Villainous Visions

  Acclaim's final Lost Land adventure for the N64, Turok 3: Shadow of Oblivion , released in the year 2000. The Turok-mania of the late 90s was certainly still going on, but even then I think most people saw the writing on the wall: interest in the series was waning. The year's previous release, Rage Wars* , wasn't received poorly , exactly, but fans and critics both agreed that it didn't match up to the previous Turok games. It got net-positive scores overall but they were consistently lower than Dinosaur Hunter and Seeds of Evil and the criticism they got was much harsher. Reviewers from GameSpot and Daily Radar called the game's weapon system "frustrating", it's audio "lacking", and it's graphics "mushy and ugly". Things seemed to be even worse in the comics-verse. I don't know any sales figures but I'm guessing they weren't good (or at least good enough) because, while Turok 2 had multiple runs leading up to it...

  At the tail end of 1998 Acclaim released another game for the N64, a direct sequel called Turok 2: Seeds of Evil . It was advertised as being a major technical step forward and an improvement over the original game in just about every way: better graphics, bigger levels, more enemy variety, more lore, more cutscenes and dialogue, cooler weapons, cleverer enemy AI, scarier and more intense gameplay, bloodier deaths... it was supposed to be everything people liked about TDH but doubled . Sounds like a tall order, but sure enough reception for Turok 2 was really damn positive! IGN, GameSpot, Nintendo Power, and Edge magazine all gave it a 9 out of 10, and in my personal experience this was the game everyone preferred. I myself got totally sucked in to Seeds of Evil in 99, so much so that I'd argue it's one of my formative games- something I played so much and enjoyed so deeply that it had a permanent lasting effect on my adult preferences and personality. For decades I quietly ...