Seems Tedious Asf

[Francisè von Spitroast]

So I'm wondering around a bunch of levels trying to figure out how to get to an actual level and all this slow traversal and platforming around everywhere with no way of knowing where the hell the portals to each thing are and with very little explanation as to what these keys are or what the hell anything does seems absurd. I picked up a nuke in some random place and it tells me nothing about what to do with it. I found a portal that seemed to go to a level except apparently I failed the level so it set me all the way to the start? What the ♥♥♥♥? I have no idea now where that portal was or how I 'failed' what I thought was a hub area. Well I do know because I missed a single girl but seriously? I don't know what anything does, how to get anywhere or what the hell I'm doing and it's annoying as ♥♥♥♥.

[Coyote Knight]

This game is meant to be explored, it doesn't hold your hand, you have to figure everything out yourself and that's its charm.

[Francisè von Spitroast]

Originally posted by ひまわりくん:

This game is meant to be explored, it doesn't hold your hand, you have to figure everything out yourself and that's its charm.

I understand not holding your hand yeah, but this is absurd. Yeah here's a few dozen portal types spread across the level. We're not going to tell you where they take you, if you'll be wasting your time going to them, if you're going to be able to get back to where you were when going through them, or if you'll miss out on any game content by going through them, but here you go. Good luck. Also, if you miss out on any of the many objectives by the end of this massive level, we're not going to tell you that that's a mission fail and reset you to the very beginning, we'll just do it anyway. We're also not going to tell you what each difficulty mode does, so good luck realising you're missing out on game features by playing the hardest mode we intended for experienced players and not skilfull newbies. Oh yeah and here's a ton of different items to pick up spread through out the levels. We're not going to tell you what they do or how important they are, but we'll make it clear that they ARE important. Here's a jumpad thing that we're not going to explain how to use, and we're going to make these levels so non-linear and confusing that once you find something you can't yet access you'll spend an hour slowly jogging your way through these massive arenas trying to find it again, whatever it is you're looking for and whatever it does. Enjoy. And if you don't like the game, then you're dumb and are used to modern games holding your hand too much, and not because we have a whole host of totally original gameplay features that we explain about 2% of.

Old-school games are notorious to the inexperienced for not hand-holding but this is something else. Thief puts you in the deep end and lets you discover how the stealth mechanics work, the AI and what each item does, but it doesn't chuck it all at you at once and some of it can be discovered in multiple ways or through natural game play. That's what a good game does. Turok 2 chucks everything at you at once with zero explanation on what absolutely anything does. One's called good game design, one's called I'm going to break my own neck playing this thing any longer game design.

[Francisè von Spitroast]

Okay I get it now after I watched a review of the game but I just don't see how this is fun. I missed nothing except one objective on my hour plus long level run and now that I'm at the beginning, I have zero wish to try and find the objective and most of all end level portal. That's just annoying. Who wants to slowly walk through a massive, convoluted portal to find one thing they missed. Silly.
Apparently the first level is simple as well, so the others can get stuffed. I'm not playing this. Shame I can't refund it.
I get the appeal now that I understand what everything does (well, enough) but surely you can get that few people will really want to spend so much time trying to find one little thing in a huge area. It's not even a case of attention span, it's just pure tedium some can put up with that others will not want to waste their time with.

[V I D A L]

Everything is self explanatory. I don't know why you're having a hard time with this. This remaster even added baby mode in which all the objectives have ridiculous giant exclamation marks on them... I even recommend turn that off to make it harder and authentic to the original release.

[Francisè von Spitroast]

Originally posted by V I D A L:

Everything is self explanatory. I don't know why you're having a hard time with this. This remaster even added baby mode in which all the objectives have ridiculous giant exclamation marks on them... I even recommend turn that off to make it harder and authentic to the original release.

And if you miss one? You still have to go through all the maps again to find it, but like I said, the objectives were the least of my worries.

[Francisè von Spitroast]

Originally posted by V I D A L:

Everything is self explanatory. I don't know why you're having a hard time with this. This remaster even added baby mode in which all the objectives have ridiculous giant exclamation marks on them... I even recommend turn that off to make it harder and authentic to the original release.

There's nothing self-explanatory about dozen types of portals that tell you nothing about where they take you or what they do.
There's nothing self-explanatory about having half a dozen keys and not knowing how important they are or what they do.
There's nothing self-explanatory in being teleported to an entirely different area and there's nothing self-explanatory about having checkpoints and lives in a remaster with quick saving and manual saving.
There's nothing self-explanatory in having to go through big, convoluted parts of a level with dozens of portals and loading screens for each just to find the end portal and/or one of two objectives you missed.

[JtDarth]

Originally posted by A National Acrobat:

Originally posted by V I D A L:

Everything is self explanatory. I don't know why you're having a hard time with this. This remaster even added baby mode in which all the objectives have ridiculous giant exclamation marks on them... I even recommend turn that off to make it harder and authentic to the original release.

There's nothing self-explanatory about dozen types of portals that tell you nothing about where they take you or what they do.
There's nothing self-explanatory about having half a dozen keys and not knowing how important they are or what they do.
There's nothing self-explanatory in being teleported to an entirely different area and there's nothing self-explanatory about having checkpoints and lives in a remaster with quick saving and manual saving.
There's nothing self-explanatory in having to go through big, convoluted parts of a level with dozens of portals and loading screens for each just to find the end portal and/or one of two objectives you missed.

If the portals are actually causing notable loading pauses, there is something wrong with your hardware.

That said, 6-year old me figured this ♥♥♥♥ out back in the day, without strategy guides, and with the game effectively being a horror game on the N64 for me at that age (Turok and Quake 2 both). You are supposed to explore, to take your time in looking around, not just blitz through like you are late for work. It's non-linear level design, with multiple paths, some of which are indeed dead ends. You are supposed to explore everything in an area before going through a portal. If your ADD prevents you from doing so, that's fine, but don't call it bad game design. There is nothing wrong with a game expecting you to use your brain rather than follow the golden trail of breadcrumbs.

[Francisè von Spitroast]

Originally posted by JtDarth:

Originally posted by A National Acrobat:

There's nothing self-explanatory about dozen types of portals that tell you nothing about where they take you or what they do.
There's nothing self-explanatory about having half a dozen keys and not knowing how important they are or what they do.
There's nothing self-explanatory in being teleported to an entirely different area and there's nothing self-explanatory about having checkpoints and lives in a remaster with quick saving and manual saving.
There's nothing self-explanatory in having to go through big, convoluted parts of a level with dozens of portals and loading screens for each just to find the end portal and/or one of two objectives you missed.

If the portals are actually causing notable loading pauses, there is something wrong with your hardware.

That said, 6-year old me figured this ♥♥♥♥ out back in the day, without strategy guides, and with the game effectively being a horror game on the N64 for me at that age (Turok and Quake 2 both). You are supposed to explore, to take your time in looking around, not just blitz through like you are late for work. It's non-linear level design, with multiple paths, some of which are indeed dead ends. You are supposed to explore everything in an area before going through a portal. If your ADD prevents you from doing so, that's fine, but don't call it bad game design. There is nothing wrong with a game expecting you to use your brain rather than follow the golden trail of breadcrumbs.

I figured it out too by myself so congrats. Doesn't mean it's not annoying and unnecessarily tedious.
Also, if you want to actually read my comments, you'll find that I explain why this is bad design, and that it doesn't have to be so hand-holding to be good design. I gave an example too so have a read. I explore in Unreal, I explore in Fallout, I explore in Deus Ex, I explore in Dishonored, I explore in Thief (you know, the game that has 2 hour long levels?), I'm not a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ who doesn't understand that exploration is key. The point is, exploration is TEDIOUS and FRUSTRATING in this game. I also already explained that I DID explore everything and already got all the objectives and it was fun besides the confusion as to what everything does, but I missed one single one, and so I had to spend almost an hour looking for it and the end portal again. Who the hell wants to spend an hour looking for one thing as you run at the speed of a snail? No one. That's why no other game I've ever played has this issue.

I play tons of 90's FPS. It's what I play most. This is the only game I've ever been frustrated by because of its level design. It's bad level design, that's why. And maybe if you actually read my previous comments you would've known all this already, and would've realised that your very cute sarcastic quips would be wasted on someone who isn't an idiot.

[JtDarth]

Originally posted by A National Acrobat:

Originally posted by JtDarth:

If the portals are actually causing notable loading pauses, there is something wrong with your hardware.

That said, 6-year old me figured this ♥♥♥♥ out back in the day, without strategy guides, and with the game effectively being a horror game on the N64 for me at that age (Turok and Quake 2 both). You are supposed to explore, to take your time in looking around, not just blitz through like you are late for work. It's non-linear level design, with multiple paths, some of which are indeed dead ends. You are supposed to explore everything in an area before going through a portal. If your ADD prevents you from doing so, that's fine, but don't call it bad game design. There is nothing wrong with a game expecting you to use your brain rather than follow the golden trail of breadcrumbs.

I figured it out too by myself so congrats. Doesn't mean it's not annoying and unnecessarily tedious.
Also, if you want to actually read my comments, you'll find that I explain why this is bad design, and that it doesn't have to be so hand-holding to be good design. I gave an example too so have a read. I explore in Unreal, I explore in Fallout, I explore in Deus Ex, I explore in Dishonored, I explore in Thief (you know, the game that has 2 hour long levels?), I'm not a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ who doesn't understand that exploration is key. The point is, exploration is TEDIOUS and FRUSTRATING in this game. I also already explained that I DID explore everything and already got all the objectives and it was fun besides the confusion as to what everything does, but I missed one single one, and so I had to spend almost an hour looking for it and the end portal again. Who the hell wants to spend an hour looking for one thing as you run at the speed of a snail? No one. That's why no other game I've ever played has this issue.

I play tons of 90's FPS. It's what I play most. This is the only game I've ever been frustrated by because of its level design. It's bad level design, that's why. And maybe if you actually read my previous comments you would've known all this already, and would've realised that your very cute sarcastic quips would be wasted on someone who isn't an idiot.

So, again, your complaint comes from you being annoyed that you missed an objective, and didn't remember the basic layout of the level? Ya know, a thing that tends to end up happening in every fps of the time period? Maybe it's the expansiveness of the turok levels that throws you off, but I found it far better than the outright mazes of a lot of the FPS games of the time.

In all seriousness, it's a personal problem you are having, not something wrong with the game. Especially if it is taking you an HOUR to run back through a single level. That implies you were getting lost, which points toward you not paying attention to the environments to keep track of where you are, where you have been, and what areas are new. That you think Turok moves at the speed of a snail, also indicates further that you are drastically overstating in favor of some odd bias.
Very literally, you are the only person I have ever seen call the level design in Turok 2 tedious and frustrating. I've seen people get frustrated over being unable to find objectives, but they typically don't place the fault on the game.

You claim to have 'explained why it's bad design' but it again, literally falls down to YOU failing to pay attention. The initial section in the port of adia, introduces game mechanics as a quick tutorial. You have a couple portals introduced individually, ladders, enemies, switches, even a direct introduction to the objectives, in a way that you would have to be actively not paying attention to miss, and a key sitting in the open to emphasize that if a path isn't open, you need a key/item you don't currently have.
It very much does introduce the basic mechanics before letting you loose, you just weren't paying attention.
Similarly, with the portals not telling you where they go? You are expected to pay attention to where you've been and build a mental map. In every level, there are multiple times where you take a portal or otherwise are transported elsewhere, look around, and can VISIBLY see an area you have previously passed through, or even see a future area before you can access it.
Your failure to pay attention is not a fault of the game.

The only major level design feature you could conceivably rag on and be in the right, is the talismans and primagen keys, and that is more down to the game not making it explicit that you will have to go back to levels to obtain the required macguffins. That's less a level design issue, and more a storytelling issue, that would have been solved if Adon would have mentioned it in cutscenes, or in-level when you approached a talisman requiring area for the first time. A lot of platformers have similar things, you just expect them because of the genre, where as here it's a bit abnormal.

You also have an in-game automap available, that last I checked is actually pretty reliable in hinting at non-obvious areas, and preventing someone from getting lost. It doesn't mark pickups or etc, but the game itself is generally pretty obvious with important things to hump on the walls or things to step/climb on.

[LT-LAZER-]

There is a co-op campaign mod you can download for free. Anyone wanna check it out with me?

[ergar...O!!! >:v]

Dont worry, the game is so casualized that you dont even need to complete objectives anymore, just collect the keys (if your head desnt explode in the process) and then use fast travel to get out to the hub and go to the other level, dumb proof design.

[emoticorpse]

Thing in this game to me is the missions are just there to add depth to the story when turok doesn't need a story. Should be like doom where you land in the game shoot through and continue. That's what I play for and the little they tried to turn it into a game with a story made it somewhere in between. A bad shooter with too much in there and a bad story based game with not enough in there. I really wish there was an option to skip cutscenes.

Edit: didn't mean bad game. I still love it just think it could be better.

[CarDr]

Originally posted by emoticorpse:

.... I really wish there was an option to skip cutscenes.....

https://steamcommunity.com/app/405830/discussions/1/135512931349179169/

[ergar...O!!! >:v]

Originally posted by emoticorpse:

Thing in this game to me is the missions are just there to add depth to the story when turok doesn't need a story. Should be like doom where you land in the game shoot through and continue. That's what I play for and the little they tried to turn it into a game with a story made it somewhere in between. A bad shooter with too much in there and a bad story based game with not enough in there. I really wish there was an option to skip cutscenes.

Edit: didn't mean bad game. I still love it just think it could be better.

I think you can skip them pressing ESC.

[ergar...O!!! >:v]

LOL, new gamers are so lazy xD

Yeah, i know what are you going to say now, "im not new gamer, i growed with spectrum and pacman and blah blah blah" well, i dont care, you are talking like this new age useless, lazy, hold my hand gamer LOL