Product Description
-------------------
Whether you're one of the millions of fans of the Turok series
or are just partial to multiplayer deathmatches, Turok: Rage Wars
blends the two favorites into a first-person shooter fan's dream
game. All of the solid level design, inspired baddies, and
engrossing gameplay elements of the Turok games are here, with
new weapons, power-ups, and incredibly smart bots (computer
nents). The only difference is this game is a pure action
free-for-all in which good and fast feet are the keys to
success.
Rage Wars offers a variety of nent and options. Play with
up to four other humans or a combination of humans and bots on
more than 36 s. Don't worry about identifying the bots as the
buggy nents are running in place in a corner with s
blazing at the floor--the computerized ners of Rage Wars are
perhaps smarter than the - and-s variety of nent.
The arsenal of weapons range from the familiar to the entirely
unique. Turok favorites include the crossbow, mag pistol, flare
, and scorpion launcher. In addition, a freeze chills
enemies into blocks of party ice, an inflator turns players
into waddling weather balloons before popping (remember Dig
Dug?), and the Chestburster--well, let's just say that it lives
up to its name. --Eric Twelker
Review
------
Turok: Rage Wars is following in the footsteps of the current PC
first-person shooting trend. Rather than have separate
single-player and multiplayer games, the single-player mode in
Turok: Rage Wars plays more like a training session for your
multiplayer games. To be effective as a training scenario, the
single-player missions need artificial intelligence that looks,
acts, and plays as a human would. But unless the humans you play
against are trying to play without looking at the screen, you'll
notice that the AI-controlled bots in Turok: Rage Wars can't put
up a fight, even on the game's most difficult setting.
The multiplayer mode will hold up to four players, be they human
or computer-controlled. You can fight free-for-all battles, team
battles, tag battles (where one player turns into a monkey and
must change himself back at a sw station before he gets
smoked by one of the other players), and capture the . Unlike
most versions of capture the , this one features only one
and one capture point. You'll pick a character (only a few
are available at first - the rest must be in the trial
mode), select which five weapons you want to carry, and then get
dumped into one of the game's many arenas. There are a lot of
different levels for each type of game. Most of them get the job
done, but there are a few levels in there that are just plain
bad. The single-player mode is meant mostly to facilitate the
unlocking of secret skins and hidden characters. It puts you
through all the game's modes on a variety of s, challenging
you to complete tasks like scoring ten kills before you have died
ten times, capturing the five times, or tagging the monkey
three times.
The game has a ton of weapons, each with a secondary firing mode,
but only a few of the weapons are truly useful. Many of them,
like the inflator, emaciator, and freeze , are neat ideas, but
they don't really perform too well in actual use. Thankfully, you
can configure each of your character's five weapon slots, so you
won't be stuck with any weapons that you may find lame. Since
you'll be choosing weapons before the match actually starts,
there aren't any s lying around the arenas. Instead, you'll be
grabbing ammo, which respawns rather quickly. This causes a bit
of a camping problem in some levels, since you can just sit near
the explosive rounds and shoot rockets at anyone who comes near
you. You'll also score some limited-use weapons, like bear claw
traps, turrets, and mines. Finally, there are power-ups that
deliver random effects, like invulnerability, invisibility,
vampire, speed burst, and many, many more.
Speaking of the speed burst, that's what this entire game needs.
The combatants just move way too slowly, yet they turn fast
enough to keep any running character in their s. So dodging
s isn't as useful as it could be, and the result is four
characters, standing around, shooting at each other until someone
dies. Tossing bots into the mix doesn't really help things. Even
on the most difficult setting, the bot AI can't stand up to any
steady-handed human player. The bots will do all sorts of dumb
things, like run right past you without firing, wander past ammo
and power-ups without picking them up, and, in team games, run
into one of its AI-controlled teammates while walking through a
door and getting stuck on each other until you get them loose
with a or two.
Rage Wars supports the 4MB expansion pak, which enables a hi-res
mode and a hi-res letterboxed mode. The standard lo-res mode
looks mushy and really quite ugly, but it runs at a tolerable
frame rate. The hi-res modes look pretty good, with crisp, clean
textures and well-defined models, but the frame rate takes a
nosedive, and this only adds to the overall sluggish feeling the
game already has. Also, it should be noted that the game's sound
is an extremely annoying composition of grunts, yelps, and
explosions. If you didn't occasionally need to hear where things
were coming from, you'd really want to just turn the sound all
the way down and try to forget about it.
There is some fun to be had with Turok: Rage Wars. It has plenty
of s, lots of modes, and enough hidden stuff to keep you
playing for quite some time, provided you can stay interested in
the game for more than three days. But given the game's slow
speed and the general lack of intelligent computer nents,
you're really better off sticking with another first-person
shooter. GoldenEye 007 comes to mind, of course, as does Quake
II. Both are still very good at putting together an enjoyable
four-player experience, as well as providing a meaningful
single-player mode. --Jeff Gerstmann
--Copyright ©1999 GameSpot Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction
in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written
permission of GameSpot is prohibited. GameSpot and the GameSpot
logo are trademarks of GameSpot Inc. -- GameSpot Review
