BREAKING NEWS
World hunger eliminated? Uh… Okay, well, not quite.
Aliens land and they turn out to be friendly? That would be cool. But no.
John Romero now in charge of Doom 4? Wait, what? No, no, no. This:
Turok: Dinosaur Hunter to return to the PC. Full story at 11.
Okay, forget that. It’s 11 somewhere. Check this out! Uh, yeah… it’s from March. I’m a little slow on the uptake, but seriously — look at this!
So, before we talk about the news, I should probably come clean. I… I like Turok… Like, a lot. Turok and Turok 2 are my favorite first-person shooters in the history of first-person shooters, bar none and by a mile. I like them even more than Doom, which is crazy because Doom is basically one of my favoritest things, up there with S.T.R.A.I.N., the Exile trilogy, Lord of the Rings, cheese-and-onion pizza, or snowstorm-in-the-woods walks. But Turok trumps most of them — not even in a fair fight in most cases. We’re talking purr-linn versus leaper levels of unfair.
With my confession out of the way, here’s the scoop: Kaiser is reviving Turok: Dinosaur Hunter in a brand new engine. Do you understand the implications of this? It may not sound like much at first — Turok did already get a PC release back in the day, and that’s actually how I first played it all the way through — but think of the possibilities…
Cooperative play is already on the table, and that’s all you’ve got to say to get me pumped for whatever you’ve got in the works. Co-oping my way through FPS games has given me some of the most wonderful gaming experiences of my life. Doom co-op was my first experience with that type of gameplay, and it was awesome even back then. Doom 3 out-of-the-box? Pretty rad. Doom 3 with co-op modded in? One of my fondest gaming memories. Turok? The greatest shooter ever. Turok in co-op? Well, here’s an artist’s rendering:
Kaiser has also already proven himself more than capable with his earlier port of Doom64, which opened that game up for modding in a big, bad way. If co-op wasn’t enough, that‘s where this news really blows my mind. You’re talking about the possibility of new fan-generated content for the first time in the game’s sixteen years of life. You’re talking about giving the game new life. One area where a game like Doom has a leg up on Turok is in replayability — simply because of how moddable it is — and I’m not going to pretend there’ll be half as much content produced for Turok if it becomes moddable in the same way, but even one or two new levels would breathe life into what is, for real, one of my most beloved games ever.
But I also have something of a selfish investment in all this. For a long time — since I played Turok 3, actually — I’ve had this dream, deep down, of some day creating a proper fan-made sequel to Turok 2. That… could actually happen now. That thing I’ve imagined and hoped for but known, ultimately, would never really happen… Could maybe — maybe — become something. Someday, if I could find the time and the right people to help me out, what was never meant to be… could be meant to be after all.
This might be a little sudden, and I don’t mean to put you on the spot, but…
Kaiser, will you marry me?