Turok used to be one of the best shooters on the market, but the series has been dormant since 2008. Now, Turok: Origins aims to bring back the masterpiece. Here’s our gameplay conclusion.
Actually, I can understand the developers of Turok: Origins. If you’re developing a shooter these days and you look at what’s really bringing in the big bucks out there, the word “multiplayer” hovers over the gaming landscape like a spaceship from Independence Day.
So what do you do when you have a brand that’s been dead for 17 years and you’re supposed to revive it somehow? You follow the trends. And hey, Turok started out as a follower too, after all. At the end of the 90s, Turok 1 cheekily copied Quake in some respects, only with dinosaurs and Native Americans. In addition to sci-fi guns, I also shoot with a bow and arrow.
Turok: Origins ticks all the boxes when it comes to current trends. It’s a co-op shooter in which you play different classes, unleash all kinds of special maneuvers in addition to guns, and charge up particularly powerful ultimates over time. Anyone who has played Destiny Strike will understand the game in seconds.
And that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. I’m having a lot of fun with my demo here at gamescom 2025. It’s just that Turok is actually always at its best when it’s not chasing trends.
What is Turok: Origins?
Let’s start by clarifying the most important facts:
- Turok: Origins comes from the Spanish branch of Saber Interactive, which has just under 250 employees in Madrid.
- The game does not yet have a specific release date (I think 2025 is out of the question), is being developed in Unreal Engine 5, and, as mentioned, is a co-op shooter.
- Unlike in the original, you can switch between first-person and third-person view as you wish – but my impression is that the game is designed for a third-person perspective, because evasive rolls, for example, simply don’t work as well in first-person view.
- You can play the game solo or with two other players.
Turok: Origins is set many, many years before the first installment of the series, but exists in the same timeline. The eponymous Turoks are Native Americans who fight alien lizards with sci-fi weapons in the mythical Lost Lands.
And this is where you come in.
How does Turok: Origins play?
I play three levels plus a boss fight at gamescom. In the game, you travel to different planets, and the areas in the demo vary greatly in appearance. Sometimes I roam through dense jungles, sometimes I enter strange alien architectures that could have come straight from H.R. Giger.
Visually, this is very impressive, but the only problem is that in terms of gameplay, everything feels very uniform and repetitive.
Before starting the mission, I choose different… um… animal spirits, such as a raven or a bison. However, behind the spiritual name are simply familiar loadouts or classes.
On paper, before starting a mission, I choose different… um… animal spirits, such as raven or bison. However, behind the spiritual names are simply familiar loadouts or classes. One unleashes a special berserk mode as an ultimate ability, and so on. Anyone who is familiar with the genre has seen all this before.
And so far (!), the co-op synergies also seem pretty much standard for the genre: I’m playing with two other journalists and, for example, I use my loadout to put up a protective shield behind which my colleagues can take cover. Or I slow down the enemies. Or do something to destroy the enemy’s shields.
The enemies, too: you know them all. Lizards sprint toward you like the aliens in Fireteam: Elite. There are flying drones, just like in any flying drone shooter. Particularly thick thugs storm towards you like all the brutes in gaming history, forcing the Turoks to roll out of the way. Mini-bosses call in ADS (additional standard enemies) like in Destiny, and regular shooters shoot at you, only they have lizard heads.
The level design of the missions suffers the most from this. All three areas chase us through narrow tubes with no corners or edges, and here and there I have to jump up somewhere or overcome the simplest platforming sections – just as simple as co-op platforming needs to be so that a team of three doesn’t lose interest.
The story framework remains vague at best: a voice in my ear constantly tells me to activate some kind of energy nodes. Most of the time, you won’t understand why you’re doing what you’re doing, because it just doesn’t seem to matter.
Is this what fans really want?
As I said, as dull as it sounds structurally, it doesn’t play that way in action. The sci-fi guns have a nice boom, my laser LMG thunders through the landscape, I slash murderous dinosaurs with my giant knife, it’s all pretty cool – but light years away from the charm of Turok 2.
Because the best Turok games – and Turok 2 was the best – scored highly in terms of level design. Huge, varied areas full of secrets, dangers, puzzles, twists and turns. After completing each level, I used to think: Wow, what’s coming next?
In Turok: Origins, I feel like I know all the tricks of the game after just three missions because the gameplay seems so limited. In general, it plays a lot like Aliens: Fireteam Elite, except that it’s a horde shooter that can do without sophisticated missions – the depth of the gameplay lies in managing the alien hordes.
In comparison, Turok: Origins seems like a cross between Destiny 2, Aliens, and smaller, more exotic games like Outriders. However, the final boss fight after the three missions gives cause for hope: my colleagues and I face off against a gigantic triceratops that covers the entire area with its attacks. This fight is truly impressive and plays out that way too.
So maybe it’s just the trade show demo, and the devs behind Turok: Origins are still holding their biggest aces up their sleeves. As a fan of the series, I would hope so, because the series has already died once because it followed trends too closely. Back in 2008, Turok desperately wanted to be like its dark military shooter competitors. And for 19 years, fans have been mourning what that has brought us.