After plowing through the Middle East in Call of Duty 4 and exploring an underwater city in Bioshock, Turok's prehistoric wonderland is a refreshing change of place, thanks to lush jungles and underground caves teeming with a host of imaginative critters. You'll battle a t-rex one-on-one, fry a bunch of scorpions with a flame thrower and bury razor sharp arrows into raptors' heads, in addition to battling an army of Killzone inspired super soldiers. However, despite its attractive graphics and homage to one of gaming's most legendary characters, Turok is a forgettable and sloppy first person shooter that fails to capture the excitement of the popular Nintendo 64 franchise.

Once again, you reprise the role of Joseph Turok, a one man killing machine that left his old faction, Wolf Pack, to join up with a band of soldiers called Whiskey Company, the goal to stop Wolfpack's leader, Roland Kane, from launching some diabolical scheme to control the universe. Enemy fire rips into Turok's ship, and him and his new friends crash land onto a mysterious planet teeming with dinosaurs. Armed with high tech weaponry, Turok sets out to not only look for survivors, but to also take down Kane and his army, by any means necessary.

Turok is decent for the most part. During the course of the seven hour journey, you'll battle a plethora of critters, from fast moving raptors to acid spewing bugs. And since the dinosaurs aren't picky eaters, it's possible to divert their attention to the opposition, which gives you much-needed breathing room, and believe us, you'll need it. While not impossible, Turok spikes in difficulty at random moments, thanks to poor design decisions that start with getting knocked down.

Whenever a larger enemy hits Turok, he falls down, most times in the opposite direction from where he was facing. Oftentimes, you get an opportunity to use the knife to jab your adversary in the throat or eyes, but you can't fire a gun, nor can you perform quick weapon switching or reload while standing back up. This proves deadly in firefights, where a dinosaur will hit you from behind, you'll attempt to recover and then get shot in the head by a sniper. To make matters even worse, the game seems to repeatedly spawn dinosaurs if you stand in the same area, which undermines the stealth segments of the game. Although the developers encourage you to sneak through the grass and kill silently with the knife, it's almost impossible to do when a dinosaur has its way with Turok from behind. And forget about getting help from Whiskey Company. Although your computer controlled comrades divert enemy attention and open fire, they almost always land non-lethal hits, leaving everything up to you. All of this leads to lots of unnecessary deaths, made more annoying by a save system that records checkpoints only, so expect to restart missions instead of reaching half-way points.

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