REVIEW: ‘Turok 2: Seeds Of Evil’ Plays Like ‘Metroid Prime’s’ Rough Draft

Turok 2: Seeds of Evil is one of the last games from the first era of first-person shooters in the ‘90s, which was characterized by segmented levels, finding keys, unlocking doors, and blasting enemies that had little to no AI, and where story was not a priority. While Turok 2’s gameplay is anachronistic by today’s FPS standards, it did things that strongly hinted at what was to come for Iguana Entertainment and Nintendo.

Turok 2 was originally developed by Iguana Entertainment, the studio that eventually became Retro Studios, the creators of the Metroid Prime series. As I got deeper into the game, it became more evident the potential Nintendo saw in them to make a 3D Metroid game. The platforming, exploration, the open environments separated by warp portals (in Prime’s case, elevators), the secret areas that have to be blown open, the power-up abilities that have to be taken to previous areas of the game, which all became hallmarks of the Metroid Prime series, are all present in Turok 2, albeit in a rougher form. In that sense, it feels like a rough draft of Metroid Prime with some of its design choices. Metroid Prime’s feel becomes more pronounced the farther you play into Turok 2, to the point that it feels like a Metroid Prime audition at times.

Turok 2 came out the same year as Half-Life in 1998, and a year after GoldenEye 007 on Nintendo 64. I first played it on the Nintendo 64 in 2000, two years before Metroid Prime came out. It wasn’t an earth-shattering game, even by Nintendo 64 standards. I didn’t get very far into it, but it stuck with me. Years later, the remastered version for PC was released by Nightdive Studios. Now with the ability to play it with keyboard and mouse, and with some quality-of-life improvements, I was ready to take a deep-dive into one of the better FPS games on the Nintendo 64. Having played the Metroid Prime games extensively, it’s interesting to see the similarities between them in retrospect.

Turok 2 has ambitious level design for a late ‘90s FPS game. Even though the level design feels dated with its use of unlocking gates with keys that is very reminiscent of ‘90s FPS games, the first half of Turok 2 holds up surprisingly well, and is where the game is at its best. Its art design is its biggest strength, and it has an open design that is mostly outdoors. Even though it’s an up-res’d Nintendo 64 game, with the settings turned up, some of the early environments look, dare I say, pretty, and the objective markers are a huge improvement in the remaster. I honestly don’t know how anyone beat it back in the day without them.

You’re thrown right into the first level with little fanfare. After you complete it, you’re introduced to a hub-area with five more levels to access. However, you have to acquire their keys to access them, not to mention the Primagen keys that give you access to the final boss. Where are those keys? You guessed it, they’re scattered in the other areas of the game.

Every level has mission objectives to accomplish. If you miss any of them, you’ll have to either retrace your steps, or you have the option of warping back to the beginning of the level. Whichever you choose, thankfully all the enemies do not respawn. A few of them will be back to not make the environment seem completely empty, but for the most part, you’re free to explore and find what you might’ve missed.

As you progress in the game, you’ll also acquire abilities that allow you to access areas in earlier levels that you couldn’t before. This makes eventually having to re-traverse levels a requirement even if you complete all the mission objectives your first time through. It’s a tried and true Metroid-like game mechanic, but in Turok 2, when you go back to access those areas, you don’t necessarily remember exactly where the areas are at, even using the map, which is an annoyance.

The biggest improvement Turok 2 needs is a better map, especially in the second half of the game. Having the same kind of 3D map that the Metroid Prime games have would go a long way into alleviating the frustration of getting lost in the game’s maze-like level design. A good remake would undoubtedly address this and make the game eminently more playable given how easy it is to get lost in the levels.

While the weapons are great in Turok 2, and some of them are fantastic (the Cerebral Bore might be one of the best guns to ever be in a video game), the system from switching from one to another is the clunkiest I’ve ever used in an FPS. Having to scroll with your mouse takes too long, as does using your quick-menu. If I needed a particular gun, I often found myself having to run away from enemies while trying to select what I needed. You can’t even pause the game to switch, you have to do it on the fly in the clunkiest way possible. Even when you get what you want, it isn’t cohesive and snappy. There’s still a slight pause before you finally switch to what you selected. Some of them you can bind to the number-keys on your keyboard, but you eventually run out of numbers as you continue to get more weapons.

When I first started playing, I thought the game was running at 60 FPS, but it looks like the framerate is capped at 30 FPS. The good news is that Nightdive Studios added a lot of graphical options for this port. The bad news is that turning everything up seems to make the framerate unstable even on a rig that should be more than capable of running a port of a Nintendo 64 game on highest settings. If I can play games like Borderlands, Bioshock, and Far Cry at 4K/60FPS, there’s no reason Turok 2 should not be able to run at a stable 30 FPS maxed out.

The level design gets quite tedious by the end of the game when it becomes a never-ending parade of running through corridors that look similar, while unlocking doors with switches. It feels like Iguana ran out of time, money, and/or ideas, because the game becomes a sprawling, tedious corridor shooter in the last three levels.

Most of the guns are fantastic with only a few duds, but even with quality-of-life improvements, it’s still tough to get through thanks to the sprawling maze-like level design, and the keys and special abilities the game makes you retrieve to reach the final boss. The combat is usually fun, but the rest of it gets old, and by the end of the game, I was ready to be done with it. It also has some of the worst voice-acting I’ve ever heard.

VERDICT

It took me twenty-six and a half hours to beat Turok 2, but it felt like a hundred. There are things to like about it, but I can’t recommend it as an FPS that’s aged well, especially since it came out in 1998, the same year as Half-Life. I can’t imagine trying to beat this game on the Nintendo 64 without the quality-of-life improvements, especially the objective markers. Turok 2 is definitely a product of its time. It’s worth playing to see what the Metroid Prime developers made before Metroid Prime. The similarities between the games were bigger than I was expecting, especially with its art design.

However, in spite of its many glaring flaws, even after playing all the way through to the end, and being frustrated for most of the second half of the game, I still have a soft spot for Turok 2. It’s environments, gunplay, and some of its music did just enough to keep me interested and push me through to the end. Turok 2 has enough going for it that it’s a prime candidate (no pun intended) for a remake. That being said, I can only recommend it as a nostalgic time-capsule showpiece.

4.5/10 – BAD