Turok 2: Seeds of Evil
A bow, a shotgun and ancient enemies lurking in a lush jungle, plus a weapon so brutal it became legend. Turok 2: Seeds of Evil was in 1998 one of the technically most ambitious shooters on the Nintendo 64 and raised the bar for what first-person action on a console should look like. Many players remember it above all for one notoriously famous weapon.
Development was undertaken by the studio Iguana Entertainment under the Acclaim banner and followed on from the successful first installment, Turok: Dinosaur Hunter. The second entry significantly enlarged the levels, added more extensive environments and more elaborate objectives, so a simple shooter became an adventure with elements of exploration and quest completion. It also added support for the Expansion Pak, which enabled a higher image resolution.
The arsenal became the game's calling card. Alongside the bow and classic weapons appeared the fabled Cerebral Bore, a homing projectile that drilled into an enemy's skull, boring into the head beforehand with an unmistakable sound. This morbid inventiveness etched itself into the memory of an entire generation and became a symbol of the series' uncompromising atmosphere.
Culturally, Turok 2 was among the titles that pushed the N64 to the limit of its abilities. It also came out in a PC version and received a modern remaster as part of the series' rediscovery, which cleaned up the original hazy draw distance and the controls. Reviewers of the day praised the scope and ambition, though the game suffered from labyrinthine levels and thick fog hiding the console's range limitations.
Today Turok 2 is a reminder of an era when console shooters were still finding their form, and at the same time of how far the creators of the time were willing to go with the inventiveness of weapons. It is rough, ambitious and unforgettable.
Why play: For ambitious action at the limit of the N64's abilities and for the Cerebral Bore, a weapon you simply cannot forget.
Game 47 of 77 for Nintendo 64
The same title elsewhere (2)
On the Nintendo 64 this was one of the most technically demanding first-person shooters of its time, with vast, fog-shrouded environments (the fog also helped mask limited draw distance) and a huge arsenal including the legendary Cerebral Bore. For the Game Boy Color, developer Bit Managers abandoned the 3D perspective entirely and built a top-down action game instead — simpler graphics, smaller levels and a more limited weapon set, but playable on a handheld that had no chance at real 3D FPS performance. Anyone after the original dinosaur-jungle atmosphere should pick the N64 version; the GBC release only offers a lighter variation on the same theme.
