Turok always mimicked other series. This kept things fresh, but also meant the series struggled to have its own identity to some extent.
Turok 1 was a really good Quake knockoff. Seriously, more people need to play it. The remaster is great.
Turok 2 was heavily influenced by GoldenEye, but really tried to cut its own path. Very clear influence on Metroid Prime. I don't like some of the changes the remaster made, but again, more people need to play this game.
Rage Wars was, again, a Quake knockoff. Very popular back in the day. Notable for its smooth framerate, too. Only Rage Wars and Turok 1 run well on the N64. The other games sacrificed framerate for sweet graphics.
Turok 3 was heavily influenced by Half-Life, and while it's a rushed mess it has a very special place in my heart. It's got a lot of cool ideas, including two protagonist with different weapons and skills and varying routes through levels, and its facial animation is absolutely exceptional.
T3 ends on a gigantic cliffhanger, and I remain disappointed that instead of a sequel, we got... Turok: Evolution instead.
FIrst off, I am a really big Turok fan (Turok 1, especially), and enjoyed reading your post. I am pretty much in 100% agreement with everything you posted.
I get the feeling, that Turok 2's ideas of widening and ramping up the gameplay idea from Turok 1 while apeing the slower controls of its contemporaries led to its downfall. It is not a tight + focused experience like Turok 1: it lacks balance in its weaponry + enemy types + its meandering levels have no payoff like you see in metroidvania style games. The upgrades you end up getting only exist to further game progression, not change up gameplay.
The things turok 2 does very well, it does VERY WELL for its time period. Its death animations and weapon variety are pretty top notch, the problem is they are introduced at times with poor context and use, and have troublesome usage. A great example is the Cerebral Bore, a weapon everyone loves due to its audio visual design. It is introduced at a point in the game when the enemy is firing very fast projectiles on a level where you can be rather HP starved, these enemies could (at the time pre-remaster) shoot from outside the fog range, while you needed visual enemy contact, a seek time, and and an animation time for the bore to even be effecctive. Using the bore in comparison to other faster / hit-scan weapons meant losing HP. Or you have the introduction of a lot of the weapons near the end of the game, but no increases in enemy counts + types to justify the greater arsenal variety + muntions you now can carry around.
I could write a lot aobut how disappointing Turok 2 is, because I see the greatness it could have had from following up on Turok 1 in a more simple fashion instead of branching out and stumbling when it went too far trying to connect in too many gameplay loops + ideas. Also, where are the backpacks ala Doom or Turok 1?! I want more shotgun ammo!!!
Dreamworks owns Turok. Night Dive Studios licensed it from them to make the Turok 1 and Turok 2 remasters. Which... were supposed to be released on console. Whatever happened to that?
Should still be coming along as far as I know. I imagine once we see the DX11 build release in a mature state on PC, we will finally see the console versions.
Turok: Evolution is a game that kinda flails around in circles and doesn't go anywhere. It lacks a sense of forward momentum. You wander through these levels and half the time you have no idea what you're actually doing there. The game is disjointed and meandering. And every so often there's a really not good flying section. Playing the game feels like going through the motions, and it is flabbergasting that the prequel to the game that INVENTED WEAPON WHEELS doesn't have a weapon wheel. How on earth does that happen? (Same thing happend to TimeSplitters and Perfect Dark: Zero, oddly. What the hell was wrong with 6th gen developers?)
Your post about Turok always apaing other games is spot on (and Turok 1 is an amazing quake game btw :D), and Evolution is basically a poster child of a lot of the design attitude + ideas from early 2000 FPS games. It has turret sequences, insta-fail sneaking sequences, vehicle levels, etc. The things that retain though at the core of its Turok identity are still actually good though for the most part. Guns, while a bit ugly IMO, hit and gib enemies very nicely... we see a return to the jungle for the most part, and they introduced non-enemy AI boids. But like you said, you once again have all these weapons + ideas like Turok 2 just jammed together with the connective tissue being poor. I would also contend that no insta-fail stealth seciton in an FPS is really ever very good, nor are most forced vehicle sections or turret sequences.
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My biggest problems with Turok games post the first one are the decrease in movement speed and ever widening of scope, say what you will about how primitive turok 1 is, but it is razor sharp blade, not a dulled cludgeon. Its score, technologically limited, gets blood pumping and is moody. Its arsenal is smaller, but overall more effective for the actual combat the game has. Its levels are smaller and less varied, but they are much more rewarding to traverse and shoot enemies within. A new turok game, with a smaller budget, would end up being fantastic as long as they focused on a core design principles and spent less time trying to ape modern shooters or deliver an arsenal.
