The past two Acclaim first person shooters that have made the transition from Nintendo 64 to Game Boy Color seem to be following a pattern. Armorines: Project S.W.A.R.M. was barely average on the machine, and it turned out terrible on the handheld. Turok: Rage Wars was an excellent shooter (easily the best in the series, thus far), and has come out as a great little side-scroller on the Game Boy Color.
Foremost, the developers, Bit Managers, have gone and used the tiny machine's extensive color palette and put it to good use. Unlike Armorines, the environments in Turok: Rage Wars use numerous colors and look quite stunning on the pocket sized machine. Not only that, but while some games on the GBC may repeatedly have repetitive stages with the same backdrops time after time. Turok: Rage Wars always had a new background coming into view after a few scenes, and it never came to the point where the scenery kept continually being the same exact thing over and over that I became annoyed.
Not only is what surrounds Turok looking good, but the animation for Turok and his enemies is also very well done, too. There is enough animation to convey Turok's moves in a pleasing fashion, and the way the characters move is quite smooth, and not jerky like in some other titles that feature a lack of animation.
The Game Boy Color lacks a powerful piece of sound hardware, and because of that it has become common to find most GBC games featuring little to no memorable musical tunes. Turok: Rage Wars, however, has fitting music for the action taking place on-screen. Although I didn't exactly find myself humming the level music it later in the day, that doesn't stop it from being a group of enjoyable tunes that work will with the game.
While most of the game I had no problem with controlling Turok, there were a few moments where I had some particularly aggravating trouble. In a section where your character is floating on a moving raft down a river, leading Turok to jump from platform to platform to collect items was especially difficult. It's a bit hard to put into words, but I can say for sure that it wasn't a fault of the control scheme, but simply that things seemed to get "out of whack" as soon as I left the comforts of the ground.
The ability to upgrade your weapons through the use of tool boxes that appear every so often is a nice addition, since it gave an incentive to take risks and explore the more dangerous portions of the environment in search of secret items. The upgrades do not make the weapons unstoppably powerful, but just enough that it takes one less shot or two to take down an enemy.
All in all, I was impressed with Turok: Rage Wars. The previous two Turok GBC titles had been less than spectacular platformers, but thankfully Acclaim has turned around with their third entry and come back with an entertaining side-scroller that certainly deserves a look.
-- Patrick Klepek
