 The release of Turrican 3 on the C64 gained a lot of attention. Some people love it, while others don't like it. But how good is it actually? For sure it's a game worth checking out. After Reviewers? Diaries, you can find more in our illustrated Turrican 3 review, brought to you by the two Turrican experts: Wotnau & _V_. Wotnau & _V_
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[21] :
05. Oct 2004 21:29
Nah, stop it, Lasse. There’s really no need to let your latest gem shine in a bad light. And I wasn’t really trying to arouse a controverse discussion or comparison between the two games. They have a quite different approach anyway.
[22] :
05. Oct 2004 21:49
Actually I would like more controvert discussion. But yeah I know what MW4 does well and that it does things C64 games usually don’t and I’m still helluva proud about it (and I even have to admit I felt some kind of sadistic & evil satisfaction when T3 flickered and bugged) And btw. that "featurelist" of T3 wasn’t all positive now wasn’t it?
[23] :
05. Oct 2004 21:51
Or it could be false modesty... I liked MW4, too, but after having played so many games on highend platforms and consoles, games like resident Evil, Silent Hill (and all their sequels), Planescape: Torment, Grand Theft: Auto, ... it’s hard to find the same rush in our little box.
One could argue that for a c64 game to really stand out in comparison to such titles, all you need to find is a great, revolutionary concept which can fit into memory. Unfortunately, what then happens is that your great idea is ported over to the big platforms in thousands of infinitesimal variations and clones, usually with much better graphics and music for a much stronger effect. Of course, by then, the game is no longer ’hot’. And that kinda sucks.
_V_
[24] :
05. Oct 2004 21:55
I like the bad Hollywood intro, btw. Brought me right back into that funky ’All your base are belong to us’ mode =). The graphics from AEG were pretty decent, although I would have preferred a grittier, cyberpunk feeling to it. I guess the budget was a bit small to hire Masamune Shirow to do the graphics ;).
_V_
[25] :
05. Oct 2004 21:57
Yeah. IMO C64 has greatest potential in getting the player *really* pumped via simple action gameplay (one important ingredient of getting pumped is the fear of failure, ie. gameover) If we still talk about MW4, it purposefully discarded that for saveanywhere and trying to imitate PC games, therefore it even in theory can’t get players very pumped. Btw. I yesterday I got *very* pumped playing T3 up to 5-1 but then it did the death lockup bug..
[26] :
05. Oct 2004 22:14
*patpatpats* (we know the pain, brother)
...And then, all your adrenalin is channeled into pure rage because technically, you aren’t supposed to be dead. Technically, you aren’t supposed to plow through the entire game again to get to the spot you died. Better luck next time - all I can say is: if you’re unsure about an elevator jump in 5-1 because your health is low, don’t do the jump. Waiting 3 minutes for the timer to expire is better than playing another 30 minutes to get to 5-1 again. Of course, that does allow you to practise the earlier levels again.
You can see my evolution because of it in the screenshots... in the first World 4 pics, I’ve got like 5-6 lives, but later on it’s 14-15 because of the added experience and other assorted tricks. I can now comfortably battle Morgul II with 24-25 lives, which is quite nice. Of course, no lives lost is even nicer, but that will take considerably longer to accomplish...
_V_
[27] :
05. Oct 2004 22:28
Aeuhm, anyone wanna mock on the biggest Turrican nerd there’s ever been? This is the first time I could agree to that there might be something about those demoparties (even though I’ve been co-organizing for five+ years already). It was just TODAY that I noticed the existence of the Smash Designs demo Return of the Darkness and downloaded it and saw it. So far about Hollywood intros, except that AEG should have had his English checked by a native speaker. :) + I like how Turrican’s (no Bren McGuire is no real name for no Turrican, and no Turrican is no name of no battlesuit) hair changes from German blonde to grey. >:D Anyway, gotta admit that I got sort of absorbed into the story, too. That bloody old fire inside... ah well...
Wotnau
[28] :
05. Oct 2004 23:24
*imitates Nelson Muntz (Simpsons) and points at Wotnau*
Ha-ha! ;)
I gues you know understand why I absolutely had to include some images from RotD, if only for the cool FLI. By the way, I did mention RotD extensively in my first diary entry, and hoped it would spur you into watching it, too. Oh well, better late than never =).
_V_
[29] :
06. Oct 2004 14:50
Ah, finished the bastard. Got to Morgul II with 16 lives and finished with 7 :)
[30] :
06. Oct 2004 15:53
Cadaver: Welcome to the club, O’Mighty Hero!
Wotnau the No-Bren-at-all Turrican
[31] :
06. Oct 2004 18:01
Wotnau, Bren mc Guire = our hero in Turrican suit. That’s how the story goes. You’ll have to get used to it =).
_V_
[32] :
06. Oct 2004 18:20
Btw. do they put him in cryostasis between missions or something? :) I remember in the official T3 there’s something like "Eons have passed since we last heard of the machine.."
[33] :
06. Oct 2004 18:59
As you know, time is relative ;). ’Aeons’ could mean ’years’ in this context. And otherwise, who knows what mr. mc Guire likes to do in his spare time. I mean, if you have like 10000 credits on the bank in 2053 at an intrest rate of 2%, it would be quite beneficial to put yourself in cryogenic sleep for ’aeons’ and then wake up a multi-billionaire. Maybe mc Guire bought that island he was sipping a cocktail on using that strategy? Of course, then also the general must have been in cryogenic sleep and all the others too, so I guess my theory doesn’t hold up too well. Still, it’s funny/weird enough to consider and write down here ;)
_V_
[34] :
07. Oct 2004 20:00
They all had money in the same bank, which miraculously stayed in business - and kept the same beneficiary interest rate - for eons. I think my savings account has about 0.5% interest and decreasing, so it would make little sense for me to go into cryostasis for that reason.
Anyway, I’m one of those "never played Turrican" people and only knew it from magazine reviews. IIRC, DMz gave the Amiga version of T2 rather good scores, but badly marked down the C64 when it was around. The magazine still exists today, but only works with PC and all the staff from the old days is replaced, so it would not make sense to ask them to review T3 to justify things, or how to say it.
Anders Carlsson
[35] :
07. Oct 2004 20:52
I can understand the scoring difference between Amiga and c64 T2: the Amiga version was, hands down, the prettiest to look at and the coolest to hear. Once you get used to that, the c64 simply looks spartan by comparison. It was the same for me - I was used to the H?lsbeck track, the glorious graphics, the pretty colours, the huge enemies. c64 felt watered down.
Something reviewers don’t have time for, however, is to really get to grips with a game and experience it to the same depth as the developers. If the DMZ reviewers had the time to do that, they would have noticed that the c64 version plays a lot faster and smoother and inevitably is more dynamic and fun as a game. It didn’t have the bells and whistles of the Amiga, but people like us have the capability to look past them and evaluate a game for what it is. Oh well =).
_V_
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