Turok 3: Shadow of Oblivion Remastered Reviews

I Am Turok!

prob my fav n64 game growing up remaster makes it 10x better now

Played on Linux using Proton Exp, I have never played Turok 3 before this remaster and i must say it does not hold a candle to Turok and Turok 2, It does not even play like a Turok Game, It's more Generic FPS Shooter, It's also a really short Game compared to the first 2 Games, I Played with both Players and completed it twice in less then 6 Hours, It does play a little different per Player as the Boy has the ability to crawl in small places and the Girl has a Grappling hook for higher places. Graphics are okay and not overly remastered, Sound is okay, I do kind of like it but it just don't play like a Turok Game. Not really worth the full Price but on sale it's a mindless shooter with some nice levels.

No, I do not recommend this game if you’re a fan of Turok. However, it may offer some enjoyment to those simply looking for a first-person shooter experience. Turok 3: Shadow of Oblivion, the fourth entry in the series, unfortunately discards nearly everything that made the earlier titles fun and memorable. The gameplay itself feels sluggish and unresponsive. Movement lacks fluidity, and jumps are weighed down by an unnatural heaviness that makes traversal feel more like a chore than a thrill. There’s no sense of momentum or agility—qualities that were essential to the kinetic energy of the earlier titles. Combat suffers from the same lethargy; weapons lack impact, and enemy encounters often feel like going through the motions rather than engaging in dynamic firefights. Even small touches that added life to previous games—like enemy in-fighting—are completely absent. The level design, visual identity, and overall art direction have been stripped down and replaced with some of the most generic settings imaginable. The first level throws you into a bland urban cityscape, followed by a lifeless military compound. Then comes a junkyard—uninspired and visually repetitive. Levels four and five are particularly disappointing, as they feel like uninspired callbacks to earlier entries: level four is essentially a reimagined segment of The Hub Ruins from Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, while level five closely mirrors the Campaigner’s Fortress, the final area of that same game. There are even faint echoes of Turok 2: Seeds of Evil in the architecture and layout, but without the atmosphere or ambition. The audio design is a mixed bag. While the environmental effects do a decent job of adding ambient life to the world—echoes in corridors, distant machinery, subtle wildlife—they’re ultimately undermined by the environments themselves, which lack visual and thematic richness. Weapon sound effects are loud, but not punchy; they lack the satisfying weight or feedback that makes combat feel impactful. Gunfire often sounds flat or overprocessed, failing to match the intensity of the action on screen. It’s serviceable, but far from immersive. The music, composed by Nelson Everhart, is the lifeblood of Turok 3. Without his score, the game would feel even more lifeless and disconnected. His compositions breathe atmosphere into every corridor and canyon, elevating the experience with a sense of grandeur, isolation, and mysticism. There’s an eerie beauty to his work—a haunting undercurrent that suggests something ancient and evil is always lurking just beyond the shadows. It’s cinematic, emotional, and deeply immersive. In many ways, his music tells the story the visuals and gameplay fail to deliver. It’s the one element that not only honors the legacy of Turok, but expands it. The use of AI for texture enhancement in the remaster is another puzzling choice.. Although the AI-upscaled textures may appear cleaner, they feel soulless compared to the originals. It’s unclear why Nightdive used AI upscaling here when they didn’t rely on it for previous remasters. The original textures had character—hand-crafted imperfections that added depth and identity—which the AI, despite its enhancements, simply can’t replicate." The weapon design in Turok 3 is a disappointing departure from the creativity and impact of its predecessors. The models are painfully generic, lacking the visual flair or imaginative engineering that made weapons like the Pulse Rifle, Plasma Rifle, or the iconic Shredder so memorable. Instead of bold silhouettes and satisfying feedback, we’re given bland attachments and uninspired forms. There’s no trace of an iconic energy weapon, no Auto-Shotgun, no true evolution of the Shredder—it’s as if every opportunity to deliver a powerful, memorable arsenal was passed over. Even the spiritual successor to the Chronoscepter or Nuke—the supposed ultimate weapon—feels like an afterthought, with none of the awe or destructive spectacle that defined its legacy. It’s as if the creative spark that once fueled the Turok arsenal was extinguished, replaced by placeholder designs that barely register. Enemy modeling and art direction follow the same disappointing trend as the rest of the game: a clear downgrade. There’s little to no creativity or imagination in the designs, with many enemy models feeling recycled or uninspired. While returning foes like the Raptors, Flesh Eaters, Sentinels, and Deathguards retain their original animations—which still look great—their behavior has been noticeably altered for the worse. The Flesh Eaters, for example, no longer circle and stalk the player like they did in Turok 2: Seeds of Evil; instead, they simply rush forward, stripping away the tension and unpredictability that once made them memorable. The rest of the enemy roster is painfully generic: cops, SWAT units, soldiers, and indistinct warriors that could’ve been pulled from any mid-tier shooter of the era. Even the new creatures and bosses fail to leave an impression, lacking any of the surreal menace or mythic presence that defined the enemies of earlier entries. It’s not just a step back, it’s a creative void. Animation quality, once a hallmark of the series, has taken a steep dive in Turok 3. The first two games were praised for their fluid, weighty animations, enemies reacted with believable physics, weapons had satisfying recoil, and movement felt grounded. In contrast, Turok 3’s animations are stiff and lifeless. Characters move like rigid blocks rubbing against each other, with little sense of momentum or impact. There’s no fluidity in transitions, no weight behind attacks or reactions, just a mechanical stiffness that breaks immersion and makes combat feel robotic. It’s a far cry from the visceral, kinetic energy that once defined the series. The only animations that stand out in Turok 3 are the ones that were repurposed from earlier games. One of the new enemies even features a particularly fluid and impressive animation set... at first. But that initial coolness quickly fades when the creature performs other actions that are stiff, awkward, or poorly synced, breaking the illusion entirely. The user interface in the remaster is a clear downgrade from the original. The N64 release featured a UI that was not only functional but full of character, animated backgrounds, vibrant colors, and a layout that felt thematically tied to the world of Turok. It had personality. It had presence. In contrast, the remaster opts for a flat, minimalistic interface that feels sterile and disconnected. There’s no flair, no animation, no sense of identity—just a generic overlay that could belong to any shooter. It’s another example of how the remaster polishes the surface while sanding away the soul. The removal of multiplayer is not just a missing feature, it’s a gut punch to longtime fans. The original Turok 3 offered split-screen multiplayer with bots, a mode that added replay value and gave players a reason to return long after finishing the campaign. For many, this omission feels like more than just a design decision—it borders on deceptive. Fans expected a faithful remaster, not a stripped-down version missing half the experience. The silence around this removal only deepens the frustration, leaving players to speculate whether it was due to technical limitations, licensing issues, or simply a lack of effort. Whatever the reason, the result is the same: a beloved feature erased without warning. The pricing of this remaster feels unjustified, even when discounted. At $29.99 and even at $17.99 during sales,the value proposition simply doesn’t hold up. The asking price doesn’t align with the quality of the product, especially with like multiplayer completely removed and no meaningful new content added. What’s worse is the absence of clear communication from the developers regarding these omissions feels misleading, bordering on fraudulent.

Very mid shooter, plays a lot like half-life just more sluggish and with weaker feeling guns. There is not enough game to justify $30 when you can get better games like Ion Fury, Selaco, or even Half-life at a much cheaper price.

The third - the weakest? I can't agree to that, from my personal point of view, especially in this formidable edition we get here. Although not knowing the second instalment yet, I played Turok 1 and the Playstation 2 game, both being great, but not necessarily better than the third one. Let me explain: + formidable graphics that do a special favor to your eyes with the optional CRT filter, letting the game look like viewn on an old TV. I highly appreciate those old, edgy, but perfectly watchable graphics, and being slightly handicaped in terms of sight, I appreciate the original look and the classic UI that let me enjoy the game to a maximum intent (UI and texts too small - I can't enjoy the game, so I look for that special retro look) + a ton of weapons, easy to find your favorite. I love fighting with the shotgun or the minigun, and if you ask me, Turok 3 does a lot right in terms of thrilling combat. + a range of enemies, and although it took a while to see the first dinosaur (at least it's Turok Dinosaur Hunter), it was a pleasure when I saw them. I hadn't had to wait too long for the dinosaur level (chapter 3), and being in the fouth chapter after only 2 hours, knowing that there might be only 5 chapters in total, Turok 3 truely seems a bit short. But - being a person who loves games around 10 or less hours, because I love to enjoy different gameplay experiences, not necessarily wanting to finish the game - that's totally okay if you get a rounded experience that Turok 3 is. I don't regret playing it, it's the opposite it is a great experience till the end that I might reach sooner or later.

this game brings back my childhood and watching my dad play this on n64, while yes it may seem tedious to those who have never played it truly is worth it as a gem of a game.

[h1]A bit different from Turok 1 and 2, yet still a quite enjoyable run‘n‘gun-retro-shooter.[/h1] If there is one game franchise that exactly shows you how first-person-shooters have evolved from the mid- to the late nineties, it‘s the classic Turok trilogy. At it‘s core Turok 1 was basically one of the very last Doom clones: There was barely a story or given reason for anything happening in the game, and all you did was navigating huge, quite complex maps with the sole purpose of finding the keys that would open the next level. When Turok 2 came out roughly one and a half years later, it tried to adapt to the rapidly changing design philosophy for first-person-shooters. In terms of leveldesign it still played much like most shooters from the early and mid-nineties. The levels were even more huge and complex than in the first game. But suddendly there were voice-acted cutscenes, subtle hints at environmental storytelling and a generally more „cinematic“ approach to leveldesign. Finally Turok 3, which came around shortly after the millenium, threw away all the characteristic features of a doom clone. Under the influence of revolutionary and highly successful titles like Half-Life, Unreal and System Shock 2, Turok 3 tried it‘s best to tell a cohesive story that puts it‘s predecessors into perspective, made its now strictly linear levels tiny compared to previous Turok games and their sequence and structure a bit more reasonable and believable through a fairly coherent plot. Gone was the somewhat random key hunting and replaced by more realistic environmental puzzles and a bit „movielike“ staged set pieces. Now i love both those kinds of shooters, but i have to admit that if you play them all three in sequence, the radical shift in leveldesign makes Turok 3 feel indeed a little bit odd compared to it‘s predecessors. The artstyle and grafics are consistent, the gunplay is at least as fun, and the characters and enemies are recognizable within the context of the Turok universe. But man, it must have felt quite different for Turok fans back in the day, for better or worse. However, having played it the first time ever in 2025, all i can say is that i didn‘t enjoy Turok 3 less than it’s predecessors, just in a quite different way. The only real big fault that the game has is that it is hella short. For the first Turok, you‘ll need about an hour per level, that sums up to 8 hours total at least, and that‘s if you are quite good and fast. Turok 3 with it’s five comparatively small and straight forward levels on the other hand barely lasts longer than half of that. If you need more than a handful of hours to complete it, i‘d say you took quite a while. If you‘re mean, you could point that out as the major disadvantage that makes Turok 3 slightly inferior to it‘s predecessors, but i‘m not feeling mean today. Nevertheless you should never ever pay 30 Euros at full price for this ridiculously short retro-console-shooter, even if it‘s a remaster and even if it’s the first time this is officially released for PC. As much as i love Nightdive Studios, 30 Euros for 4 hours with grafics and gameplay from 2000 is cheeky, mildly spoken. Turok fans should wait for 25% off, all other people for at least 50%. ______________________________ TUROK 3 SHADOW OF OBLIVION Genre: First-Person-Shooter Release: Q4 2023 ( ) 0/8 Simply one of the worst games ever made. Don't waste any money on this. ( ) 1/8 Bad. Seriously flawed with barely any redeeming qualities. Worth a couple of Cents at best, if at all. ( ) 2/8 Sub-par. Only for hardcore-fans of respective genre / series. Don't pay more than 5 bucks. ( ) 3/8 Meh-diocre. It‘s okay. Don't pay more than 10 bucks. ( ) 4/8 Decent, but not for everybody. Don't pay more than 15 bucks. (X) 5/8 Good game, Must-play for genre- / series-fans. Worth 20 to 25 bucks max, if you are not a fan. ( ) 6/8 Great game, universal recommendation. 30 bucks would be a steal for this. ( ) 7/8 Outstanding game, a milestone of it‘s respective genre. Definitely worth its full prize. ( ) 8/8 Simply one of the best games ever made. Get this, the prize doesn't matter.

[b] This is last Turok of its original franchise, it was ported for PC with its remaster verison it's very great, simples and easy to play, no hard puzzles as the Turok 2 had people says the game follow half-life 1's style and i agree, mostly on first missions of game you have to enter silo nuclear and those are some scientists, a bit similiar to half-life as well you have to shoot some soldiers enemy is just other continuation of Turok series and you will enjoy this as well if you liked all Turok games higly recommend for gameplay, graphics and weapons, very good oldschool game.