NOTE: THIS IS A REVIEW OF TUROK REMASTERED FROM NIGHT DIVE STUDIOS, NOT THE ORIGINAL RELEASE
I had an N64 as a kid, but I never did play the Turok games. I think I rented the first one once or twice, but the controls really threw me and I never got very far. Moving with my right thumb and aiming with my left felt awkward and clumsy, especially with that cheapo joystick. Given the oft-noted flaws of the game and its engine such as the pathetic draw distance, the aforementioned clunky controls, and the many jumping puzzles, I'd written Turok off as just another one of 'those' mediocre console FPSes from the early 3D era. However, something about it that I could never put my finger on had always gnawed at me for whatever reason, which is why I found myself surprisingly excited for Night Dive Studios' remastered edition for the PC.
You might recognize Night Dive as the studio that regularly adapts older games that are out of circulation or otherwise difficult to play on modern OSes. They brought back both System Shock games, Strife, Harvester, Darklands, and even a bunch of children's edutainment games. Their work on Turok is, as always, totally solid. They've added modern gamepad support, HD resolution and native widescreen, a wider FOV (and options to increase it further), some subtle new graphical effects, and pushed the fog back about twice as far. All in all it remains very faithful to what I'm familiar with, and even the bells and whistles can be disabled for a more true-to-the-original experience. I wouldn't recommend playing like that, however, as these additions mitigate the more egregious issues Turok has. For example, the wider FOV makes the treacherous jumping sections much more manageable and the longer view distance makes navigating the sometimes perplexing levels far easier.
And that's my main uncertainty with regards to Turok. Without prior experience, I can't tell if it's a good game being given another chance, or a bad game that's been fixed. I suppose at some point it doesn't matter, as I'd recommend this version above all others anyway.
What ends up being Turok's most distinguishing asset is its ability to make you feel totally lost while also subtly leading you so that you never actually are lost. Paths often split into two, three, even four directions with none of them having that telltale 'optional' quality to them. Secrets are all over the place. Even the critical path will often go out of its way to disorient you. And yet even the most basic due diligence with regards to exploring and a moderately careful attention to the automap will keep things moving along at a steady pace. Their "Keep It Simple, Stupid" approach to delivering this kind of aimlessness puts it in a stark contrast to other, more confusing FPSes from around that era, which tended to lean heavily on non-intuitive switch puzzles and keycard doors.
Turok has a somewhat antiquated lives system and lacks the functionality to save whenever you want. Instead you are reliant on 'save shrines' and checkpoints, both of which are infrequent. Given that the game was made for an N64 controller and I now found myself playing it with a mouse and keyboard, the difficulty is decidedly low. Not only did I never die once from enemy attacks, it was rare that my HP even fell below 100 hp (the maximum is 250hp). Most deaths will arise from the bottomless pits. Turok has always been maligned for its jumping puzzles, and perhaps rightfully so. However, these didn't start becoming a pain for me until around the second to last world. The ones that result in instant death are usually immediately preceded by a checkpoint and even those tend to look more intimidating than they actually are dangerous. That being said, the game has a Doom-style ammo backpack item that doubles your carrying capacity and is lost upon any death. The ammo capacity for each weapon is pretty low even with the backpack, so it can be a very irritating thing to lose. For the most part, however, I found Turok to be a cakewalk.
The movement speed is very high, in the fashion of the times, and it's enjoyable to use an overpowered arsenal of weapons to mow through baddies literally without even stopping. It's a bit irritating, especially in large scale areas meant to be explored, that enemies will respawn almost immediately. For the most part, though, you've moved on way before they've had the chance.
I had a lot of fun playing Turok. How much of that can be owed to Night Dive Studios and how much is owed to Iguana is hard to say. It's not exactly a classic on par with Doom or Quake but I will say it's earned the right to be remembered fondly.