In 2002, Acclaim were struggling to keep afloat. This had an impact on the games they were developing themselves – with them rushing games and pushing them out of the door. Turok Evolution was one such victim of this, being shoved out while very clearly incomplete and filled with bugs, glitches and other issues. This led to it getting middling reviews and killed off the franchise until Disney’s short-lived reboot. Now, it seems even more hated than it was at release, with its original “alright” reception turning much more negative.
Visually, Turok Evolution is both impressive and rather ugly. There’s an impressive amount of foliage in the outdoor levels, but everything looks cobbled together, often feeling that different plants came from different games altogether. The levels themselves are linear like Turok 3, but they do have a good flow to them with some really good variety throughout, with some focusing on searching for the way forward and others being all out assaults and even an obligatory stealth level (thankfully, stealth is optional). There’s just one big thing messing with them: loading screens.
Levels within a chapter in Turok Evolution flow directly from each other, so they were clearly designed to be much larger, individual levels. Because of this, you can never tell when a level is going to end, you’ll just be walking forward when the screen will fade to black, the game will save and there will be a long loading screen. The size of each section of level is also widely inconsistent, you can have a series of tiny levels, yet other levels are colossal. It’s a shame, as there are a lot of nice areas and ideas throughout the game.
The weapons, like most other Turok games, are a ton of fun to use, and come with alternative modes you unlock over the course of the game. Even the basic pistol becomes very satisfying to use when you get the sniper-add on, and is one of my favourite scoped weapons due to how easy it is to swap between the two modes. Then you have various explosive weapons, a silence machine gun that can swap into a full on gatling gun, black hole grenades, auto targeting plasma rifles, and a gravity gun.
The gravity gun’s second mode lets you pick up enemies and swing them around, whacking them into other enemies. The force of the gravity wave also causes the enemy to shake violently as their limbs explode. It’s wonderfully brutal and a ton of fun to move. But, while the weapons are a ton of fun to use, there’s just one issue: the weapon inventory is broken. You’re supposed to collect a weapon and keep it for the rest of the game, however, some levels simply don’t support some weapons, even the all weapons cheat doesn’t let you use it. The pistol, for example, doesn’t exist past chapter 5 (out of 15), even though ammo is still plentiful. It’s a shame as it’s a great selection of weapons.
Another aspect of Turok Evolution that many people hate are the flying sections. I personally disagree and think that they’re a ton of fun and help break the game up. The issues with longer levels being cut into chunks is far more prevalent here, though, so you’ll load a new level as if you’re flying in the middle of a cave. However, the controls are rather smooth, and there’s a mixture of linear levels and “all range mode” levels. I think these are a really good addition.
So, Turok Evolution is a very glitchy mess, but underneath is an immensely fun game that manages to stay varied throughout its campaign. The weapons are all a lot of fun to use, and there are some great areas to explore. The developers just needed time to finish things properly. Instead, Acclaim sealed their own fate by rushing their own games.