Turok is a video game franchise based on the Turok comic book series published by Valiant Comics.The first Turok video game, titled Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, was released in 1997 for the Nintendo 64 console. It followed Tal'Set Fireseed, the eldest male in his family chosen to become Turok: The protector of the boundary between this dimension and the others, a series of parallel universes held together by "The Lost Lands", a world where "Time Has No Meaning". In other words, things like robots, cyborgs and aliens from the distant future, Demons from the darkest pits of Hell, and Dinosaurs from primeval jungles ran rampant, and where various people from different dimensions were at war for its control. The job of the current Turok was to keep balance in this world and close the portals to the other dimensions that were bound the The Lost Lands (this was also a good excuse to give a Native American warrior things like Nuclear Fission Cannons and Radioactive Death Rays).Turok was well received by gamers and critics alike, and paved the way for the even more popular sequel: Turok 2: Seeds of Evil (1998), which was lauded for its excellent AI, graphics and long, sprawling levels. It followed the life of a modern-day eighteen-year-old boy chosen to become the next Turok: Joshua Fireseed, as he slaughtered his waythrough hordes of enemiesto stop the evilPrimagenfrom destroyinghis universe. A PC port and a side-scrolling Game Boy Color version were released in the wake of the game's success, but both were poorly received.The following title, Turok: Rage Wars (1999), was a pure multiplayer game along the lines of Quake III Arena or Unreal Tournament, which was situated outside the main chronology. Despite this (and a so-so reception from reviewers) Rage Wars was well received by fans.The third canonical entry to the franchise was Turok 3: Shadow of Oblivion (2000), which took a more story oriented path than the previous games, and more-or-less picked up where Seeds of Evil left off. The Hero of the previous game dies, leaving his two remaining family members - younger brother Joseph and older sister Danielle - to carry on the family tradition of blowing up dinosaurs with big guns... And to also stop the abomination known as Oblivion from devouring all life in the universe. The game was sadly mired by programming errors and annoying bugs, as well as poor voice acting. A common fan criticism is that it didn't have the feel of a Turok game.The final game to appear as part of the original story-line was Turok: Evolution (2002), a prequel game revolving around the early exploits of the first game's protagonist, Tal'Set, as he battles the tyrannical Slegs (a race of Snake/Lizard/Dinosaur people) and their commander, a genetically-engineered T-Rex named Tyrannus.A Continuity Reboot simply titled Turok was released in 2008 for PlayStation 3, PC and Xbox 360, with the titular hero as a Space Marine. While not a terrible game, it was "simply another generic FPS" and received predictably poor reviews.
A.K.A.-47: "Assault Rifle", "Pistol", "Shotgun", etc.
Anachronism Stew: Averted, as the Dinosaurs, Demons and Aliens were all interdimensional travelers (albeit involuntary ones); and not simply different things from different time periods together for no reason.
Arc Words: "The child is the key." Turns out it was referring to Danielle's unborn child.
Authority Equals Asskicking: Fully embraced. The Campaigner in the first game, who is probably the hardest enemy in the game if you don't have the Chronosecepter, and the Primagen in the second, though he does fight dirty. Kane in the reboot shows that he's the best knife fighter in Wolf Pack and easily shows by beating Turok in a sparring match in a flashback.
Awesome, but Impractical: The Nuke Weapon in the second game did nothing to the penultimate or final bosses, though firing it at the ceiling took care of the latter's mooks. Also the Scorpion Launcher's bugged damage meaning it sometimes did nothing but knock an enemy into the air without damaging them.
Best Boss Ever: Thunder. He's a massive Damage Sponge Boss that singlehandedly requires the player to conserve ammo for the fusion cannon, but his attacks are tough enough to avoid that he really tests your skills with strafing and dodging. And there's the sheer concept of the fight that makes it cool.
Big Creepy Crawlies: The first game gives us Giant Beetles, Giant Dragonflies, and the Mantis boss. There's also Swamp Wasps from the second game. The 2008 game gives us giant mosquitoes.
Black Speech: Heard while approaching a temple in 3. Warping to the level boss and going to the temple from there lets it be heard properly; it's actually just a bunch of sinister voices repeating the words 'Foreign chanting' over and over!
Blown Across the Room: Hilariously invoked in Turok 1, soul-crushingly averted in Turok 2; In 1, an enemy's body could be knocked about endlessly with explosives, all the while spewing endless torrents of blood. In Turok 2, no matter how much explosive power you launch at an enemy, their body WILL NOT MOVE from its spot. Ever. It WILL fly upwards, perfectly vertical, and fall back down to its anchored spot, but it will not be moved horizontally.
Cool, but Inefficient: The Cerebral Bore. Despite being the most iconic weapon of the series, and for a damngood reason, has an almost non-existent fire rate and limited ammo, and sometimes left the enemy alive after the bore detonated.
The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: If you attempt to use anything more powerful than the minigun (apart from the Chronoscepter) on the Campaigner in Dinosaur Hunter's final battle, the Campaigner activates a magnetic shield that not only protects him from harm for some time, it actually removes the weapon from your arsenal. Oh, and he counters your puny efforts with an attack that knocks HALF of your health off and sends you flying across the arena.
Cutscene: Averted in the first game, played straight from the second onwards.
Cruel Mercy: In Evolution, where you leave the Big Bad alive with a dead T-Rex on top of him after giving him a humiliating ass-kicking. Compys quickly close in on him as Tal'Set leaves.
Cut and Paste Environments: Turok 2 suffered severely from recycling identical areas, to the point it was entirely possible to walk from the middle of Lair of the Blind Ones to the entrance without realising. Those sprawling levels? Sprawl a little too much.
Cut Song: This piece was supposed to be used for the Primagen battle, but they ended up using the Mantid Queen music instead.
Cyborg: A lot of the Campaigner's minions, as well as the Campaigner himself.
Darker and Edgier: The comic books were produced in the utlra-politically correct 50s, and come with a seal from Dell comics that promises "only clean and wholesome entertainment", pledging to eliminate objectionable material entirely. The videogames, on the other hand wholeheartedly earn their M rating
Defrosting Ice Queen: Slade in the 2008 version is a male, non-romantic example. He starts out as a complete asshole towards Turok (he does have a reason, namely his brother was in Wolf Pack (Turok's old group) and died after Turok betrayed them), but gradually softens and respects him, especially after Turok saves him from a giant eel/octopus thing.
Drought Level of Doom: All of Turok 2 on Hard difficulty. Conserve, and choose your weapons and strategy wisely.
Dual Boss: Syra and Warclubs in Rage Wars. Syra is significantly more powerful with Warclubs, but either one can respawn if they are killed as long as the other one doesn't die quickly enough. It's handy to whittle one down, kill the other, then finish the job.
Oblivion's influence rapidly turns the first level in 3 into one.
Elite Mooks: At least one different kind each level.
Everything's Better with Dinosaurs: The main storyline has to do with the job of an ancient warrior trying to keep The Omniverse from collapsing; using his ancient wisdom to survive in a dark, alien land. They could just have easily have come up with some pretty strange creatures for the Lost Lands; but Bio-mechanical Dinosaurs were apparently better fitting.
Excuse Plot: Almost every game: "Some jackass is trying to conquer the Multiverse... or something of that variety. Here's some kick-ass weaponry. Now go kill."
Faceless Goons: The Mendel-Gruman soldiers from the 2008 game. In a rare variant of this being played straight for the good guys, the Lost Land soldiers have helmets that conceal everything but their mouths in Evolution, and SWAT wear balaclavas in Seeds of Evil.
Fackler Scale of FPS Realism: The earlier games are very much on the "not" end of the scale, with Hammer Space inventories, the ability to jump in mid-air and healing by picking up plus signs. Even the most recent one let you dual-wield shotguns and stab giant dinosaurs to death with a knife.
Fetch Quest: The first two games are all about finding keys. Extended with 2's objectives, which often included fetching things like explosive charges and crystals that you were never actually told about.
Flat Character: Both protagonists in Dinosaur Hunter and Seeds of Evil. The latter gets some Character Development in the third game, right before he dies. In Evolution, while Tal'set is given a reason for his rage, it's never really expanded upon and he only talks in cutscenes between levels - if there are cutscenes.
Flunky Boss: Longhunter in the first game. You have to fight two Humvees before facing him.
Symbiont and Tal Set in Rage Wars. Symbiote fights with several copies, while only the real one must be killed. Tal Set, meanwhile, will vanish and summon mooks twice in the battle. For the third round with him, the same mooks will appear to fight at the same time. Killing them this time does away with them for good, and they must be killed when Tal Set is gone to get him to come back.
Foreshadowing: The second game's Big Cheat gives us this.
Turok: Human poachers will shoot a glorious fountain of sweet crimson from their necks; gagging while trying to hold it in and keep from collapsing; before choking to death and ceasing to live. Raptors and Demons shot in the face drag their heads along on broken necks before flopping around like fish and giving a soul-chilling death rattle; all while kicking the air in a futile attempt to keep alive.
Turok II: Seeds of Evil
Shoot a monster through the chest and its heart will be blown out; still beating, it will crawl away while its former body collapses.
Blow the head off a Raptor or Raptoid and it does a "headless chicken" death spasm where it will continue to attack you before realizing it no longer has a head, then falls down dead. During this spasm it will no longer make noise but will continue to spill blood all over the floor.
Shoot the Cerebral Bore at something with a brain in it's head, and pinkish-green goo will be spit out of its liquified brain before blood jets out; and finally its head EXPLODES. Note that the drilling noise the weapon makes while drilling into it's victim is chill inducing, as is the way the victim will writhe in pain. Though it is hilarious to see enemies try to run from the heat seaking weapon. Please note that it will NOT work on the undead. Hence the 'something with a brain comment'.
Insectoids can be roasted to nothing but exoskeleton before its rotting remains spill out of its abdomen.
Use explosive shotgun shells on the dinosoids and you can literally blow them in half, exposing their spines and a few surviving ribs.
Explosive shotgun shells (well, the regular ones can do it too, but with less occurance mind you) when used on the Purr-Linn that aren't wearing chest armor, can literally blow a hole in them so large you can see through it, count surviving ribs, and supposedly even shoot through it at enemies behind them. Granted Purr-Linns killed in this manner only stay up for a short time so it's not a wise tactic to try, since if you miss when shooting them they can melee you to death, very fast.
The Nuke Weapon, fires a bolt of energy that draws in more energy, then lets out a blinding flash. Any enemies caught in any of these flashes will be turned into a statue that will then explode if not touched for a few seconds.
Sunfire Pods, when used against the Blind Ones, will set them on fire and send them running to try and stop the searing pain. Also it's an instant kill to spiders caught in the flash.
Dead soldiers line the walls of the Port of Adia and River of Souls levels. Such bodies usually have spears embedded in them, holding them up against the wall. If the player is so inclined, they can shoot regular arrows at the dead soldier and they will embed themselves. More than 20 arrows can be fired into any one soldier and they will all remain in place so you can see them from another angle, which is more No Kill Like Overkill than anything. Said arrows can then be reclaimed and reused.
Firing an arrow at an enemy will cause them to stick in place.
Explosive shotgun shells (aren't they fun?) when used on the lava dinosoids in the Lair of the Blind Ones level can blow them up in such a way that all that remains are their legs, and their thigh bone which will protrude out of the remaining leg, all the while spilling blood over the floor.
Turok III: Shadows of Oblivion: bloodied bodies litter the streets of cities overcome by Hellish Demons that seek to bring about absolute rule of their Eldritch God, Oblivion; disembowelment and skinnings of screaming children becomes reasonably commonplace.
Turok: Evolution: There's gorn here before you even start playing the game. In the opening movie, a Sleg (humanoid reptilian) gets an axe thrown directly into his face, splitting his head open (leading to the title screen as he slumps down the wall as blood spurts).
Turok 2008: CQC knife kills are introduced, that allow you to kill dinos by stabbing them in the head with your knife. And as one of the loading screens says, "What's a meat fountain? Try hitting a dino with a well-placed grenade." Explosives let you blow some dinos to bloody pieces, which then twitch around on the ground. And guess how you defeat the T.rex? You jab a grenade into its already-scarred eye and blow the whole top of its head off, leaving just the bottom jaw.
Hyperspace Arsenal: An aversion was attempted in the first game, since you could only hold a limited amount of ammo unless you had a backpack equipped,. It didn't do much to improve realism since its own capacity was unlimited, so the bag (or rather, not having one) was a hindrance more than anything and wasn't included in later games.
Turok 2 takes it to the extreme with the ability to carry over 20 weapons, but then does a fairly nonsensical subversion by allowing you absurdly little ammo for many of them - the pistols, for instance, are limited to fifty shots; considering the Mag fires three shots at a time, you can only pull the trigger 16 times before you're out.
And Evolution overkills it.
Averted in the 2008 game. You can only carry two guns, a knife, and a compound bow.
In Name Only: The 2008 game has barely anything in common with either the comic or the previous games, beyond starring a guy called Turok who kills a lot of dinosaurs.
Infinity+1 Sword: In every game, there is a BFG that must be assembled, piece by piece, throughout the entire game. Except for the most recent two.
In the case of the first game, the Chronosecepter actually does have some use against the Campaigner, the Nuke in the second, not so much since if you been collecting everything as you got, there's likely to be nothing left worth using it on since it has no effect on bosses.
Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence: Fairly frequent in the older games would be finding your way blocked by a grating or arbitrary wooden barrier.
Invincible Minor Minion: S.W.A.T. Officers in the 3rd game. They open fire on you if you try to get past them, and are completely unkillable. They pretty much serve as a Border Patrol to push you down the pre-scripted game path.
Item Get: In Turok 1 enemies are kind enough to let Turok grab a key and gaze at it thoughtfully, like it was a gift from the gods and not one of two dozen Plot Coupons.
Jerkass: Slade in the 2008 version, who constantly complains and makes snide remarks toward Turok at the drop of a hat. Though he does soften over time.
The Juggernaut: The fourth game has a Seismosaurus converted into a Land Battleship called "Juggernaut". An entire three levels are spent stopping it from reaching Galyanna.
Penultimate weapon: THE MINIGUN IN EVOLUTION. It was able to gib the huge minibosses, literally in seconds. The drawback was that it had very little ammo in store.
Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Dimension-hopping Navajo Warrior trying to stop an Omnicidal maniac's army of genetically engineered Dinosaurs, shape-shifting Demons and Vicious biomechanical Extraterrestrials with future-weapons that skull-fuck enemies to death on an Alternate version of Earth where "Time has no meaning". How freakin' epic is that?
The first would have different Game over animation if you died against some of the bosses. The Mantis and T-Rex would eat you and the Campaigner bludgeoned Turok to death.
The T-Rex had a Nonstandard Nonstandard Game Over animation on top of this. Normally the animation ends with the T-Rex burping after eating Turok, but if you enable the "Disco Mode" cheat (which normally causes enemies to dance, but just screws around with the bosses' timing), then the T-Rex eats Turok faster than normal, burps, and then watches a feather from Turok's headdress floating by its head.
Nostalgia Level: Turok 3 reproduces parts of the first stage of the first Turok game.
The series' very favorite thing; Turoks 2 and 3 are the only ones to not totally ignore the events of every preceding game. 2 didn't bother to pick up on 1's 'Campaigner is actually an Android' ending or explain how Joshua became Turok (this is because the Turok in 1 was supposed to be Joshua as per the cover and manual comic, but for some reason was shown as Tal'Set instead). Rage Wars barely had a plot at all and claimed the first Turok was the bad guy, leading to Acclaim making the insane claim in the Extreme G strategy guide that Tal'Set had never been Turok and the Turok in 1 was Joshua. Evolution ignored the entire preceding series, and Turok 2008 ignored that.
Evolution was a prequel to the original Dinosaur Hunter; explaining how Tal'Set took about becoming Turok and defending The Lost Lands.
Ribcage Ridge: Early in Turok 2008 a ridiculously huge carnivore skeleton is seen; the skull alone is the size of a house. The player might think this is foreshadowing. It isn't.
Rule Of Cool: Dinosaur Hunter had raptors with horned skullcaps, Death-rays and Rocket boosters, Triceratops with mounted machine-gunners, rocket-launchers and grenade-launchers, a freaking fire-breathing bio-mechanical Tyrannosaurus Rex with laser beams on its eyes, flame-throwers on its face, death-rays and rocket launchers and freaking intestine-rending claws. Meanwhile, the Player Character is a dimension-hopping Navajo warrior with a scorpion missile launcher that fires 4 rockets at a time and a ruby-powered fission cannon. Now those had to be some pretty epic brainstorming sessions.
Sorting Algorithm of Evil: Usually averted. Mooks and EliteMooks appear throughout the whole game, but generally aren't any tougher than the ones from the last level.
The 2nd game has this with the Primagen's bio-bots encountered on his lightship, who are definitely the strongest enemies in the game, but not necessarily the hardest if you've been collecting all the weapons and know how to deal with them. Also, the Oblivion portals in the same game DO get a lot nastier in the later levels, with far more enemies.
Sprite Polygon Mix: Turok 2 featured an interesting graphical glitch that showed how the sprites were scaled; the game measured the distance from player object to sprite to figure out how large the sprite should be on-screen. Unfortunately, it had no way to compensate for the sniper zoom, meaning a 2D effect will appear to shrink as you zoom in and grow as you zoom out.
Standard FPS Guns: Depending on the game, this is either played straight, averted or subverted with some creative inclusions.
Trouser Space: The first two Turoks were only ever seen wearing pants and a few small accessories (probably why they got damaged so much, come to think of it).
Holy shit, is it very bad in Evolution. Let's see - The bore. Then you get to the flamethrower, where you could burn them until they gibbed. You had poison arrows, which caused them to puke their guts out until they died. You had the black hole grenades, which stretched the enemies as they were sucked into the hole. You could fire darts or arrows into their throats and watch them choke on their own blood. And so on...
For its time, Seeds of Evil was considered pretty bad, though it pales in comparison to the gore in Evolution. The PFM Layer (Personal Fragmentation Mine Layer) could amputate the legs of most enemies, causing them to roll around on the ground in agony until they bled to death (and you could sometimes shoot legs off with your other weapons). You could blow off heads and arms from just about every enemy. Zombies could be blown in half, reduced to an upper torso crawling along and dragging its naked spine. Purr-Linn Warclubs could have holes blown clear through their upper torso (the Magnum, Shotgun and Shredder were best at this), resulting in blood fountaining down both sides of their bodies and a ghastly gurling sound before they keeled over.
Even the original had its moment. In the tutorial. Shooting Tek Arrows at the pillars enemies were situated on rather than the enemies themselves would (somehow) cause them to launch into the air, bleeding and screaming. And you could juggle them this way.
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