Turok 3 starts out with a rather long cinematic sequence that sets up the story for the third entry. Joshua is living with his sister and brother out in the country until danger strikes. The forces of evil are attempting to wipe out the Fireseed family, thus allowing the evil Oblivion to invade our universe and wipe us all out. Joshua, the hero of Turok 2: Seeds of Evil, seals his fate and defends against the evil hordes while the other two – Danielle and Joseph Fireseed – attempt their escape. As the two are on their way out, their vehicle is knocked off the road by an enormous creature capable of killing the two of them in a matter of seconds. Then, out of a blue portal not far off, steps Adon, who aided Joshua in the previous game. She brings Danielle and Joseph to The Council, where it is decided that one of them must bear the burden of making sure that Oblivion is not allowed to live.

This is where Turok 3 starts to divide into two entirely separate directions. Instead of running through the same levels except with different weapons, Acclaim has basically created this entire game and then chopped it in half. In order to comprehend the entire plot and experience all that the developer's indtended, you have to play as both characters; there are certain locations and events that cannot be triggered or are unreachable. Since Joseph is younger, he has the advantage of being able to use sniper weapons, can crawl into small places and utilize night vision goggles. Danielle, on the other hand, has the nifty grappling hook that can swing her up to high places that can’t be accessed through normal means. She’s also one heck of a jumper, too. And even though the game is technically sliced in half, each character has enough length to basically treat them as an entire game on their own.

One problem that has continually plagued the Turok series has been the frame rate. It was fairly forgivable in the original Turok because it was an early first generation title, but Turok 2: Seeds of Evil was positively terrible. The game looked stunning running on the Nintendo 64 hardware, but since it couldn’t move at more than 5 frames per second at a given time, all the fun was sucked right out. When Turok: Rage Wars rolled around, the frame rate was ironed out enough that it didn’t reach points of frustration. The introduction of Turok 3 has put the frame rate in a bit of a midpoint where it isn’t exactly 30 frames per second smooth as was originally stated, but it never reaches the slide-show point of Turok 2. The fog line, something heavily prevalent in Nintendo 64 games, has also been pushed back significantly, although it’s not yet been completely erased. For the amount of detail and expansiveness in the environments that Turok 3 is pumping out, the frame rate clips along fast enough that most people should not have too much trouble dealing with the lesser points.

For the weapons arsenal, Acclaim decided to take a good chunk of the weapons already developed for the previous games, and then added in a few new ones for variety. My personal favorite weapon, the Cerebral Bore, has made a triumphant return, and it looks just as gruesome and gives the same satisfying return when used successfully. It’s unfortunate that while nearly everything else in the game was given the one over for improvement, Acclaim went against that for the weapons; a significant chunk of them are the same as before. While that isn’t inherently a bad thing per say, since the weapons are still pretty cool with the new tweaks made, it would have been more interesting to see something other than the boring “pistol” as the main weapon. Things are somewhat spiced up by the fact that weapons are upgradeable, such as the normal Bow upgraded to the Tek Bow.

Multiplayer has been integral in numerous Nintendo 64 titles, and especially in the Turok series; it had an entire game dedicated to the concept. Turok 3 expands upon the multiplayer aspect with the inclusion of eight different kinds of multiplayer, including Bloodlust, Capture the Flag, Last Stand, Golden Arrow, Monkey Tag, Arsenal of War, Color Tag and Weapons Master. Most should be self explanatory simply because of the names or because they were in previous Turok titles, but some of the more unique ones need some explanation. Last Stand’s goal is still to have the most amount of kills, but you are only granted one life per “round” and the player with the most round wins is the victor; Golden Arrow throws an arrow out in the battlefield and the players have to hold it for a set amount of time; Arsenal of War starts the player with a mere spear and a score of 8, and each time they die their score goes down, but they respawn with a better weapon; Color Tag makes it so that each person is assigned a color, and each person they kill is turned to their color; and finally, Weapons Master is the same as normal deathmatch (Bloodlust), except that it forces a two-weapon limit upon each player. Turok 3 might not have the deathmatch customization that Rare’s Perfect Dark has, but there’s enough variety that any first person shooter buff should be more than satisfied.

And so there you have it. Acclaim has brought back the Turok series for a third time, and it’s easily the best one released so far. It might still have that infamous bumpy frame rate, but basically the game is a great amount of fun, and ranks up there with Perfect Dark and GoldenEye in terms of best first person shooters on the machine. It should be interesting to see what comes about when Turok makes the leap to a next-generation console.