“I am Turok!”
So it may seem that this analysis is late. Turok 2: Seeds of Evil is a game from 1998, and even its re-launch in the digital platforms of PC (Steam, GoG and Humble Store) is already a few months back in time. However, even today it is easy to retu
rn some relevance to the work of Iguana Entertainmentlittle that we look around us. In a year marked by shooters with a 2 in its title (Destiny, Splatoon, Wolfenstein, Battlefront), Seeds of Evil is not only a good remind
er of how a sequel can expand and improve based on its predecessor without limiting itself to making another the same time in different phases. Or how the use of a gore without reservations can give another weight to the violence, even that so exaggerated t
hat it goes into the caricature, but without ceasing to activate something visceral in our interior. Or how the world of the game can be more than a simple succession of rooms in which to release clashes and scripts. It’s all that and some other things, so it’s still worth talking about in full 2017.
NightDive Studios , company responsible for bringing the titles of the extinct production company Acclaim to the 21st century, began with the difficult. Tru
e, Dinosaur Hunter had the nostalgia factor: prior to the very GoldenEye 007, it was the first incursion of many in the FPS consoleros. But while the lack of veteranía was countered with an effective and potentially addictive approach (kill dinosaurs in the jungle through a very agile gunplay ), the remaster also showed the seams of a game th
at even in his own generation was relegated to learning exercise barely a year and a half after its premiere. Even leaving in a post-GoldenEye panorama,Turok 2 led Nintendo 64 to limits that neither Rare nor Nintendo itself were able to achieve with most of their
efforts . Like the creatures that roamed the levels, lurking in the dark to give us a claw at the slightest carelessness, Seeds of Evil was a beast capable of intimidating even the experts in the genre. A display of creativity and ambition with ideas that reach our days through other games, but that also drag the slab trying to take shape in a machine that was too small.
Risen and renewed: A necessary “remaster”
Those familiar with this classic 32-biter will know that it is already their second appearance on PC. In 1999, a few months after the launch in N64, Acclaim took Turok 2 to the platform that a priori best suited the game scheme of an FPS. However, as in other
famous consoleras works of the time such as Final Fantasy VII or Metal Gear Solid, the new version was a port that did the right thing to work, taking advantage of little and nothing the possibilities offered by the jump. It may be that qualifying for remastering this reissue sounds a bit generous, since it uses the modeling and
textures created by Iguanain his day (elements that do not always keep the same type of good), but at the same time the work tuning the existing base is so good that he manages to close the wound of that forgettable first port:the control has been fine
-tuned, the resolution and field of view adjustments are more flexible, the drawing distance is greater, and the framerate is not a problem unless we try to move it with a very humble computer .
On these improvements are also added extra effects such as bloom that affects the lighting, or a motion blur that causes blur in the movement of the camera and enemiesif we wish. All this optional and with gradual values so that each play
er looks for the aspect that he wants for the game: the purists can approach the experience of yesteryear, eliminating filters and voluntarily reducing the resolution or drawing distance, while others can opt for a more modern
style within the range that offers the full menu of options. The change never becomes radical , whatever we do is not going to go through a game created in 2017 (the retexturized would have been key to that),but it does succeed in its mission to offer a “v
itamin port” that fans can use to replace the original , relegated to a piece of collecting now that there is a much more efficient version both visually and playable. In that sense, the recommendation is straightforward: if Turok 2 already liked you before, now yo
u will like it more. Or at least it will be more similar to that idealized image that can be created in memory after years without visiting it.
More complicated question is what happens with those who have never played and want to immerse themselves in it without prior attachment. As we said at the beginning, we are not short of solid proposals in the field of action these days, so if any of them h
as to find something different or above average to gain our attention, a game of two decades has another handicap added. The positive part here, with no intention of discrediting (all) the current shooters, is that we are talking about a genre that has not always evolved as we usually understand the term. The history of the FPS is not one tha
t is plotted in ascending line, but rather one in which we find several compartments that have been going through their own evolutions (or involutions) a little apart from what was happening around. In this way, few games such as Perfect Dark or TimeSplitters inherit
ed the structure of GoldenEye, Half-Life marked a new path for proposals of greater narrative weight, and recently the Call of Duty campaigns made an art of choreography that creates spectacle without hardly need the player.
Turok Prime: The not so lost link
Even released near the turn of the century, Turok 2 has its origin just in the works with which Id Software institutionalized the FPS
years before there was such a variety. Wolfenstein 3D and the first DOOM deliveries can now look like relics of the past, butretain that ingenuit
y of a time where developers lived in constant pulse with technology to build ever more complex levels. Different heights, secret
s, collections and backtracking served as a complement to the shootings, establishing a symbiosis between the immediate satisfaction of the gunplay and the se
nse of achievement in the medium term to overcome or beat marks in the phases. In a stage of learning, scenographic austerity and total pr
otagonism of the player moving the action forward, this interrelation was vital to keep the games interesting beyond the first contact, although it lost so
me validity as new tricks appeared (playable) , visual or narrative) to stimulate us. There are few things that could be attributed to the success of the last DOOM , but one of them was precisely a reformulation of this philosophy, now relegated to the periphery of the genre.
It’s hard to treat as a coincidence that Metroid Prime , the first feature by Retro Studios , is prowling that periphery. The Texan
studio has part of its origins precisely in Iguana Entertainment, and Turok 2 works a bit as a link between Dinosaur Hunter and the adventures of Samus in GameCube . The original Turok raised the levels as large tracts of land, much wider than any phase of DOOM, both to give plausibility to its forest theme (as opposed to the infern
o-industrial Id Software, benefited by the feeling of claustrophobia) as for introduce plataform and facilitate the agile gunplay thanks to an action more centered in the movement than in the targeted, thus counteracting the restrictions of the command. Seeds of Evil leaves from this premise, but it makes changes of quite important:the number of levels descends
to a maximum of six to further nourish each one; the general amplitude is reduced in favor of a more intricate design,
as well as provided in the use of the spaces; and the selection of environments is also better differentiated. Destroyed urbanizations, swamps, cemeteries, alien ships or colonies of insects are some of the environments that this sequel intersperses, sometimes within the same level.
