Turok 3: Shadow of Oblivion Remastered

First things first: This remaster is a job well done. The price is ridiculous. Turok 1 and 2 both cost 20 each and are at last 4 times as long and much MUCH better overall. A playthrough on normal takes roughly 4 hours and that DESPITE the complete nonsense that the game throws at you. And while I am happy I could finally finish this chapter I am somewhat disappointed that teenage me was completely justified not liking how the game and gameplay looked and ignoring it on release. Well done me. The overall game is also an early lesson about the Game Industry that many have learned or understood only recently: A game is made by a team and publishers have no idea what they are doing. Acclaim, the publisher fired important team members from developer Iguana between Turok 2 and Turok 3. Those developers later founded Retro Studios (Metroid Primes series) while Turok died on its arse and has been abysmal ever since, with studios trying to lodge whatever "current day" genre is popular at the moment under the brand name. Iguana tried to remedy Turok 3s terrible... everything by creating Turok Evolution buit the less is being said about that game the better. It didn't even look good back then. Now what are the games issues? It is a complete mess in every aspect. - Even on Normal the reaction times of enemies are ridiculous. Instant hits are a given. - Enemy projectiles are just broken. Even if they clearly miss you by a meter you still get hit. Their hitboxes are MASSIVE. - There is ZERO immersion here. You can't walk for more then 2 minutes before the game loads you into a new area. And the way it does that is just... I don't even. What happens is you enter an area, then the game CLEARLY drops you into a new area. Like LITTERALLY DROPS you into it. You fall down a step and everything. It is amateurish and it happens CONSTANTLY. And its not clever about it either. In one level you are in a relatively open Canyon. To advance you have to climb up the canyon walls and so cross by a gate that closes of the canyon further down. After said gate you walk a few meters and POP it drops you into a new area. Like WHY (okay I think I know why but that would b e to much for here)? Why not create a bend in the canyon and load the new area seamlessly in the background. Turok 2 did it! Hell Turok (the first) did it! These are first grade lessons of game design! This is their 4th game at this point (okay rage wars was mostly arenas, still!) And this happens every few hundred meters walked! - The levels are also all devoid of actual flair, atmosphere, ANYTHING! Its just empty levels. Empty and far to short levels. Some of the areas are just lazy. There is a area where they used the Fireborn Dinosoids from 2 and it makes no sense. These guys were artificially produced. Here is an potentially even worse example: it seems they use the textures from the Sunfire Pods for boulders you need to "push" to advance and you can clearly see that this wasn't a texture that was supposed to be enlarged like this. The game is full of unpolished assets and there is a clear stylistic mismatch between different assets and even different enemies. Like WTF is up with these GIANT, unfinished looking Velociraptors they they seemed to have just dropped the lounge animation from 1 into without much of anything else? - This game only released on the N64. And the shooting feels like its build around the auto aim. Using mouse and keyboard should make you able to easily hit headshots but if you hit enemies feels completely random EXCEPT if you use auto aim. Then it hits headshots and pops of body parts like its a birthday piñata. That is until they make the oblivion enemies out of mostly armoured parts where it goes back to feeling completely random. Its more effective to hip shoot enemies with the sniper. - The new weapons are forgettable and they nerfed the ♥♥♥♥ out of those they brought in from previous games. Like when the Cerebral bore can only shoot one homing projectile at a time. They also messed these weapon up in other ways. The grenade launcher looks like ♥♥♥♥ and is clearly more or less directly dropped from 1 into 3. It also has a limp ♥♥♥♥ arc now, you can barely hit projectiles over clever angles into things like windows or doors. The projectile modelling is arse. I have seen a grenade slip between the legs of an enemy. Damage is a joke or completely random. It goes from needing like three for one enemy to suddenly oblitering a group of enemies in one explosion. Enemies used to ran away in panic, trying to evade the cerebral bore, now they don't show no reaction to it whatsoever before they get hit. - Most enemies are just anaemic and slow or they just run up to you. There is no real dynamic here. Its no compare to the previous two games and I think the reason for this are these tiny areas they load you into. The boss fights fit right in with this description. Mindless is putting it mildly. And I mean the design as well as the gameplay. - I don't mind when studios reuse assets. But its so lazily done here. You can clearly see where they imported assets from Turok 2 because they stand out from all the new stuff that looks like complete ass. Overall the complete design of everything looks just terrible. There is no polish here (from the original designers) and many assets look like they were put in and modelled with now care and the lighting setting was set to Albright. - The music is completely nothing. I still can hear the music of the first two games. I will never forget the track of the Purlin Marsh levels. The sound here, on all fronts, music, ambience and sound effects is just completely forgettable. - The Story. Oh my god. Its embarrassing. Turok was never a story game. There was a premise and then the game drew you in with excellent atmosphere and limited but present environmental storytelling and with excellently designed enemies. The "story" here is the worst. Children of light or whatever is worse writing then fanfiction. Joshua Fireseeds death is embarrassing, twice, the council sucks. Turok wasn't a job, it was something that he just took on and did becasue it was right. Turok wasn't "employed" and then you could command him around like a hireling. That is not how I understood Turok. If you ♥♥♥♥♥♥ with him then you could have just as well ended up as a Bossfight. The bag was a concession to gameplay and the rule of cool. It wasn't a key story element and doing it like they did in the story is very cringy. To top it of it ends with a sequel cliffhanger that is unfitting like the rest of them. Also its Ada not Adon. FAZIT: If you love this game because because you played it during your childhood and have a fondness for it, that is completely fine. But objectively this is a terrible game, on its own but especially in contrast to its predecessors. Even Turok Rage Wars had a more complete art direction, better weapons and an actual atmosphere, despite being mostly menus and arenas. Honestly, to cut the old team some slack, I simply think that this game was pushed out unfinished. There are so many elements that feel simply unfinished, music, sound technical things like how the different areas "load in", half baked enemies and bosses and the overall visual and art design. Worst of all is that it is simply boring. This is a well done remaster, but if you have no nostalgia for this game or the series. try the first two and ignore this one. Its certainly not worth the full 30 bucks. EDIT: Turok 3 has ONE good idea in it. Collecting the classic triangles gives you more maximum life. That is actually a good updated version of using that collectible. Unfortunately the game is far too short to get any use out of it.