Game: Turrican 3 - The Return of Darkness 
By: Smash Designs 
One Liner: A game of contradictions, awesome gameplay wins out over bugs in the end. Arbitrary Rating: 90% 
Type: Full Game/Freeware 
Reviewer: A Life in Hell 
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For the two people in the universe who are unaware, Turrican 3 - The Return of Darkness is an unofficial followup to Turrican 1&2 by Rainbow Arts. It isn't a conversion of the Amiga game named Turrican 3, but rather an original game from the Smash crew, taking place twelve years after the events of the second game. Obstinately containing five new worlds, with a total of over 4,000 screens full of game world, and over 100 different enemies, T3 promises to be a large game. Possibly the most long awaited game in the modern commodore scene, as well as one of the most hyped, we here at Game Over(view) suspected that the game would not live up to the hype, as no game could. Respect to the Smash hype machine, but hype doesn't matter once the game is released. 

Following a simple yet effective title screen (with a nice pumping song by KB, converted from the Amiga Turrican 3 - there are a few covers from that game in here), Level 1-1 loads. World 1 is a very blatant tribute to the earlier Turrican games, with an environment and a design mimicking the earlier game almost exactly, and even including a (poor) cover of Huelsbeck's famous Turrican 2 Level 1-1 song from the Amiga. 

Unlike earlier Turrican games, T3 forgoes sound effects to make room for a soundtrack. While more technically impressive, the lack of any sound effects at all doesn't help with the atmosphere of the game, particularly on level 1-1, where the soundtrack sounds incredibly weak. The lack of audial feedback to any of your actions makes the game feel quite detached, particularly when combined with the lack of visual feedback when shooting at a lot of the enemies (notable exceptions, of course, the end of level monsters, and the power-up boxes). Indeed, my first impression of the game was a feeling of meh-ness, like I wasn't really in control of the proceedings, but was just a spectator, watching someone else play the game. This feeling did quickly subside, however, as I got down to the business of playing the game proper, and indeed the music in Level 1-2 and later actually add to the atmosphere significantly. Even so, the lack of and sound effects at all still hurts the feel of the game no matter which level, and 2 channel music plus a sound effects channel would have felt far better. 

Gameplay wise, the first world feels much like Turrican 2, with some notable exceptions in the feel of the character movement (the jump physics are different, and the gyroscope no longer lays mines, but instead shoots normal bullets), and is great fun. However, it's not far into the game that blemishes start to show - for the three people in the world who haven't either downloaded this already, played Turrican 2, or both, the first world consists of a mountainous wasteland, which looks stunning, but unfortunately the collision detection between Turrican and the ground is horrifically bad, often being out by an entire character block or more. Similar problems exist with collisions between the super weapon (a large lightening bolt in this game, rather than the stream of bullets in the previous), especially when shooting at the power-up blocks (and larger monsters). You often end up in a situation where your weapon is clearly hitting the power-up block, but because the game's collision detection is poor, you have to try and carefully position yourself and the angle of the weapon in order to work around the code in the game. This is made even more frustrating by the behavior of the lightning bolt, which can only be rotated to one of about 32 angles, which is unfortunately not nearly enough to cover the whole screen, as well as the collision problems being biased in favour of the computer rather than of the player. 

The levels on the first world are large, continuing the tradition of lots of secrets to be found through exploration, and are very well designed. AEG has managed to capture the feeling of the older game incredibly well in this world, and so to the first end of level enemy, who is a large fist. A staple of the genre, while he is trivial to beat (it is after all the first level), working out where exactly you have to shoot him is often problematic (that collision detection once more rears its head). But you do work it out, and with him out of the way, you proceed to the next level. 

World 2 is an eight way scrolling labyrinth, in the style of the factory levels of the earlier game, and is by far the most polished of the platform levels. It is far more atmospheric and immersive than world 1, capturing perfectly that massive feel which the Turrican games are famous for, as well as tight time limits for that extra challenge. Very attractive, despite the disconcerting X-only parallax, with a perfectly suited soundtrack. The one flaw it suffers from, is that sometimes it can seem unfair when you take a wrong turn, and end up all the way back at the start of the level. But such is the nature of labyrinths. 

One amusing cut scene later, World 3 is (as in Turrican 2) a horizontally scrolling shoot-em-up. Visually, this world is nothing short of amazing, with a really large parallax background on 3-1, dual layer parallax on 3-3, and massive end of level (and mid-level) enemies. While Level 3-1 has a massive problem with disappearing sprites, and 3-2 has problems with slowdown and flicker if you're not fast enough to clear the screen of enemies, these bugs cause only minor damage to what is an amazing side scrolling shooter, with well thought out waves, fast exciting gameplay, a great soundtrack, and some of the best end of level monsters we've seen. Others have complained that the ship is too large relative to the rest of the screen, but I didn't find that a problem (indeed, I found it added a lot of challenge to Level 3-3, in which you have to negotiate your way through a fast scrolling tunnel. Are you guys players or pussies?). 

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'i know by myself that the level of world 1 and 2 are not that perfect, up from world 3 are much better code' 
- AEG/Smash Designs, on Turrican 3 
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Back on terra firma for world 4, the gyroscope is no longer available for reasons which are unexplained (nor is it available on world 5). The jump physics are different, which makes sense being on a different planet and all, however as the screen is only (single direction) horizontally scrolling, sometimes you bounce off the top of the screen when trying to make difficult jumps. As difficult jumps are a significant part of world four, this is a non-trivial issue. On the positive side, this level does look great, however is suffers from very severe slowdown and flickering problems when things get busy, the slowdown particularly causing even more problems with chasm jumping. 

I miss the gyroscope terribly on this level. Since a much of the world is flat it's perfect gyroscoping territory, and I've have loved to just gyroscope my way through it. As it stands, walking and jumping, walking and jumping, walking and jumping, the levels on world 4 are massive, but they also feel very unfortunately repetitive. 

The final world, world 5, is a single level of a vertically scrolling tower. With almost no monsters it's a race to the top, negotiating moving lifts and tight jumps in order to reach end of game monster. World 5 is all about making the right jumps, which makes it very unfortunate that it is also the single most bugged level in the game, causing the world to become more about playing against AEG's coding errors than playing against a well designed level. Not only is the collision detection way off in the most inconvenient of places during the level, but also the objects (such as the lifts which make up much of the level) in this level often don't follow the scrolling of the background correctly. Additionally, the game will sometimes hang when you die on this level, causing an incredibly amount of frustration for the player who has spent half an hour to an hour playing from the start. The music and graphics are great, but the bugs in this level completely destroy the experience, the only saving grace being is it is not too large, and reasonably easy for a player who has completed this far, and hence at least one doesn't have to spend much time within its hideous confines. Following Level 5-1 is the final battle, which is wonderfully surreal, and which I enjoyed immensely. But that, you'll have to discover for yourself. 

Turrican 3 lives up to it's promise of being a massive game, and sometimes this works against it. While a lack of any sort of level passwords or save games, and of course a limited number of continues, works great in a smaller game, there is little in the world more frustrating than dying on world 4 or 5, and having to play through world 1 yet again. What is more frustrating, however, are some of the more heinous bugs in this game. Turrican will sometimes spawn within solid rock on world 1, world 2 (where he also sometimes spawns offscreen), and world 5, causing the player to have to wait until game over and hope like hell they have a continue. Diamonds also often spawn in solid rock, enemies less so, but still often enough to be a problem, and due to the way jumping works (jumping will almost always scroll up the screen, and then scroll it back down when you hit the top of your arc), often only appear for half a second before being destroyed forever. We understand that object spawning on a large c64 game needs to be limited to screen area (and Turrican 3 objects only exist strictly until they are scrolled off, then they are destroyed forever), but one has to make allowances for that in either the level design or the jump/scroll algorithm. 

Despite the bugs, Turrican 3 is still a great game, without question the best game of 2004. The array of weapons still is as impressive as it was when Turrican 2 came out, and game is full of secrets to discover, just like the older games. Difficulty wise, with the notable exception of Level 5-1, T3 seems to strike the right balance between being a challenge and being too difficult, and each level has the gameplay to back up the name. We freely admit that we expected to see a technical masterpiece, but mediocre gameplay perhaps unworthy of the Turrican name. We couldn't be more wrong on that second count. The Turrican 3 is, gameplay wise, brilliant and a worthy member of the Turrican family in its own right. However, this is not without reservations. Unlike earlier Turrican games, Turrican 3 doesn't feel like a coherent game, but rather five separate games slapped together in an ad-hoc fashion. Some of these are brilliant (Worlds 2, 3), some are good (World 1), some are visually stunning but kind of dull (World 4), and some are just not good (World 5). 

A game of contradictions, Turrican 3 is a massive effort from Smash (who spent seven years on the game, supposedly), which will be remembered for a long time to come. But it could have, and should have, been brilliant instead of just very good, and would have if not for all of the bugs and the rushed feeling of worlds 4 and 5 (and the horrible music on Level 1-1). But yet, very good is nothing to scoff at, and there is a lot of great gaming in this release. 

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Turrican 3 can be downloaded from http://smash-designs.de