Turok: Evolution

Turok: Evolution
North American box art of Turok: Evolution
Developer(s)	RFX Interactive (Game Boy Advance) Acclaim Entertainment (PlayStation 2, Xbox, Nintendo GameCube)
Publisher(s)	Acclaim Entertainment
Series	Turok
Platform(s)	Game Boy Advance, PlayStation 2, Xbox, Nintendo GameCube, Microsoft Windows
Release date(s)	August 26, 2002 Game Boy Advance NA August 26, 2002 EU September 6, 2002 PlayStation 2 & Xbox NA August 31, 2002 EU September 6, 2002 Nintendo GameCube NA August 31, 2002 EU September 27, 2002 Microsoft Windows EU October 24, 2003
Genre(s)	First-person shooter
Mode(s)	Single-player Multiplayer
Rating(s)	ELSPA: 15+ ESRB: M OFLC: MA15+
System requirements Microsoft Windows Microsoft Windows 98 or better 128MB GeForce 3 series/ATI Radeon HD series 1-2GB HDD 2x DVD-/+ Drive

Turok: EvoIution is a first-person shooter video game developed and published by Acclaim Entertainment, released for the Nintendo GameCube, PlayStation 2, Xbox, and Game Boy Advance in 2002. A port for Microsoft Windows was released in 2003 for the European market. It was the last to follow in the series before it was rebooted by a 2008 entry in the Turok video games series, called Turok.

Plot

The game begins with the seer, Tarkeen, explaining the history of the Lost Lands which had, for years, been fought over by tyrannic warlords.

On earth during the old west, Tal'Set faces off his enemy, Captain Bruckner and succeeds in cutting off his arm, but both of them are sucked into a wormhole. Tal'Set is nearly killed and the people of the River Village, who found him, call upon Tarkeen to heal him. Tarkeen then commands them to bring Tal'Set to him. He is sent into the jungle and kills enemy factions, lizard-like enemies known as the Sleg, that are close to the Village. Tal'Set hooks up with Genn, a pilot from the Village, who will be guiding him to the seer. Along the way, he uses a Quetzalcoatlus to evict the Sleg from the jungle and destroy their air ship.

Tal'Set reaches Tarkeen's sanctum and Tarkeen tells him that it was he who summoned him and that he must accept the mantle of Turok and release Tarkeen from a curse. When Tal'Set refuses, Tarkeen tells him that the Slegs had managed to reach the Village. This enrages Tal'Set which prompts him to cut through the mountains to reach the Sleg base, where they are holding the villagers and the River Village leader, Wise Father. He infiltrated the base and releases the prisoners and then enters the Sleg fortress.

Tal'Set proceeds in liberating the base and learns that a "human general" was the one who ordered the attack on the jungle and the Slegs that Tal'Set fought were only a diversion. Deeper in the base, Tal'Set is ordered to retrieve the enemy war plans, which he does by destroying the reactor and causing it to meltdown. With the reactor causing much chaos, he is able to reach the prison cells, kill the guards and rescue the Wise Father and his comrades. They both escape the fortress, but outside they assault on the human city of Galyana, but for the army to reach it the must cross the Chasm, which can only be crossed in two spots. Tal'Set enters the Shadowed Lands and makes his way through the ruins to an old bridge, where he blows it up to stop the Slegs from crossing the Chasm. He is rescued from falling to his death by his Pterosaur and he proceeds in destroying an enemy stronghold in the Chasm with Genn.

After the stronghold is destroyed, the Pterosaur crash lands near the second are where the Slegs are trying to cross: The Suspended City. Tal'Set breaches the city and cleanses the street with his comrades, surviving the first wave of Sleg paratroops entering the city. He clears snipers from the rooftops and proceeds into the city square, and from there he enters the sewer system. The sewers lead into the maintenance tunnels under the Great Library, which Tal'Set enters so he can reach the Senate Chambers behind the Statue of the God of Justice. He breaches the Senate and saves the Senators, who tell him that the only way to stop the Slegs from cutting through the city is to destroy it. He is sent to find the other senator in the Great Hall, which he succeeds in doing and uses his clearance to release the tethers that are connecting the city to the Chasm walls. Tal'Set barely escapes aboard another pterosaur.

The city is successfully destroyed, but the Sleg leader, Lord Tyrannus, has one more tactic to try. He unleashes the Juggernaut, a massive mechanized beast to level the city. Tal'Set infiltrates the Juggernaut via pterosaur and destroys its cannons, crippling it. Before escaping, he is confronted by Tyrannus, who says that they will continue fighting and that he will kill him, but he is stopped by Tarkeen. Tal'Set escapes on his pterosaur and rushes to Galyana, where he stops the Brachiosaurus artillery from destroying Galyana's walls and then evicts the Slegs from the premises.

Although Galyana had been saved, Bruckner still lived, and Tal'Set sought vengeance for what he did to his people. He finds Bruckner aboard a mechanized Tyrannosaurus rex. Once Tal'Set defeats the tyrannosaur boss, Bruckner attempts to escape, but is crushed by the falling beast. Bruckner is left to die by Tal'Set, who says that "he does not deserve a warrior's death" and is then eaten alive by a small pack of Compsognathus. Afterward, Tal'Set tells Tarkeen that he accepts the mantle of Turok, leading to the events of Turok: Dinosaur Hunter. At a Sleg temple, Lord Tyrannus mourns his defeat.

Multiplayer

Turok: Evolution features four-player split screen multiplayer. The game features at least 13 multiplayer maps, several of which contain dinosaur AI bots.

GameBoy Advance Version

The Game Boy Advance version of the game takes the same concept from the past Game Boy iterations. It is side scrolling and has 2D graphics.

Reception

Evolution received mixed reviews upon its release. The review aggregator Metacritic scored the Xbox version a 6.8 out of 10, the GameCube version a 7.0, the Game Boy Advance version a 7.2, and the PlayStation 2 version a 6.1. Publications such as Play magazine and Yahoo! Games praised its "fierce energy" and "general violence and mayhem". Common complaints focused on what was called a weak storyline and unimpressive AI. The PS2 version was more heavily criticized than the Nintendo GameCube, Xbox and PC versions due to poor framerates and inferior graphics.

The game's villain, Tobias Bruckner, lived on through Electronic Gaming Monthly's annual Tobias Bruckner Memorial Awards, which "honored" what they perceived to be the worst in video games, with categories specific to the games released in that year.

External links

• Turok: Evolution at MobyGames
• Turok: Evolution at the Internet Movie Database
• Turok: Evolution at IGN