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I have been interested in the new Turok: Rage Wars game for N64. The discription below will leave you shaking. Something little I read. This November, Turok is coming back and he's bringing all his friends. Turok: Rage Wars, a four-player deathmatch game with a side of single-player action, takes the Turok 2 engine, optimizes it, betters it, and throws you in the middle of it. The need for a Turok deathmatch game "kind of became obvious to us even before we shipped [Turok 2]," says Dave Dienstbier, the creative director at Austin's Iguana, "because we were having so much fun playing the game here internally. Monkey tag was a huge hit. We decided that there was more we could do here...[and] we felt it could stand alone." And so Rage Wars was born, begun even before Turok 2 shipped. "We wanted the social part of this to be important," says Dienstbier, explaining Rage Wars' emphasis on multiplayer play. "To us, new games like Mario Party are just great because you sit down in a group and [play]. The thing about playing with your friends - it's always far more rewarding to razz the guy two controllers down, when you pop him in the head or you turn him into the monkey for the tenth time in a row." So Iguana picked up the multiplayer ball and ran with it. "[Rage Wars is] a substantial improvement over Turok 2's multiplayer game," says Dienstbier, the driving force behind all the Turok games. "It's hard to give an exact percentage right now," but it's already running much faster than was Turok 2 - it's hitting a steady 20fps in four-player right now. But speed, while essential, isn't the only thing the team at Iguana (made up of four programmers, four design guys, and ten artists - some of them new, some of them veterans of other Turok games) is focusing on. There are also things like story, characters, and weapons. Weapons were key to what made the Turok 2 deathmatch so much fun, as anyone who's spent any time with the cerebral bore can attest. And weapons will be equally - if not more - important to Rage Wars. Sixteen tools of destruction will be yours to wield, some more familiar than others. Eight of the toys are returning from other Turok games, and eight will be brand-new, but all of them will feel fresh for two reasons: The graphics on the returning guns are enhanced, and each weapon has a secondary fire function, effectively doubling the weapon number. "We've gone back and decided that there were a couple of weapons from the original Turok that we liked - so people will get the chance to wield a proper minigun against their friends," says Dienstbier. And while he's keeping mum on the subject of what the new weapons will look like (and whether or not the cerebral bore will return), he does says that "in addition to some old favorites, we are introducing a few new weapons that we feel carry on in the proud tradition of the cerebral bore, but in some fine, new, and suitable Turokian ways." "We're going to get an equal number if not greater amount of maniacal laughter when the effects of certain new weapons are seen," he adds. A few of the Turok 2 deathmatch modes return new and improved as well - like monkey tag, where apparently the monkey now has more of "an edge" in gameplay, though what exactly that edge is remains to be seen - and Dienstbier's not talking about that just yet. But modes that were "considered to be very fun" are being brought back, enhanced, and added in. Team-oriented modes have been implemented as well, so you can now play one-on-one, three-on-one, or two-on-two. And if you don't have enough friends to fill up all your controllers, one to three AI bots can now be dropped in for deathmatch pleasure. Random bots floating through the levels won't be in the game, however. "We don't want to throw more in there than we feel is necessary for a faster, smoother game." Even though Rage Wars is, at its core, a deathmatch game, it does have a single-player mode and storyline. The story revolves around the arena-based combat, explaining why you're there. A big part of what you're trying to do is tip the balance of power from good to evil. "Basically," says Dienstbier, unwilling to go into specifics, "we've created a story that in the context of the Lost Land and the Turok framework obviously makes sense. Essentially, the winners of this tournament would gain control of the balance of power in the Lost Land. " When you begin, you'll have no choice of which character to play as. But as you progress, you'll unlock a number of characters (there are 16 total), and you can choose to continue playing as the one you've got or switch to a new one. As you progress, you "unlock other playable characters [you] can then use to move forward through the story mode." The story itself branches dynamically. "If the player plays to a certain point and unlocks a new path and a new character, [he] can opt to pursue that path with a different character and change the way the game plays," says Dienstbier. And, we should add, this story mode can be played cooperatively by two people - from beginning to end. "The basic structure of the single-player storyline is very similar to a fighting game layout where you're moving up a ladder, but what we do is we branch it off. If you were playing Mortal Kombat, you might start off fighting Scorpion and end up fighting Raiden at the top of that ladder... the story mode allows for branching and changing depending on which character you're playing with and how well you're doing,"says Dienstbier. How well you're doing is now going to have serious consequences, as an award systems has been built into the game. You earn various honors by accomplishing certain things, like getting a high total number of kills, for example. The reason for this is that Iguana wants you to build equity in your character. "In the same way a player playing a fighting game would really get into their character, in Rage Wars what we're trying to do is give the players real inspiration to develop a character," say Dienstbier. "As you build characters," says Dienstbier, "You can truly gain equity in the characters by comparing your characters' awards and achievements and stats against your friends'. As your character matures, your character's history becomes obvious based on his awards, which are based on specific performance in the game. Some are based on kills, deaths, and things like that. But then there are the others based on specific, far more difficult agendas, like number of kills within a certain amount of time, the number of lifetime head shots, thing like that. Acquiring all the awards in the game is going to become very, very difficult." Many of the new playable characters are from character groups that were seen in past games, but hadn't been playablebefore- Biobots, for example. And Rage Wars will have four brand-spanking-new bosses and all-new environments. When you fight against the mantids, you fight them in an environment proper to the Mantids, for example, and that's going to be all-new artwork. "We've got all-new artwork. We don't recycle. We do not believe in giving people mold maps, old geometry - anything at all. So an entirely new body of in-game artwork has been created," says Dienstbier. As a matter of fact, very little has been recycled. In a house-that-Jack-built way, Dienstbier explains why that is: "This is a new product; this is a completely enhanced version of the engine, of the editor that takes advantage of new features that have been added, that makes building levels easier and more timely, which means that we can build better levels in shorter amounts of time, which means that we can pick from the best of the best, and that means we can optimize what ends up in the game not only for aesthetics and layout but for performance as well. While our time frame was shorter for this game than it was for Turok 2 or Turok, the tools are a lot smarter and the technology is there. So we hit the ground running from day one." And apparently, they still have a little running to do - the game's not due out till November, and the AI needs to be tweaked (the bots are shooting really well right now), the gameplay finessed, and all kinds of details taken care of. But while we haven't seen the game running yet - and won't get to for another week and a half or so - it sure sounds as though it's going to be an awful lot of fun and appropriately bloody. We'll let you know more just as soon as there's more to know. By Moira Muldoon Posted 05/04/99 | |||||||||||||||||||
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