Turok: Rage Wars is a first-person shooter with a heavy emphasis on multiplayer.[3] It features three distinct modes of gameplay:
Single-Player Trials Mode - In the Single-Player Campaign, the player must go through a number of death matches through the various game mode types and must face all four game bosses as well. Each character in the game must be played to the end of their campaign at least once to unlock other characters and rewards, including Talismans and an increase in maximum health.
Two-Player Trials Mode - This mode is similar to the Single-Player Campaign with the addition of cooperative gameplay. Some rewards can only be gained in the Two-Player Campaign. In early copies of the game, the two-player trials mode was affected by a glitch which prevented progressing past a certain point.[4]
Multiplayer - In this mode, the player selects a character and level to play. The player starts with Turok, Adon, Bio Bot Elite, and Mantid Drone as the first playable characters, with more characters unlockable through the Single-Player Trials Mode. Multiplayer has several game type options, including, Bloodlust and Team Bloodlust, which are deathmatch-style games, Capture the Flag, and Monkey Tag, in which a random player is transformed into a monkey that other players can frag to score points. In this mode, the player can configure the options for gameplay before each game.
The game features weapons divided into three ammunition types: bullet rounds, energy rounds, and explosive rounds. A player may only carry six pre-selected weapons at one time. However, when playing as Tal'Set, the player has access to every weapon in the game at once.
In addition to weapons that can be picked up in-game, most arena maps contain a Power Core, a glowing pink-and-blue crystalline item floating in a set location. They are similar to the "Power Ups" in Quake III Arena and grant the player a randomly selected power. Each Power Core lasts approximately 15 to 20 seconds.
There are 50 medals that can be earned in the game to unlock cheats and character skins. Medals are awarded for completing a range of actions, from defeating bosses to committing suicides. One of the medals is impossible to achieve in the United States version of early (black-cartridge) copies of the game due to a Two-Player Trials glitch in the "Creature Tag" levels. Acclaim recognized this glitch and exchanged any black cartridges with fixed grey cartridges. The recalled variants weren't widely known, however, and have led to the grey cartridge variant of the game being a rare collector's item.[4]
