I thought Lair of the Blind Ones was bad. Hive of the Mantids is somehow worse. More boring labyrinthine level design (and the rooms with turrets that shred you in seconds are just sadistic) and I know I've probably missed stuff so I would have to do it all over again. Absolutely not.

This is the point where boredom and frustration overwhelm any enjoyment I was having with the game.

Beat levels 3 and 4. 3 was fine, possibly the best level gameplay wise even if I preferred the aesthetic and music of 2.

4 is absolute ass and I had to play through it three times thanks to the stupid objective system. Good FPS games reward you for exploring, Turok 2 gives you a caning for not exploring well enough.

So... yeah, enjoying it just enough to stick with it, but Turok 1 is way better than this game.

So thought I'd give this a go. Originally I tried on Steam Deck, but despite being verified the game has an issue where it stutters and then completely freezes the system. I tried to get around this by saving regularly. It either didn't save properly or it wiped my saves. So that was a non-starter.

Valve's verified program clearly has a few misses.

So I moved to playing it on my laptop. I've beaten level 1 and 2 and, so far it's about what I expected. From what I heard, I expected to like this less than Turok 1 and that's holding up. The game is definitely holding my attention but it's so full of little frustrations and utterly baffling design choices. Like they wanted to expand on Turok 1 but their ambition lead them down the worst roads possible.