PLATFORM: PC, PS4/5, SWITCH, XBOX ONE/SERIES (REVIEWED) | RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
Released as an N64 exclusive in the year 2000, Shadows of Oblivion is the culmination of the original Turok trilogy that itself was based on a dinosaur-hunting comicbook character from the 1950s. With the first two games in the series already receiving remasters over the last eight years, it makes perfect sense for Turok 3 to get the same treatment, and the folks at Nightdive Studios have gone above and beyond to bring this underappreciated FPS up to modern standards.
A more linear experience than its two predecessors, Turok 3 offers the choice of two playable characters who follow slightly different paths through parts of the game. Where Turok 2‘s levels sprawled across the map in an almost incoherent manner, its follow-up features smaller environments and fewer obscure objectives to meet – you’ll still need to track down various objects, but there’s much less chance of getting lost and having to spend hours cluelessly wandering around. The decision to swap dinosaurs for soldiers and weird zombie mutants is a bit of an odd one, given that the series quickly became known for its “dinosaur hunter” tagline, but there are still plenty of monsters and weirdos to blast away with your huge arsenal of weapons. The option to play again as a second character adds a bit of replayability, and two further characters become playable after completing the game, one of which provides a fair amount of challenge due to its inability to wield any weapons…
Along with making the expected improvements to visual fidelity, textures, lighting, geometry and sound, character models and animations have been reworked and improved, higher difficulties have been beefed up with extra enemies, and there’s even an extra splash of extra blood and guts that was sorely missing from the original release. There were plenty of other things missing from 2000’s version of Turok 3, with a whole host of assets being removed from the game due to hardware limitations. Apart from a “new” foe and one enemy receiving an extra attack, these assets were mostly cosmetic but nevertheless have been added back into the game, showing the level of care and attention that Nightdive Studios has put into making this the definitive edition of the game. Without a doubt worth adding to any retro fan’s collection!
