You've really got to hand it to Bits Masters. This development team has been contracted four times to provide a Game Boy version of Turok each time Acclaim releases a Turok for the Nintendo 64. And while the series had a rocky start with Turok and Turok 2, the team continued to work on the idea to produce last year's decent release Turok: Rage Wars and now the surprisingly good Turok 3. I guess when you've been working on one product for so long, you tend to get to know your own stuff.
Features
- Ten weapons
- Five missions
- Multiple weapons and vehicles
- Password save
- Only for Game Boy Color
Right off the bat it feels like you've jumped into an alternate universe ¿ this is Turok, a so-called dinosaur hunter, and the first mission puts you in control of a mega-tank wiping out structures in a jungle. Huh? This level seems out of place, but the engine is done extremely well ¿ smooth animation for the tanks, responsive controls, and huge sprites. It's like the team wanted to do a combat game but wound up using the engine for the latest Turok adventure.
The tank level is basically a transition between the mission parts, which are basically the same action-style levels that were in Turok: Rage Wars. Missions expand through a side and vertical scrolling environment where you'll have to wander through structures, jungles, and beach worlds, using your bowie knife and other weaponry found to wipe out the endless onslaught of reptilian enemies. Some missions require you to simply find keys to access the other parts of the level, in later levels you simply fight your way through the structures blowing up everything you can find. The design is very old-school, much like a Final Fight game but with weapons and no hand-to-hand combat.
In later levels, the tank rounds give way for speedboat missions, or swamp boat missions, or jeep missions ¿ all of which use the same engine, which means nice graphics with extremely tight controls. Even though these vehicular missions seem out of place, they add a lot of variety to the game...considering that the side and vertical-scrolling missions really don't vary too much other than the background missions.
I spent a lot of time in the first mission simply due to an oversight in the game design ¿ the only way you can finish the level and fight the end boss (a red raptor) is if you locate a switch on the wall and flip it. Now, nowhere in the mission briefing does it tell you anything about switches, and neither does the instruction manual ¿ so I spent more than an hour wandering the structure trying everything. The switch on the wall blends in with the standard background, so it was by accident that I saw it animate when I got right up against it ¿ the switch moved, and I could continue on to the level boss. But I'm sure that a lot of people will get frustrated with this one element ¿ so much as to put the game down before they can even finish one mission. A shame, too, since the game is a lot of fun, and very challenging.
And because the same guys who worked on the past Turok games worked on this one, they could safely borrow the library of sprites, animation cycles, and background tiles from the past game. Oh, that's not to say that this game looks exactly like Turok: Rage Wars, but the Turok character looks identical ¿ and I'm guessing that it's borrowing the same action engine from the past games. Which might explain why the graphics don't look as vibrant as they could on the Game Boy Color screen ¿ the game style is very washed out. On the other hand, the cutscenes are very slick ¿ detailed, rendered artwork using the Game Boy Color's high-color mode.
Each Turok game on the Nintendo 64 vary in quality from one game to the next, but Turok on the Game Boy systems increase in quality with every release. This game is the best yet, and is a well-designed action game on the handheld. I still want a two-player link cable mode somewhere in the Game Boy version ¿ maybe when Acclaim moves the series to the Game Boy Advance. Until then, this game makes for a great action-adventure fix.
