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**S3M** · 17-07-2014, 14:49

Originally posted by noobish hat View Post

Anyway, I was saying that the control cannot compete with Goldeneye. So what's left? What's Duke Nukem's trump card? Obviously, it's the b-movie over the top violence, smut, and filthy language. That's the whole reason Duke Nukem is so popular. And, of course, most of this has been excised from the Nintendo version. The strip club in the first level is now a Duke Burger. The captured babes no longer have their tits out. Duke still has some of his quips, but all of the swearing has been removed, so most of the best lines are not included. I am really strongly against this. Not just censorship in general, which is clearly stupid, but the particular hypocrisy here. It's the sex vs violence thing again. You can show any horrendous murder you like, but oh god, no, not some tits. I can summarize the entire thing with this singularly distasteful image, which really put me off the game:

Nintendo must have looked at images like these before censoring, and said 'those naked women are inexcusable. We cannot have naked women in a Nintendo game. It's unnatural, people would sue us. Get rid of them, now." To which a developer possibly replied "You're the boss. I'll get rid of this bound woman with the severed spine too, shall I?" "What? No, leave that where it is. Now get back to work, I have some ignorant American parents to pander to." It honestly makes me sick.

Only just seen your Duke Nukem 64 review, but actually the bound woman with the severed spine was added for the N64 version. In the PC version she is just tied up but naked, which said it all for Nintendo and the bizarre rating system of ESRB in the USA, you can have a unnatural depraved act of violence in a supposedly "Mature" rated game. Yet the natural act of a man and woman having sex would get you an "Adult" rating if you saw the full deed.

I wonder if the developers were making a statement to Nintendo by including it.

**bash** · 17-07-2014, 15:16

I cant look at Duke Nukem games without feeling ill at the misogynist material.

**The Moleman** · 17-07-2014, 16:44

I always thought Duke Nukem 3D was created as a parody of the ridiculousness of 80s and 90s action films. For me it's harmless, it's all a joke, albeit poor taste at times... The naked babes weren't really naked, they just had exposed pixilated sprite boobs...

I can't remember DN64 creating any kind of controversy when it was released.

I loved the box art, it really stood out on the shelf.

**Duncan James Waugh** · 17-07-2014, 17:33

Yeah Duke Nukem has always been delivered with its tongue firmly in cheek. It's just mischevious fun.

**The Moleman** · 22-07-2014, 04:07

The sex vs violence bias Nintendo has brought up some N64 memories. I got my N64 xmas '97 so I was only 11 at the time. One of the first games I played was Turok, the lasting memory I have was that I thought the game was about blowing the **** out of dinosaurs so I wasn't expecting the first enemy you come across to be a human. I remember killing him then watching the death animation, he stumbled around holding his neck as fluids spirted out making sounds as if he were choking on his own blood... going from Mario 64 to then playing this blew my mind...

Maybe it was the 2d sprites in DN64 that kept the gore to a cartoonish like level... I dunno, but I think Turok was a far more violent game.

**noobish hat** · 22-07-2014, 04:49

Maybe it was that you couldn't see the violence in Turok because of all the sodding fog.

**Sketcz** · 22-07-2014, 07:05

Ah, Turok. Finite ammo which never respawns once collected, but infinitely respawning enemies. Worst design decision ever?

**noobish hat** · 22-07-2014, 09:48

Don't forget the platforming. That always works in first person.

**bash** · 22-07-2014, 11:51

Bah, the platforming wasnt that bad. The problem was it was boring, once you got past the slow down freeze power up and dinosaurs Turok was one big bloody foggy island.

**S3M** · 22-07-2014, 12:48

Strangely enough Sketcz & noobish, Randomised Gaming said the same in our review of Turok.

Turok: Dinosaur Hunter - Review - Vol 7

http://randomisedgaming.tumblr.com/post/74083457631/randomised-gaming-vol-7-review-turok-dinosaur

Format: Nintendo 64 Publisher: Acclaim Developer: Iguana Entertainment Release year: 1997 Genre: First Person Shooter (FPS) For this review Randomised Gaming reviewed the original PAL N64 release of the game. Turok: Dinosaur Hunter was released on the N64 in 1997 and was also a launch title for the European release of the system in 1997. Turok also has the honour of being the first, First Person Shooter (FPS) on the system and one of a select few FPS games to appear on a Nintendo system up till that point, previously Doom and Wolfenstein 3D were some of the best and only examples of the genre on Super Nintendo, along with the down right bizarre Super Noah’s Ark 3D. For many Nintendo fans there is a good chance this was likely their first taste of the FPS genre and after playing the first 30 minutes of the game you can see why this was quite a hit amongst the Nintendo fans in 1997 as it’s certainly very different to any Super Nintendo released game. The controls handle well and the game plays at a solid frame rate, on first glance the 3D visuals are also impressive and the environmental sound effects really bring out the jungle atmosphere of the first level in the game. Certainly the very start of the game is very impressive. However has Turok stood the test of time and how does it compare to PC, PlayStation and Saturn, First Person Shooter games of the same period. Certainly while Turok may have well impressed Nintendo 64 gamers, PC gamers on the other hand had been playing Id software’s excellent Quake since 1996 and to a PC gamer Turok may have well looked somewhat underwhelming. The plot of Turok: Dinosaur Hunter revolves around a evil overlord known as the “The Campaigner” who seeks an ancient artefact known as the “The Chronoscepter” in order to rule the Universe. Turok’s task is to find the eight pieces of the Chronoscepter before the Campaigner does and put an end to his evil plan. Very run of the mill stuff but at least the game itself doesn’t include any boring story cutscenes it’s just pure 100% FPS action. All the plot for the game is included in the Manual, which also includes a lovely 14 pages full coloured comic inside it. Unlike most modern games Turok doesn’t force you to sit through an hour of tutorial gameplay which makes a refreshing changing. There is a tutorial level available but it’s entirely up to the player if they want to play it or just jump straight into the main game. Some of the more impressive insects and dinosaurs seen in Turok. Gameplay is simple enough with Turok having to reach the end of each level, while collecting the various keys hidden on each level to unlock the next stage. Along the way you can also find pieces of the Chronoscepter hidden on each level, collect all eight parts and you unlock the Turok equivalent of the BFG9000. While Turok only starts off with the Knife and Tek Bow additional weapons such as the Assault Rife, Grenade Launcher and Mini Gun can be found dotted around the levels, more powerful guns are reserved till the later stages of the game. The levels themselves however are massive featuring large 3D open areas not seen on a console before and the first level alone will take you 2 – 3 hours to fully navigate especially if you’re planning on finding all the keys and items hidden in the stage. The problem is the levels are a little too big and due to the limited texture memory of the time after about 5 minutes of play you’ll know how the rest of the level will look. Add to this the fact that the draw distance for the game isn’t that far and you will often find yourself navigating the game via the 2D map. All in all this makes exploring of the world map extremely boring as it all looks very similar. While on a technically side the huge environments are impressive, from a design side they just don’t work as there isn’t enough variety in them to sustain the player’s attention. Some of the levels also feel a bit disconnected as many of the sections within a level are only connected via warps and save points can also be a good 30–40 minutes apart. Exploring the world may have worked better had the game featured a Metroid style power up and explore system. As without that type of game mechanics, aside from the single Chronoscepter piece and keys there isn’t much reason to explore a level. There are hidden bonus portals that take you to area full of power ups but many of these are hidden in hard to reach areas, one such portal on the third level requires the player to make a nearly impossible jump across the top of three pillar to land on a portal. At the same time having to avoid hunters and dinosaurs both behind and below you, in the end the risk rewards factor for some of the portals just isn’t worth you going for many of them and the player is better off conserving the ammo and health you would waste trying to reach some of them. One of the many secret portals hidden in the game (left) and the bonus area you are taken to for entering them. (right) While exploring the world of Turok isn’t that enjoyable, it’s still fun to shoot velociraptors and hunters. Aiming works very similar to the original Doom system so there’s no cross hair and instead as long as you point and shoot in the general direction of the enemy you will likely hit it. Occasionally it can be tricky to hit the odd enemy with no cross hair but inventive players will note the marker of Turok on the in-game map works as a surprising good replacement cross hair. Human enemies also have a variety of different death animations with blood pools often flying out of them as they die, amusing as first, it does get old pretty quick. While there is plenty of enemies to shooter at, a big problem Turok suffers with is an issue of enemies often re-spawning 30 seconds after you defeat them. While in most case they don’t infinitely re-spawn it’s rather annoying to kill an enemy and while you’re still exploring the area watch them appear again. The give away teleport sounds and yellow tower of light as they reappear makes them easy picking, but with the limited quantity of ammo found in the game. You will soon find yourself running low on ammo if you hang around for too long and this factor adds in another reason why exploring areas isn’t fun, if you have to keeping checking behind you in case the hunter you just killed hasn’t just re-spawned. Add to that the fact that teleporting in velociraptors look a bit silly and you have to question why the developers choose to re-spawn enemies in this manner. Velociraptor being teleported in (left) and the cyborg raptor you meet later in the game complete with mounted laser. (right) By now it’s quite clear to see Turok suffers with some quite bad design issues, the worse of all of them is the fact that Iguana Entertainment seemed to think they were making a platform game at times. Resulting in plenty of awful platforms sections, problem is that jumping sections have to date never successfully worked well in a FPS due to the camera angle and the lack of the ability to see your character’s feet and the floor together. In some sections like the end of level 3 the platforms you had to land on were so small the only way to get pass the jumping section was to bring up the map and use that as your navigation guide to see where you needed to land. You can try looking down as you jump, but this slows down the jump momentum and makes longer jump near impossible and rather awkward. In the end I lost count of the number of times I saw the death scene where Turok impersonates Wile E. Coyote and falls down a bottomless chasm. Turok going for the Looney Toon style of falling to your death. If Turok could grab onto ledges and pull himself up it would make the jumping a lot smoother and more interesting alas he can’t and for a FPS there is just far too many awful jumping sections. Ironically Retro Studio was founded by and hired a number of former Iguana Entertainment employees and despite Samus being able to climb in Metroid Fusion. It appears Samus has gone on to suffer a similar issue to poor old Turok as none of the Retro Studio Metroid games have ever allowed Samus to climb or grab ledges. Resulting in some rather backwardly designed Metroid 3D titles with rather average platform sections when compared to the 2D games in the series. Are we spotting a pattern here? Every last flaw in the jumping system is shown up by Nintendo’s console rivals at the time in the form of the excellent Tomb Raider on Saturn and PlayStation which arrived on the gaming scene before Turok and let’s not even not talk about the wonderful Super Mario 64. Quite what Iguana Entertainment were thinking when they included large amounts of jumping sections in a FPS is a bit of a mystery? Hardware limitation perhaps? The map vital for navigating dark caves and some of the more tricker platform sections. Another rather underwhelming moment in the game is the first boss battle. Having survived the first three levels in game you face the first supposedly menacing boss, queue massive dinosaur battle you would think? Nope instead it’s the highly not so scary threat of a jeep that’s right a jeep. Followed by another jeep and then a guy who run around shouting “Hey” all the time. Supposedly it’s a character from the comic book called the Longhunter but the game makes no direct reference to the character’s name in-game. The jeep itself can be easily defeated by walking around in a circle and it has to be seen to be believed. While later bosses like the Cyborg T-Rex are somewhat more impressive even the final battle with The Campaigner is also a bit of an anti-climax. Funny movement is when the Jeep gets stuck on the wall, happened to me during this review also. While it’s easy to point out faults with much of Turok Dinosaur Hunter, the one element that does stand out is the excellent in-game soundtrack. As with the sound effects the music really brings out the atmosphere and feel of the world along with the tension of battle. One of our more favourite tracks is the underwater theme and it’s braving the deep tones as you dive into the many rivers of the game, which often hide secrets. Turok: Dinosaur Hunter is certainly a game of its time and format as the game has not aged well. And was it that good a game in the first place either? The 1996 released Exhumed (Also known as Powerslave and 1999AD) is a cult classic FPS for the Sega Saturn and PlayStation set in Egypt, Exhumed gameplay is also very similar to Turok. Exhumed, still as playable today as it was in 1996. However Exhumed arrived before Turok did and Exhumed also used a proper Metroid style explore system. Which allowed you to find and use different power ups to revisit previous stages to find hidden weapons, extras and additional routes in each level. It’s a faster paced game with more variety in the stage design, levels are much smaller but there is plenty of them. Graphically Turok is a better game in terms of character models and animation, but that’s about it Exhumed just feels all-round a better game for your money. Even now in 2014 Exhumed still remains a game worth tracking down and playing, Turok on the other hand has aged badly and should be left in any bargain bin you find it in. While back in 1997 N64 fans may have rejoiced at the release of the first FPS on their system with rich 3D environments and character animation. The truth is sadly that PC, Saturn and PlayStation gamers already had better games to chose from. Turok: Dinosaur Hunter did receive a number of sequels, including the ill-fated 2007 Disney reboot which might have fared better if it had used a Far Cry world map and hunt style of gameplay, instead of a preset level structure. This is one Dinosaur video game series that has long since gone extinct and for clear reasons. Review by Random Gamer Riven. Twitter: RDGamerRiven E.mail: [email protected] Follow Randomised Gaming on Tumblr, for video game, art, reviews, features, videos and more. You can also follow us on twitter and subscribe to us on YouTube for even more Randomised Gaming content.

Turok is a ****ing awful game and I never want to have to play that game again, but I know I need to record at least one gameplay video.

**noobish hat** · 22-07-2014, 14:58

If anything, I think it was the obtuse level layouts that killed Turok for me. Why make such a non-linear, exploration-based game when your ?rappy engine only allows the player to see 2 feet in front of their faces. Rare knew what they were working with when they made Goldeneye. There's basically only level with a wide open environment (and that's probably the most annoying level in the whole game for knowing where to go).

**S3M** · 22-07-2014, 15:45

Originally posted by noobish hat View Post

If anything, I think it was the obtuse level layouts that killed Turok for me. Why make such a non-linear, exploration-based game when your ?rappy engine only allows the player to see 2 feet in front of their faces. Rare knew what they were working with when they made Goldeneye. There's basically only level with a wide open environment (and that's probably the most annoying level in the whole game for knowing where to go).

The biggest problem with the non-linear level design is that there is no point to it as there aren't any secret items or power ups to look for. All you have is the keys needed to access the next level and the one gun which you can collect the pieces to find, the rest is just lots of rooms with ammo and health. It's not like you find upgrades for the weapons or a hidden jet pack to fix the awful jumping sections.

Spot on about Rare as they clearly knew how to work with the limitations of the console, which Acclaim and Iguana didn't.

**The Moleman** · 22-07-2014, 17:58

Agree 100% with the opinions on Turok, I have to have the map overlay on when jumping otherwise I just fail... The level design was piss poor, I always ended up missing keys or getting lost in the fog, they should have removed the key element entirely and just have you getting from the start to the end of the level.

I always thought it was a bit weird that the character on the box and the one you played as were different...

**noobish hat** · 23-07-2014, 10:02

Lol, that's exactly how I played it. Explored each level, and when I got to the end, I just used a cheat to go to the next one. I do hope Turok 2 is a lot better.

**Zaki** · 23-07-2014, 11:55

Originally posted by noobish hat View Post

Lol, that's exactly how I played it. Explored each level, and when I got to the end, I just used a cheat to go to the next one. I do hope Turok 2 is a lot better.

Turok 2 has an amazing Soundtrack!

It also looks great with expansion pak (but slows down alot at higer res). It also has one of the best weapons in a videogame ever (cerebral bore):

#3: Cerebral Bore (Turok 2) - IGN's Top 100 Video Game Weapons

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jp3xSsvFNQQ

Join us as we countdown the Top 100 Video Game Weapons of all time. This is number 3, the Cerebral Bore from Turok 2.Get ready the full 100 list here: http:...

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