Turok 2: Seeds of Evil

Hardcore mode is no joke in Turok 2.

You only get one life. No extras can be earned. In fact there aren't even any of the extra life collectibles. This does make knowing where to go a little tricky if you don't already know.

Enemies take way more damage to kill, and you take way more damage from them. Things that end up being invaluable are the Charge Dart Rifle and the Cerebral Bore. The Bore is already good, but for the big enemies that just soak up bullets it becomes necessary. The Charge Dart Rifle is great for when you are running down a hall way, turn the corner and there an enemy is. I would hit them with a charge dart, then switch to something else like the Mag 60 to headshot them.

Remember to always stop at the spots with respawning health and ammo to refill everything.

All that being said, the single most important thing is to save scum constantly. If you take too much damage reload your save to try the section again. I set auto save to LS and auto load to RS. I was reloading constantly. Once I got up to 250 health I tried to keep myself there as much as possible. Sometimes it would take quite a few tries to get through a tough spot but it was worth it.

The second most important thing is to follow a guide. You do not actually need to complete the objectives to beat the game. You need to get all the level keys, most of the talismans, and all of the Primagen keys. The only boss you have to fight is the Primagen himself. Every other boss you can skip thanks to the check point quick warp system.

Here is the speed run that I used. It is from the Awesome Games Done Quick 2018 stream. The runner gets you everywhere you need to be as efficiently as possible. The only thing you can't do is follow his death warps. Any time he dies to travel back to a check point you have to walk. It's not awful, just longer. The only part it really is a problem is in the Hive of the Mantids level. In that level he dies after he gets the Eagle Feather to warp back to the portal. You can't do that, and you can't go back the normal way because of the speed run skips you do. Instead you have to go forward with the level until you find a checkpoint station. Then you can warp back to an earlier checkpoint and get the talisman.