While Acclaim put announcements regarding other big titles aside as Forsaken came to market, the company came by the GameSpot office on Wednesday to show of the latest build of Turok II: Seeds of Evil for the PC.

　　The plot for the title picks up after the first title, Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, where Turok has defeated the Campaigner. Taking the weapon he sought to destroy his enemy with and tossing it into a volcano, Turok awakens a new foe - the Primagen. This new enemy is trapped in his spacecraft deep in the ground at the center of the lost land. Turok's new task is to stop the Primagen from escaping his craft before it opens a wall connecting the nether world to the Earth.

　　Turok II gains a new graphics engine that has added new techniques for soft-skinning enemies, accurate collision detection, and real-time lighting.

　　Soft skinning is one of the newest uses for 3D accelerators where instead of having the sharp edges of a polygon outlining the body of a creature, the creature is built up from a skeleton. What happens is that the graphic depicting a moving enemy is wrapped around this underlying skeletal structure. For gamers, this makes enemies look extremely realistic. In the Turok II version that we saw, soft skins weren't fully added yet but were added to Acclaim's new title that it was showing, Shadowman. The movements of enemies take on a whole new level of fluidity with the new engine, and gamers are sure to like what they see.

　　One of the new features in the sequel, highly accurate collision detection, uses a simple concept that brings a much-needed element to the game - accuracy. Seeds of Evil allows you to shoot enemies in specific body parts. We saw Turok blast the head off an oncoming enemy - the game flashed a quick "head shot" indicator, and the creature fell to the ground. This accuracy feature will also come in handy when you want to launch an arrow into the leg of an opponent and watch as he staggers toward you with the arrow firmly planted in his leg. Since there will be multiplayer support in Turok II, we can imagine that this kind of torture is going to become really popular.

　　Graphically, Iguana has beefed up the game with ten new real-time lighting effects that add more atmosphere to the game, better fire effects, and shimmering water.

　　Turok II's multiplayer capabilities allow up to 16 players to play via Internet or LAN in any of 12 multiplayer levels. You can also play as a raptor. Seven single-player levels in the game will help you gain the skills you'll need against the 30-plus enemies you'll face along with five new bosses. The game will also pack in 24 weapons with names like War Blade, Scorpion Missile, Firestorm Cannon, and Storm Bow. Along with the new weapons, Turok also gains a sniper mode when using the bow or a sniper rifle.

　　Acclaim's minimum spec for the Windows 95-based game will be a Pentium 133MHz, 16MB RAM, and a Direct3D-compatible accelerator card. If you have some of the newest hardware on your machine, Acclaim will be supporting 3D sound (although it hasn't decided on which 3D sound API it will use), higher resolution textures when used with AGP video cards, and DirectX input devices including force-feedback joysticks. As Turok II: Seeds of Evil gets closer to its fall release, check back for an in-depth preview.