The people have spoken, the dissenters have been silenced. Turok is back. Lock up your dinosaurs. The recent (and excellent) Night Dive remasters of Turok: Dinosaur Hunter and Turok 2: Seeds of Evil must have done reasonably well, because a new game in the series has been greenlit. Yes, Turok: Escape from Lost Valley is coming to Steam, and… it’s an isometric action game starring what appear to be Funko Pop figures.

Admittedly, it’s not what I expected. It may, however, turn out to be a shrewd move; a sort of ironic Turok for the [insert zeitgeisty reference] age. A game one could term a “reimagining”, though it’s not looking like a huge amount of imagination is on show in Lost Valley. Visually it’s extremely indie by numbers, and the gameplay resembles something of a stillborn Bastion homage. The Quentin Tarantino kind of “homage”, where you just do exactly the same thing  as whatever you’re homaging.

Let it never be said that I don’t like trying new things – why, just the other day, I ate a “quesadilla” – but what’s happened to Turok here strikes me as a little bit of a shame. I know it’s not a series with a fantastic pedigree (though I’ll go to bat for those first two), but the trailer for Lost Valley is a pretty by-the-numbers and looks chronically slow-paced. Turok used to bomb around like a man possessed, which, to be fair, he was. Possessed by his hatred of all dinosaurs. This new Turok doesn’t appear to have even the slightest antipathy towards the cretaceous cretins. If anything, he probably gets on with them. It’s outrageous.

Of course, it remains to be seen. There are people out there to whom I imagine this looks like the first remotely interesting Turok and while I don’t agree, it’s a perspective I can acknowledge without vomiting or soiling myself. And frankly, I don’t know what else you could possibly ask of me.

You can get ready Turok on July 25^th. If you want, I mean. You don’t have to.

• steam
• turok
• Stuart Gipp