So I was doing my weekly thing at work of going through games getting them ready for sale and I came across this:
Naturally me and my 18-20 something student workmates got talking about this:
Being 18-20 this means in 1996 they were roughly 7-9, approaching the perfect age to discover videogames. Almost in unison they all chimed in with "Wow, that is a classic!" Turok: Dinosaur Hunter was a good game but far from a great one. I'll admit though, before Goldeneye 007 any console FPS that was playable stood out immediately and was highly praised, I hate to use such a worn phrase but anything before Goldeneye broke new ground.
Turok did do some great things, and some awfully frustrating things for the genre, with jumping between platforms. Also It's music and overall atmosphere, helped along by the game's creative use of the N64's volumetric fog, was very engaging for the time. When you eventually got to it's hub and then started going off to crazy levels the game started to crumble, but still today I think the journey to the hub ruins is one of the greatest first levels/game experiences of my life.
But my point here is that Turok is far from a classic, it won't appear on anybody's "lists" anytime soon. In the world of videogames Nostalgia is powerful force. In fact it could be argued that Nostalgia has a greater hold over Gamers than actual Creativity/Quality. Usually when a movie achieves what they call "classic status", or long after its release becomes a classic, it's because it is a great work of great creative merit. Whether it be directed well, acted well, written well, or shot well. Casablanca falls into all these categories.
I believe these 18-20 something kids call Turok a classic just because they played it when they were young, and we all have games like that and most of us are probably guilty of calling them classics. Is gaming even an old enough medium to have actual "classics?"
Discuss.
- Danny
P.S - This post is not really that long, my copy of The King of Kong arrived today. I'm gonna do some watching.
1 comment:
The release of the new Turok really reiterated the principle for me whereby games are so desperate for "classics" and "heritage" and "lineage" and all that malarkey, that anything old and yet recognised becomes a "classic".
I have no idea why there's a new Turok game - the old ones went from mildly awesome to thoroughly terrible in a few iterations - except that Turok is an established brand, even albiet a really half-assed one, so someone decided it's an IP worthy of exploitation.
Making a new Turok game so as to retroactively make us care about the franchise is like releasing a bunch of media centered around the notion of "Vin Diesel in sunglasses" so we'll retroactively think Pitch Black didn't suck.
I'll go on record here, though, as never having had any problem whatsoever with Turok's jumping sections.
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