The game is a prequel to the previous games and tells the story of how Turok originally came to the Lost Land. Last year at E3, we spoke with Acclaim’s David Dienstbier who promised big things for Turok Evolution, with lots of violence, over the top weapons and all the things that have made the Turok series great. This year I ran into Dave as he showed off the game, demonstrating just how atrociously violent you could be. Although the GameCube demo was a little bit choppy & had ridiculously long load times, it’s clear that the game is set to deliver on the hype by the time the final version arrives.

Running around a lush forest environment, Dave demonstrated how you could pick off baboons that dwelled in the trees. However, because baboons are tribal creatures, if you attacked one, other Baboons in the level would attack you. After killing one baboon and then another who attacked, Dave turned his aggressions upon nonviolent dinosaurs. Using a giant stone axe/warclub, Dave hacked down a tree which felled a nearby Stegosaurus. Quickly jumping to another level, Dave used a sniper rifle to pick off another type of ape before declaring “let’s see what other docile dinosaurs we can find.”

He found a Triceratops. Usually peaceful, this Triceratops attacked Turok because it was a mother with a baby. Dave greeted her protective maternal nature by chopping down a tree on her. Then he pointed out that players could then kill the baby dinosaur, and did just that with heavy automatic weapons fire. Whether or not gamers would be so cruel is up to them he said with a shrug.

If you think this makes David Dienstbier sound like a sadistic man, wait till you hear about Turok’s weapons. PGC got a good look at Turok’s weaponry during a demonstration by Tom Bass, another key member of the Turok team.

Instead of having to cycle through numerous weapons, Turok’s arsenal has multi-functions to save time. Along with secondary functions (pioneered in Turok Rage Wars), some weapons have three or even four functions! One example is a gun that transforms from an air rifle, to a mini-gun to yet another weapon. There are two types of arrows, one of which being a poisoned arrow head. When shot with this, enemies will stumble, start throwing up and then die.

The cerebral bore will not appear in the game—at least not as gamers have seen it before! Instead, is the swarm bore, which is one nasty piece of equipment! Instead of boring just into a victim’s brain, the Swarm Bore takes apart a foe piece by piece. First one arm, then another arm, then the legs, then the head! Sometimes the order of destruction will vary… Very, very brutal. The standard cerebral bore buzzing noise wasn’t present in the demo, though we were told to expect it in the final version.

The most devastating weapon is simply known as “the Nuke” –Turok Evolution’s answer to the BFG. Upon firing the Nuke, in the distance all goes silent. Then a massive shockwave followed by a huge explosion that blossoms into a mushroom cloud, which you actually have to look up at to appreciate. Obviously, the Nuke kills everything for miles around, and must be seen to be fully appreciated.

It’s also worth mentioning that not all the opponents are peaceful primates and dinosaurs. In fact, many of the bad guys feature great AI and are outright vicious. The main level I played featured Turok trying to sneak up on a platform to take out a Captain. As soon as one enemy was alerted to my presence, it called for back up and others came running and quickly overpowered me. These enemies weren’t stupid pushovers, they’d hide, run and sneak up on me. Even equipped with a pistol, a shotgun, a sniper rifle and grenades, I still had problems surviving. Clearly, stealth will be a bigger part than in previous adventures.

Some mission will feature CPU controlled allies of Turok. The AI of the Allies is pretty good, though I forget if you can issue orders to them or not. Still, it really helps to have them and is a nice touch.

The flying levels are something the Turok team wanted to include in the original game for N64, though couldn’t. Now on the current console hardware, they’ve been able to realize their ambition. The flying levels are excellent and will be a mix of free roaming levels and “on rails” shooter style missions. The flying levels I saw were pretty big and featured a variety of enemies: from ground troops, to foes mounted on dinos to several boats in the ocean. These looked great and were pretty fun.

I didn’t get to try the multiplayer, though along with the traditional death matching, there will be four-player airborne pterodactyl levels. I’m sure we can expect some sort of multiplayer modes with monkeys too…

All three versions will be released around the same time, and both Dave and Tom from Acclaim assured all three would be identical. I was excited about Turok: Evolution before E3, but now it’s one of my most anticipated titles for the summer.