Turok: Escape from Lost Valley review

Turok: Escape from Lost Valley is based on the classic Turok: Son of Stone comic book characters and tells the story of the titular character and his buddy Andar as they navigate through the dangerous world of the Lost Valley as they try to find their way back home.

Turok: Escape from the Lost Valley is an isometric hack n’ slash game where, as Turok, you can attack with your melee weapon or use your bow and arrows as you navigate through various environments. Each chapter follows the typical route of going from point A to B, kill enemies, reach and kill the boss and then move on to the next chapter.

As you progress through the game, you’ll be able to reach areas where you’ll set up camps automatically. Camps serve as checkpoints/saves so you can continue playing without having to restart the chapter every time. Checkpoints are well perfectly spaced overall so you don’t have to waste too much time re-doing the same things over and over if you should die.

While most of the combat takes place on the ground, you’ll have some time have to defend yourself on a rowboat. Most enemies can only be hit with your bow and arrow as they stand too far from your boat. The problem with that is that properly aiming takes a bit of adjusting and if you run out of arrows, you need to rely on Andar to take them out. Thankfully, your buddy’s A.I. is pretty competent. The boss battles, while fun and unique, are a true testament of patience has you have to analyze the attack pattern of the boss before attacking if you want to have a chance.

While it is a hack n’ slash, don’t expect to blaze through this. Some enemies, and most bosses, require a lot of “attack & dodge” combo. Given that Turok walks very slow, to compensate, he can dodge enemy attacks to avoid damage. This is very useful against bosses as they can do crazy amounts of damage, even while wearing armor.

Let’s dive into the problems. First off, your running buddy can actually hit out if you’re standing in their way. Why in the hell is that still a thing in 2020? Additionally, your buddy only helps you against common enemies, but when it comes time for bosses, he’s always incapacitated. At this point, just remove him altogether as he could come in handy in boss fights as battles against common enemies are pretty easy. You also cannot skip or fast-forward the dialogue, which is not a big thing, but kinda slow things down. And finally, while the first three chapters are properly balanced difficulty wise, things take a turn for the worst on Chapter 4 as you’ll encounter enemies that can one-hit kill you and tough as nails tiny dinosaurs that stick to you like glue leaving you little to no chance to dodge.

Turok: Escape from the Lost Valley looks great and very colorful. Each are is uniquely designed and feels different from one another as they each add something different as a challenge to the player. There are some questionable detection issues mostly caused by the isometric view as sometimes you look out of the way, but still get hit. The audio side of things is near non-existent. You’ll hear the sound bytes of monsters growling and attacks as they bury a sleep-inducing ambient score.

Turok: Escape from Lost Valley is an overall fun little adventure game that can appeal to gamers looking for a challenge. While it has a cute, cartoonish look that may appeal to kids, this is not for kids as they will struggle against bosses. It’s far from perfect as it suffers from questionable gameplay design and detection issues, but if you into it with a Dark Souls mentality, it’s a nice bite-size adventure that can tide you over until the busy Fall season.