People love dinosaurs. This was never really in doubt — but it's become even more apparent in recent months, with the massive success of films like Jurassic World and open-world, survival, dinosaur-wrangling game Ark: Survival Evolved.
That makes this the perfect time to bring back the original dinosaur wrangler, Turok. First appearing in comics before taking the world of video games by storm, Turok: Dinosaur Hunter originally released in 1997 for the Nintendo 64 and will soon be getting a PC re-release, courtesy of Night Dive Studio. Night Dive, whose resume includes a long list of re-released versions of classic games like System Shock 2 and games from the Wizardry series, will also be re-releasing the sequel, Turok: Seeds of Evil.
That's great news for dinosaur fans, as Turok was fairly popular back in 1997. It's a first-person shooter in which players take on the role of Turok, a Native American warrior tasked with protecting "The Lost Lands" — a world where time has no meaning and dinosaurs (albeit ones with futuristic weaponry) still roam free. Critics praised the game's visuals and called it one of the best games for Nintendo's console.
But that was nearly two decades ago. How Turok holds up in 2015 is a fair question, and if the franchise's reboot in 2008 is anything to go by, the answer is maybe not so well. The reboot ditched much of the zaniness of the original game for a tried-and-true approach.
Turok became a Native American space marine who, along with a team of other soldiers, is sent to bring back a war criminal who just so happened to be Turok's former commanding officer. Things go terribly wrong and Turok lands on a remote alien world filled with dinosaurs — dinosaurs he must battle in order to survive and bring his former mentor to justice.
The game wasn't awful, but it lacked the charm of the original series that made Turok such a video game icon to begin with. No definitive dates for the re-release of Turok and Turok 2 have been given, but hopefully we will get to play these games before we all go extinct.
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