Turok: Escape from Lost Valley

I have fond memories of the last time I played a Turok game, some ten-odd years ago now. On that fateful weekend, I packed up my Nintendo 64 and a handful of games (having recently acquired a giant bin of retro video games and consoles from a seller on Craigslist) and headed to a friend’s house. After burning through some of the classics from our childhoods, we landed on Turok 2: Seeds of Evil. We had a blast assaulting each other with arrows and Cerebral Bores, all the while hiding the gory action from my friend’s overly-religious mother. All these years later, Turok is being brought back in the form of Turok: Escape from Lost Valley, and boy, is it a drastic change.

I wouldn’t call myself a fan of the series, but this makeover definitely piqued my interests. Gone are the days of gunning down “realistic” (for the time, perhaps) dinosaurs and humans in a gritty first person action game. Instead, we are treated to a squeaky-clean, isometric world of conveniently-sized cubes, the inhabitants of which I can only describe as freaking adorable. Even as I was pulling my hair out in frustration (which I’ll get to here in a minute), I couldn’t help but admire the cuteness of it all. The art is absolutely what sold me on this game.

Unfortunately, the art is really the only thing keeping me going. Of all the games that I’ve been looking forward to recently, this is not the one I expected to get annoyed with. You’ll spend most of your time in combat with hostile animals and humans alike, but much to my chagrin, combat is my least favorite part of the game. This is, in part, due to movement and rotation being restricted to eight directions. That alone wouldn’t be an issue, but enemies often slip into “blind spots”, making them unreachable without needing to reposition your character. Pair that with being locked to the animation of an attack, leaving yourself open to counter-attacks, and you have a recipe for disaster.

There were a handful of other issues during my hour and a half with the game that I figure I should bring up, ranging from nitpicks to actual technical issues. Text boxes are extremely slow, and there seems to be no way to skip or even speed them up. As for bugs, the only one I encountered manifested itself by misinterpreting the direction I pushed the analog stick in to move Turok, usually being the exact opposite direction of what I actually pressed (brownie points if you can find it happening in the above gif). It happened relatively often, and definitely contributed to my death count.

I intend on finishing Turok: Escape from Lost Valley, but I don’t think I’m going to be happy while doing it. Luckily, thanks to the incredibly cute art style, and the fact that you can take out your frustrations out on your companion Andar with no repercussions, I should be able to keep it together for the hour or so I have left.