It's a step down from Turok 2 pretty much across the board. The levels are empty, flat, and uninteresting to look at. Where Turok 2 had a different theme/locale for every level, in Turok 3 it's almost all just gray boring interiors.
In Turok 2 the enemies all were really threatening looking, the look of some of them was legitimately scary, especially when I was younger, and the Oblivion level's final cutscene tease built a lot of anticipation for me, especially knowing the next game was to be about fighting them. In this game, the monsters are really lame and cartoony looking. Like with big dumb eyes big round character models. In Turok 2, the enemies were varied, the Dinosoids were so cool, and fun to fight. Every level had something new to throw at you. The bosses were all varied with freaky alien looks that could under your skin. But in Turok 3, the first boss is a police car with monster teeth. Woah. I'm literally shaking as I type this. It's so spooky.
And then there's the weapons. All the guns feel worse. ALL the guns. Got a favorite gun from Turok 2? It's worse. Firestorm canon? That thing was a beast, hold the trigger down and just let loose, and it sounded and looked amazing. Well now it looks like a standard minigun and feels so meh to shoot. How about the Grenade Launcher?? Man that thing was a beast, blowing up enemies and clearing out rooms? Now the grenades will NEVER hit your enemies because they bounce so much more than before, and most of the time will just come flying back and hit you. The Mag 60 is worse, the Tek Bow is worse, the Cerebral Bore is worse. Even the nuke, EVEN THE NUKE is FUCKING USELESS!
Not to mention someone had the bright idea to split the arsenal between the two characters. So Danielle gets a bunch of dogshit weapons, while Joseph's are ever so SLIGHTLY better. And I don't know why they split the character at all, since clearly Danielle was meant to be the main character. Even when you pick Joseph, Danielle is in all the cutscenes, and the little bit of the story is ABOUT her. Why did they bother? JUST MAKE IT ABOUT HER. Better to have one good campaign focused on one character, than 2 mid campaigns so they can pretend this game has more content than it actually does.
Enemy placements are also somehow worse. In Turok 2, enemies were set in the levels and you could memorize all the places they were in your run and just have a blast shooting what was coming around the corner. In Turok 3, enemies almost ALWAYS know where you are before you know where they are, AND they can shoot you through walls and floors. Many is the time that you will walk into a new area, immediately shots start ringing out and before you have a chance to look around, you're hit, the screen is red, you start to turn, and BAM, you're dead. Repeat ad nauseum. It's more than a little annoying. Not to mention, in Turok 3, they decided that enemies should just respawn. Like they do in turok 1, but much much MUCH worse. Imagine, you walk into a room, you kill the 2 enemies inside of it. You walk down the hall, and you get shot from behind so you turn around, enemies are now spawning out of that room that you JUST CLEARED and now you're dead. So fucking cheap. Bullshit. You can literally see enemies spawn in front of you, it's so lame.
The second this game has mouselook, there will be no more challenge. There are so few enemies in the game, the only way they have any chance is to get the drop on you, with your awful N64 controller giving you no help in dispatching them. With a mouse and keyboard? I can't imagine even the hardest mode would be an issue. The only thing that ever gave me trouble in this game was caused by N64 framerates. And then I watched a friend play through it on an emulator, and that wasn't an issue for him, so if you play that way, you will have almost no difficulty or challenge with this game.
Now that I've beaten the game, surely tomorrow Nightdive will announce a PC port, just to piss me off. It's surprising an updated port hasn't happened yet, considering this game is stuck on Nintendo 64. It's a fate worse than death, really. And now that I've played it, I'm starting to think they pretty much came to wonder what I wonder now. Would it even be worth it? There's so little meat in the game. It's an empty feeling game. Will this even be worth the price of admission? It's such a letdown compared to the first two. There's really nowhere for them to go with it.
I liked the idea of going with the story, with adding voice acting and more emphasis on plot and cutscenes, but what was happening in the story wasn't too interesting, and the game just isnt long enough for a deep story.
There were very few times that I had actual fun playing this game, which is a shame. Turok 2 is one of my favorite shooters and to know the same love and care wasn't given to its sequel is a genuine disappointment after all these years. Playing this finally, and knowing how bad Evolution is, it's really no wonder they thought the only way to save the franchise was a reboot that was nothing like the original games. But even that didn't work.
R.I.P. Turok.
In Turok 2 the enemies all were really threatening looking, the look of some of them was legitimately scary, especially when I was younger, and the Oblivion level's final cutscene tease built a lot of anticipation for me, especially knowing the next game was to be about fighting them. In this game, the monsters are really lame and cartoony looking. Like with big dumb eyes big round character models. In Turok 2, the enemies were varied, the Dinosoids were so cool, and fun to fight. Every level had something new to throw at you. The bosses were all varied with freaky alien looks that could under your skin. But in Turok 3, the first boss is a police car with monster teeth. Woah. I'm literally shaking as I type this. It's so spooky.
And then there's the weapons. All the guns feel worse. ALL the guns. Got a favorite gun from Turok 2? It's worse. Firestorm canon? That thing was a beast, hold the trigger down and just let loose, and it sounded and looked amazing. Well now it looks like a standard minigun and feels so meh to shoot. How about the Grenade Launcher?? Man that thing was a beast, blowing up enemies and clearing out rooms? Now the grenades will NEVER hit your enemies because they bounce so much more than before, and most of the time will just come flying back and hit you. The Mag 60 is worse, the Tek Bow is worse, the Cerebral Bore is worse. Even the nuke, EVEN THE NUKE is FUCKING USELESS!
Not to mention someone had the bright idea to split the arsenal between the two characters. So Danielle gets a bunch of dogshit weapons, while Joseph's are ever so SLIGHTLY better. And I don't know why they split the character at all, since clearly Danielle was meant to be the main character. Even when you pick Joseph, Danielle is in all the cutscenes, and the little bit of the story is ABOUT her. Why did they bother? JUST MAKE IT ABOUT HER. Better to have one good campaign focused on one character, than 2 mid campaigns so they can pretend this game has more content than it actually does.
Enemy placements are also somehow worse. In Turok 2, enemies were set in the levels and you could memorize all the places they were in your run and just have a blast shooting what was coming around the corner. In Turok 3, enemies almost ALWAYS know where you are before you know where they are, AND they can shoot you through walls and floors. Many is the time that you will walk into a new area, immediately shots start ringing out and before you have a chance to look around, you're hit, the screen is red, you start to turn, and BAM, you're dead. Repeat ad nauseum. It's more than a little annoying. Not to mention, in Turok 3, they decided that enemies should just respawn. Like they do in turok 1, but much much MUCH worse. Imagine, you walk into a room, you kill the 2 enemies inside of it. You walk down the hall, and you get shot from behind so you turn around, enemies are now spawning out of that room that you JUST CLEARED and now you're dead. So fucking cheap. Bullshit. You can literally see enemies spawn in front of you, it's so lame.
The second this game has mouselook, there will be no more challenge. There are so few enemies in the game, the only way they have any chance is to get the drop on you, with your awful N64 controller giving you no help in dispatching them. With a mouse and keyboard? I can't imagine even the hardest mode would be an issue. The only thing that ever gave me trouble in this game was caused by N64 framerates. And then I watched a friend play through it on an emulator, and that wasn't an issue for him, so if you play that way, you will have almost no difficulty or challenge with this game.
Now that I've beaten the game, surely tomorrow Nightdive will announce a PC port, just to piss me off. It's surprising an updated port hasn't happened yet, considering this game is stuck on Nintendo 64. It's a fate worse than death, really. And now that I've played it, I'm starting to think they pretty much came to wonder what I wonder now. Would it even be worth it? There's so little meat in the game. It's an empty feeling game. Will this even be worth the price of admission? It's such a letdown compared to the first two. There's really nowhere for them to go with it.
I liked the idea of going with the story, with adding voice acting and more emphasis on plot and cutscenes, but what was happening in the story wasn't too interesting, and the game just isnt long enough for a deep story.
There were very few times that I had actual fun playing this game, which is a shame. Turok 2 is one of my favorite shooters and to know the same love and care wasn't given to its sequel is a genuine disappointment after all these years. Playing this finally, and knowing how bad Evolution is, it's really no wonder they thought the only way to save the franchise was a reboot that was nothing like the original games. But even that didn't work.
R.I.P. Turok.