undead enemies, make you think you're playing Resident Evil rather than Turok. Sentinels are the smallest but are ferocious and relentlessly pursue you, lobbing grenades at you and trying to slice you with their blades. Best to keep running backwards and dodging their grenades while firing at them at the same time. The Death Guards are even deadlier with their heavy armor, clubs and blasters, although they're mainly stationary and headshots will work against them. The most intimidating of the Flesh Eaters, the Lords of the Flesh, are really fast, heavily armored, and fire energy bolts that do major damage. You have to use really powerful weapons (I once ended up killing two with just one throw of the Razor-Wind).

The bosses are even crazier. The first boss is the Blind One, whom you face, naturally, at the end of the Lair of the Blind Ones. The Blind One is mainly an enormous eyeball in the ceiling of this chamber (I don't know why it's called "the Blind One" because it can clearly see just fine), that tries to kill you with tentacles, mouth-like openings that drool acid, and flesh-eating grubs that come out of the surrounding liquid to munch on you. This fight is tricky because you have to be constantly at shooting at the Blind One's tentacles and mouths whilst fending off the onslaught of grubs. After you've destroyed all of its defenses, the last thing to do is blast away the eye (which I was glad to do since the thing kept making gross noises whenever it blinked).

The Mantid Queen was the boss I faced the least amount of times but from what I can remember, she was quite tough. The spots where you're supposed to attack flash during each phase of the fight and between faces, the queen goes up into the ceiling and sends her minions out after you. Once you've killed all of them, she comes back for another phase. The first phase is the easiest because all you have to do is blast her forearms. The second phase, however, is the hardest because the target is her abdomen, which she makes difficult for you to hit because of her shooting poison balls from her tail at you, as well as firing deadly blue lasers that are pretty much impossible to avoid. Add to that the fact that you can only hit her abdomen when she's in a certain position and you've got a very frustrating battle ahead of you. The third phase is also difficult but not as much. She fires more lightning-like energy blasts but they're easier to dodge and you have to blast her arms as best as you can (grenades work best). The final phase is not a phase of attack at all: she falls to the floor and all you have to do is shoot her in the head.

After going through the Primagen's Lightship, you face the Mother, an enormous, fat, cyclops monstrosity with a huge mouth and whipping tentacle-arms. There are no sections between her attacks where you can catch your breath so you better be prepared to keep moving. During the first phase, she stays in one spot and tries smacking you with her tentacle arms. The arms are the targets and the Nuke comes in handy here because it takes care of them with only a few blasts. The second phase begins with her growing her tentacles back and using them to swing from the ceiling in an attempt to crush you. Like the Mantid Queen, this is the hardest phase because, while her tentacles are still the target, you barely get enough time to fire on them with her swinging around like crazy and you trying to avoid being squashed. In the third and final phase, she sprouts enormous, spider-like legs from her abdomen and chases you throughout the arena, trying to smack you with her tentacles or hit you with a blue energy blast. However, the target is her head now, which is easy to hit because of its size. During this entire battle, she spits bizarre little monsters at that you that you have to deal with as well, making it even more difficult. (While we're on the subject, I never cared for the look of these little monsters because they look cartoony and inconsistent with the design of the game in general.) She's also the only boss that you don't actually kill. Once you defeat her, she latches onto the wall and simply crawls away into the darkness. That's just plain odd, as far as I'm concerned.

And, of course, there's the Primagen himself. He's a bizarre, alien creature with insect-like attributes, big leathery wings, and badly proportioned limbs. I never liked the design of his face, though, with his sad-like frown. It just doesn't fit. Anyway, being the final boss, he's naturally the toughest. In between his phases of physically attacking you, he drops big bombs that kill you instantly if you're hit and split into many little ones if they hit the floor. Also, he sends little insect-like robots out after you which are hard to hit. To make things even more difficult, you can fall off the edge of the arena and die instantly from red lasers at the bottom. During the first phase where he himself attacks you, your targets are the little antennae behind his head. They're really hard to hit because of their small size and when you've almost destroyed one, the Primagen tries to heal it back (the sound he makes while doing so is disgusting beyond words). You have to constantly shoot him in the head to keep him from healing. You have to repeat this process until all the antennae are destroyed and while doing you have to keep moving to avoid swipes from the Primagen's powerful claws (again, all while trying not to fall off the edge of the arena). During the second phase, the target is his bizarre-looking left arm. During this part of the battle, he'll constantly fly up into the air and rain fireballs down on you and hit you with blue rings which take off a lot of health if three in a row hit you. Again, he tries to regain health and you have to hit him in the head to stop him. The final phase involves him actively trying to push you off the arena's edge and the target is his easy to hit head. He also tries to make you fall off with shockwaves from his fireballs. Another thing is that, unlike the Campaigner and the Chronosceptor from the first game, the Primagen is immune to this game's ultimate weapon, the Nuke, so don't even bother trying.

Like the first Turok, this game is so hard that I was only able to beat it by using its version of the Big Cheat (and the code for this cheat is way longer than that of the first game). Unlike the Big Cheat of the first game, this cheat gives you all the cheats in the game. Most of your favorite cheats from the original return: Invincibility, All Weapons, Unlimited Ammo, Big Heads, Little Enemies, etc. There are also some new interesting ones. One makes your enemies look anorexic; one gives them enormous hands and feet; and one even puts faces on lifeforce tokens (it's either one of the developers or a baby, depending on which code you use). There's one cheat that plunges the game into almost complete darkness, which I've never understand the usefulness of. Like I said, this game is already so dark that I have to turn the brightness up to see what I'm doing. Why would I want to make it even darker?

Now I have to talk about the game's ending. From what I've heard, the Primagen's final death is different depending on whether you completed all the levels or used the cheat (which, I must confess, I always do). The death I've always got is that the Primagen stumbles around with half his brain destroyed, screaming until he finally collapses. Apparently, if you beat the game fairly, the Energy Totems all blast the Primagen with their power, destroying him completely, a cinematic that sounds quite cool. After both endings, Turok goes back to Adon but what she says to him is apparently different depending how you defeated the Primagen. I've always gotten dialogue where Adon tells you that while the Primagen's body has been destroyed, his mind may still be active and that, "For now, we can only wait." But from what I've heard, she doesn't say that if you beat him fairly. However, I think in both versions she goes on to talk about something that I've always found to be a creepy way to end the game. She says that she was unable to identify the mysterious entity that tricked you into going into the Flesh Portals (she refers to the creepy voice that always said something to you when you entered one of the portals) but when she tried to scan it, she got a horrible feeling that she had never felt before. To cap it off, she says that she discovered that whatever this being is, Turok's ancestors have dealt with it before. That just creeps me out and the music that plays over the ending credits further punctuates the dread, with the entity, Oblivion, saying, "It is inevitable." I didn't know it at the time but this was meant as a prelude to the third game, Turok 3: Shadow of Oblivion.

In conclusion, while there are aspects of the original game that I like better, there's no denying that Turok 2: Seeds of Evil is more than worthy of being a sequel and is a standout game for the Nintendo 64. It's definitely one of the darkest, most gruesome games I own and is also ridiculously hard but it's also a joy to pop in from time to time. I did play the Multiplayer mode with my friends but we did it so little (unlike the Multiplayer for Goldeneye) and it was so long ago that I don't remember much about it other than it was fun. After this game, I lost touch with the Turok franchise. I did get the game Turok: Rage Wars but I was expecting it to be the next entry in the series, not just a bunch of endurance and Multiplayer rounds so I only played it once. I never played Turok 3 so I have no idea how it compares to the first two. One day I may play that one but for now, Turok 2 is as far as my knowledge of these games goes.

Stuff I Grew Up With/Video Game Corner: Turok: Dinosaur Hunter (1997)

I'm not exactly sure when I first heard about this game (it may have been in an issue of Nintendo Power) but I know when I first saw a clip of it. It was during Cartoon Network's Toonami block one afternoon when they showed a clip of a first-person shooter with someone firing a plasma-type weapon at something that blasted off into the sky using a jet-pack. It wasn't until I rented the game from my local video store that I discovered that this was what I saw. I'm pretty sure that this was the first M-rated game I ever played (although I honestly don't think it's that gory to be rated M) and the minute I first played it, I enjoyed it thoroughly. It was like Jurassic Park mixed with a James Bond game. The gameplay was fun and challenging, the enemies were well designed, and the levels were some of the most beautiful and atmospheric ever seen up to that time on the N64.

The game got me interested even before it actually started. There was a hilarious animation scene where a large iguana is sitting on the logo for the company that developed the game, Iguana Entertainment. Suddenly, a bunch of arrows fly at him, causing him to yell in terror, and a tomahawk comes really close to hitting him in the head. He gulps really loud and runs off right before a few more arrows come at him. You actually hear him say, "Mother." After that, you see a scene of Turok himself pulling back on a bow and arrow, firing it at the title logo, and when it hits with an explosion, you hear a roar in the background and the main theme of the game's score begins. That's how you get a player interested in playing a game.

The game itself doesn't tell you what the story is, but the instruction booklet and strategy guides for it did. You play as the latest member of the Turok family and your mission is to stop the Campaigner, an evil mastermind, from taking over the universe. He plans to do this by finding all the parts of a powerful weapon called the Chronosceptor, which can create gaps between dimensions. You must travel through eight enormous levels, collect special keys that allow you to enter the level after the one you're currently playing, as well as collect pieces of the Chronosceptor that you find in the levels. In each level there are also two bonus levels whose entrances appear as blue portals that pop up randomly throughout. You don't have to do these bonus levels to complete the game but they are useful whenever you need health or extra lives. There was also a central location at the heart of the game where you could use the keys you'd found to open the doors to new levels. 

The game's controls kind of befuddled me at first. Almost all N64 games used the control stick to move the character. Turok, however, used the yellow C-buttons (or camera buttons as they were usually called) to do so. When I first played the game and moved the control stick, all it did was control which way I was looking and I never moved. I started to get frustrated. I'd just started the game and I couldn't even move. I discovered how to move by accident but I was relieved when I finally did move because I thought the cartridge I'd rented was busted. These controls took some time to get used to but by the time I got my own copy of the game for my birthday that year, I'd pretty much mastered them.

As with many first-person shooters, Turok gives you a variety of weapons for you to find and use against your enemies. Your starting weapon was a basic knife which would eventually become useless against enemies in later levels but were good for closeup fighting. Your bow could shoot two types of arrows: normal and Tek. Normal arrows I never found to be that useful except against ordinary human enemies; Tek arrows, on the other hand, were great with their explosive tips and would usually take down enemies in one to three shots. The basic pistol didn't do much damage against non-human enemies but the good thing was you didn't have to reload it so you could fire away at charging dinosaurs. The shotgun was really when it came to taking down raptors but its reload time could get you killed. (That's what tends to get me killed in shooter games: waiting for your weapon to reload.) The automatic shotgun was one I liked much better because the reload was faster and you could usually rely on it to take down enemies quickly. Speaking of the shotguns, they each could use two types of shells: regular and explosive. Needless to say, explosive was always more useful. The assault rifle was a gun that fired several shots at a time for maximum effect but for some reason, I never found myself using it that much. The plasma rifle that I mentioned at the beginning was really useful in the first level you find it but as you went on and the enemies became stronger, it was a gun you would probably only use as a last resort. The mini-gun was a great weapon because it could cut down enemies very quickly, it had no reload, and worked well at long range. The grenade launcher was good at taking down tough enemies at long distance (it was powerful enough to blow some enemies' bodies apart) but using it in confined spaces wasn't a good idea because the grenades could bounce back and blow up in your face. The particle accelerator was a unique weapon because it would freeze enemies and after a few seconds, cause them to explode! Unfortunately, you had to charge it up for the blast to cover a large range and the reload wasn't the best. The alien weapons you could find were quite useful because the shot would first hit the enemy and then cause a small explosion that would take the enemy out more often than not. But the blasts could hurt you as well. Quad rocket launchers were best used against bosses and while they did a lot of damage, their reload was quite slow (but the animation was cool to watch though). The fusion cannon would cause a small nuclear explosion that would spread over a wide area. But it had its fair share of drawbacks: it could only hold two charges at a time; it had the slowest reload of any weapon; and it wouldn't work in the final battle with the Campaigner. And finally, there was the Chronosceptor. It only had three shots period and it was best to use it against the Campaigner. But man, it hit hard and did an amazing amount of damage, especially on a direct hit.

All good games have an interesting variety of enemies and Turok was no exception. The enemies in this game came in three different types: humans, dinosaurs and other monsters, and mechanical. As for human enemies, there was the basic poacher, which was no challenge at all; soldiers, which weren't much trouble either; Campaigner's sergeants, which were really tough with their heavy armor and powerful plasma rifles; ancient warriors, which took quite a few shots to take down and they usually attacked in groups, which made it even more challenging (especially if some had blowpipes); and the worst, warrior priests, which would attack with powerful magic spells and were hard to kill. For dinosaurs and other beasts, you first had your basic raptors, which would charge at you but you could usually take them down with a couple of shotgun blasts (but when they came in packs, they were much more challenging). In later levels, you would run into raptor mechs: cyborg raptors which could take a lot of punishment and had power laser blasters on one arm. Really difficult to survive against those guys. Dimetrodons were really trouble and your best bet against them was to use the grenade launcher. There were Dimetrodon mechs as well; these suckers had twin machine guns strapped to their backs, although, thankfully, they weren't that much stronger than the normal ones. One of the toughest dinosaurs were Triceratops, which had human riders on their backs as well as rocket launchers. If the rockets didn't get you, the dinosaur would try to gore you with it horn and even the human rider would take potshots at you. Best to use the rocket launcher (when they died, it was so satisfying because they'd fall backwards and crush the human rider, who would scream in pain). There were big beetles that you could easily kill with your knife but they often came in swarms which could overwhelm you if you let your guard down. Dragonflies were enemies I never had a trouble with because you didn't even have to kill them if you didn't want to; you could just run. Leapers were big, ugly reptiles that would jump towards you and slash you. There were three types: small, large, and leaders, which were huge. One wasn't difficult by itself but when they came in swarms, you could easily get slaughtered. They could also swim and you could run into them in water areas. Alien infantry were four-armed aliens that would use the alien weapons against you and were the enemies that would fly up into the sky with their jetpacks. Sometimes they would self-destruct! Tek bows and explosive shells were their weaknesses. Pur-Linns were big, ape-like reptiles that, like the leapers, came in three types: ones that would knock you around, ones that would pound the ground to create harmful shock-waves, and, worst of all, ones with powerful blasters on their arms. Tek arrows were the best when dealing with them. Demons were big, scaly humanoids with red eyes that would attack either spears or energy blasts. Quite challenging when you were dealing with a bunch of them. Demon lords were the same as warrior priests in their use of powerful magic and just as hard to take out. Subterraneans were big, worm-creatures that burrow up from under the ground and attack you with their claws and poisonous saliva. They only appeared in one section of one level and you didn't even have to deal with them if you didn't want to but if you did, you'd have quite a challenge on your hands. Sludge beasts were big crabs that you'd only encounter in the last level but they were tough with their long attack ranges and tendency to come up behind you. Killer plants were enemies you'd only find in one level. They'd act normal until you got too close when they'd bite you and then shoot thorns at you. Grenade launchers were best against them because they could block bullets. The mechanical enemies were the worst of all. Cyborgs were the most basic but they were invulnerable against normal bullets and arrows. Cyborg sergeants, like the human ones, were worse and could take a lot of damage. Finally, there were attack robots, which came in two colors: red and yellow. Yellow ones were tougher and had rocket launchers. They could easily make mincemeat out of you if you didn't take them down quickly.

The game also had four bosses. The first was Longhunter, a tough human enemy you'd face at the end of Level 3. You'd have to destroy two Hummers before actually facing him. The Hummers weren't too hard to destroy honestly but you'd waste a lot of ammo doing so. Longhunter himself, I found, was best to fight at close range because he'd put away his gun and fight you hand-to-hand. If you attacked him at long-range, he'd use his pulse rifle, which could fire two types of shots. I never found him to be that difficult, though. Now the giant mantis you faced at the end of Level 5 was another story. That sucker was hard. He'd hit you with acid spit, whack you with his pincers and, near the end of the battle, he would shake off little explosives that did a lot of damage. He also tended to jump on you or behind you. Fortunately, there was a section during the fight where he would start focusing on destroying the walls in the room and you could use that time to pump a lot of shots into him. Level 8, being the last level, had two bosses to face at the end. First was the Campaigner's cyborg T-Rex. He was the enemy where it was best to use the powerful but unreliable fusion cannon. After using that weapon, though, you'd have to circle around like crazy and blast away at him as much as you could. The T-Rex's attacks where powerful laser blasts from his eye, fire breath that could easily kill you if you got caught in it, shock-waves he'd cause with his tail, and his big teeth. Hiding in the alcoves along the wall wasn't recommended because the T-Rex would eventually stick his head in and pull you out, which could easily mean the end for you. One cool thing about the T-Rex that I liked was when you first faced him, you'd discover that he was the one doing the roaring you'd hear in the distance throughout many levels. Finally, the Campaigner himself was the most difficult boss. Three direct Chronosceptor shots would make him much easier to deal with but he was still difficult. He'd often teleport all over the place and hit you with fire rings and bomb-like crystals. Every once in a while, he would jump to a huge weapon on the wall and fire repeated shots at you. However, the more damage you dealt with him, the slower he would move. In fact, you find out that he himself is a robot as you deal more damage to him. If you kept moving and shooting, though, he'd eventually go down.

Interesting thing about the bosses was that when one killed you, there would be an animation of him finishing you off (except for Longhunter). When you lost to the Mantis, he would repeatedly smack you around with his arms. The T-Rex would actually swallow you whole and burp out the feathers in your hair. And the Campaigner would kick you to the ground and shout, "The universe is mine!" before delivering the final blow. While you were frustrated when you got killed, it was interesting to see these cinematics.

Another interesting note about the game's enemies is that they would die in different ways depending on where you shot them. If you hit human enemies straight on in the chest, they would fall backwards with a loud yell or gurgled choke. The one that always got me was what occurred when shooting them near the throat. They would grab their throat, choking and gagging, then fall down and finally make one last death rattle before dying. Dinosaurs also had a similar range of deaths. The raptors especially would sometimes scream and make a death rattle as they fell to the ground and expired. You could also get enemies of different species to fight if you positioned them so one would inadvertently claw or shoot the other. You would usually lose some health doing this if you didn't have the invincibility cheat activated but it was worth it to watch them fight. One thing that Nintendo Power's initial reports about the game was that enemies wouldn't magically disappear when you killed them as in most games. Well, that was wrong. The article boasted you could walk up to a dead dinosaur and count its teeth but it turns out the developers must have changed that because they do dissolve away a few seconds after dying. And they regenerate like mad as well. When dealing with a big group of enemies, you'd usually kill one and be busy trying to kill the others when the first one you killed would regenerate. That was a rather frustrating part of the game.

For me, personally, the enemies weren't the hardest part of the game. It was the levels themselves. To this day, I still can't find anything without a walkthrough or a strategy guide's map. The first level is not too hard and even the second one is quite simple but starting with level three, I get lost very easy. The biggest reason for that is the fog that the levels have that cover up the everything in the distance. When you get out into an open area and try to search one end to another, the fog effect makes it hard to figure out where you've been. (Although, it is cool to see enemies materialize out of the fog as they come running at you.) Level Five, the Catacombs, was the worst because the entire level is a dark underground maze. I get lost so easily in that level that it's unbelievable. Level Six, the Treetop Village, has so many paths to take I get turned around very easily. And one person wrote that Level Eight, the Final Confrontation, is fairly easy to navigate but I highly disagree. That level is as confusing as Level Five in my opinion.

Not only are the level designs and distance fog boundaries impressive but is the sound. If you turn the music off, it's amazing how much detail they put in the sound. You can hear everything from birds chirping and water sloshing to lions and the T-Rex roaring in the distance. In underground levels near the entrances, you can hear the wind rushing, breathing-like gusts in the tunnels, and even freaky sounds that sound like evil laughing and screaming! Finally, in the last level which takes place in the Campaigner's fortress, you can hear eerie energy surges throughout. It's really dang creepy. In the outdoor levels, there are animals besides the enemies that don't harm you at all. In fact, if you shoot deer or wild boars that sometimes pop up, they'll give you health. There are also monkeys that hoot and climb up the nearest trees when you approach. The only way to kill them is with the Particle Accelerator but you don't get anything for doing it so it's pointless.

This is where I have to make a confession: I never beat this game without cheat codes. Yes, I had to use cheats to complete the game (the same can be said for the sequel but that's a story for another day). I just couldn't find everything and unlock all the levels. The strategy guide tantalized with a couple of codes at the end of the book that were mostly meant for fun but they had an offer for a list of codes to send you if you mailed to their address. So I did so. I was particularly keen to get the code for All Keys. But months and months passed after I mailed to that address and I heard nothing back from them. By that time, I'd thought I'd found salvation when I bought a cheat book at Wal-Mart but when I tried the code it had for All Keys, it didn't work. In fact, none of its codes worked. The book was a complete and total lie! Eventually, Nintendo Power came through and gave me the code for the Big Cheat, which unlocks many different codes, including warps to all the levels and bosses, invincibility, infinite lives, all weapons, infinite ammo, and others. It was a life saver. It may not have exactly been the proper way to do it but I beat the game with these cheats so I didn't care. The only thing was the All Keys cheat wasn't part of the Big Cheat and to this day, I'm not sure it even existed to begin with because I've never found the actual code for it.

Some of the cheats were creative and downright funny. There was one that made all the enemies tiny with little sounds to boot. (This was good for a laugh but unless you had invincibility on as well, it actually made the enemies harder to hit because of their small size.) Another gave them enormous heads and deep voices to boot. If you combined those two codes together, it was equally funny. One made all the enemies disco dance(!); one turned the game entirely ink and paint and while it made it hard to navigate, it was cool to look at; one made the graphics less impressive; and my personal favorite was a code that made Spirit Mode, a bizarre feature that would happen whenever you touched a particular item, last throughout the level until you turned it off. With everything in slow motion, you could see all the detail in the animation of the enemies, their designs, and their regeneration. It did, however, start to mess up your eyes after a while.

While Turok: Dinosaur Hunter may seem rather dated by today's standards, I think it's still a challenging and enjoyable game to pop in every once in a while. Not only was it one of the first (if not THE first) shooter games for the N64, it started a franchise that lasted into the millennium, starting with the darker and gorier sequel, Turok 2: Seeds of Evil, which I happened to get for Christmas the next year. While that game is better on a technical and gameplay standpoint, there's something about the simpleness of the first game that was never duplicated in any of the ones that followed. It's just in a separate league from all the others and that makes it a very memorable game.