Turok 5
Skye Severy
So which series is better? Epic's Unreal series, id Software's Quake, or Acclaim's Turok? Or are all of them the best? They all have similarities, and even have games (in Turok's case, one) in a type of genre (Unreal Tournament, Quake 3 Arena, and Turok Rage Wars being arena shooters for example). They're fast paced old-school first person shooters with excellent single player and multiplayer. The level design in all of them are big and/or open. They also have beefy and brutal guns to use. Which series would you choose?
Turok doesn't appeal to me, and Unreal feels like it's geared way towards solely multiplayer gaming than anything, the single-player story in the first game I feel was only an excuse to show off the engine.
uhhhhh sssshit this is a hard one lol. turok and quake are both great series, and unreal had the best mp, so it's hard for me to pick between them tbh. i can eliminate unreal cuz i only ever liked ut99, but that still leaves turok and quake.
turok is a lot more varied than quake and feels more "fun", in a tonal sense. it's really colorful, some of the weapons are downright absurd (see: cerebral bore), you travel all across the universe to all sorts of different environments, turok is a fuckin' goofball; it overall just feels much more energetic and chaotic than quake does, which is something i absolutely love about it. i also think it has much more of a sense of adventure than quake does due to both the aforementioned variety of the game and the exploratory nature of the levels. it's freakin' fantastic, i love it.
first, there's the atmosphere, which i prefer over turok's wacky action-adventure movie vibes. i love horror, especially lovecraftian horror, and that just oozes out of each and every fiber of quake 1. it's so, so good, and nearly every aspect of the game's art and sound direction compliments it. the soundtrack fits it perfectly, the sounds of the enemies feel inhuman and ghastly, the world feels so creepy and isolated...again, it's incredible.
secondly, the gameplay just feels more satisfying in just about every way. part of this is due to quake's movement, which feels so much more responsive and fluid. turok's movement is fine, but has some issues that make it a bit less fun than quake, namely momentum not being preserved very well and overall just being slower. another part is the weapons and their sound design; i'd say that quake is slightly below doom in terms of how satisfying the guns sound, so obviously it's gonna take quite a bit to surpass quake in that regard.
and lastly, the level design is more suited to my personal tastes in every single way other than in the art direction. it compliments the player's movement perfectly and, unlike turok, isn't easy to get lost and turned around in. obviously that's because the level design of the two games have two very different philosophies - it's like comparing no end in sight to plutonia - but i really do prefer quake's more action-oriented design than turok's exploratory, adventurish design.
Between Unreal and Quake, it is a tough choice. In terms of aesthetics and grandiose, Unreal beats both Quake 1 and 2 (heck I think Unreal is still the most atmospheric FPS I have ever played). But both Quake games have more solid gunplay. Also Quake 1 has some really cool mapsets. So I think that in SP department, Quake series beat Unreal series by a small margin.
In terms of MP, we also include the UT games, then I feel that Unreal series win by a big margin. UT99 and Quake 3 are close together, but then there is also UT2004 and UT3 (and Quake 4 and QC are nowhere near UT2004 and UT3 for me).
Quake, definitely. Unreal's movement and mouse control haven't aged well at all, the singleplayer is a drag with slow gameplay and damage sponge enemies and I can't imagine Turok has fared any better with it being a console shooter.
This seems a rather weird comparison. Compare Unreal and Quake, sure. Primarily PC based FPS series with a mix of single player and multiplayer entries. But why compare them to a series known primarily as a console FPS (yes, there were Windows versions but they were nowhere near as well known) with relatively minor multiplayer features?
At any rate, never played Turok. Of all the games in Quake and Unreal, I had the most fun with Onslaught in Unreal Tournament 2004. But as I am primarily a single player gamer, I would give it to Quake. Quake, Quake II and Quake IV had their issues but were generally solid SP games with a lot of positives. Unreal certainly made an impact and had some strengths, but it was a bit of a slog to play through overall. No one speaks of Unreal II in polite circles for good reason so let us keep it polite.
I cannot stand Unreal's single-player. I had fun with Turok, but the respawning enemies, the irritating design of some enemies (e.g. Turok 2's Deadkin and their quasi-hitscan homing attack), the absence of an automap and the frustrating first-person platforming deter me from replaying it. Quake has its flaws too, but of the three it is the one I am the most likely to replay.
I like the one that had a great start in the late 90s followed by a polarizing sequel and then an arena shooter spin-off followed by some pandering lowest-common denominator AAA sequel in the late 2000s that completely went against the original gameplay and then ended with a mediocre game released just a few years ago that was basically abandoned by its creators not soon after release.
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