It's been quite a while since we have been graced with a new Turok game (about six years I believe), but how does the dinosaur hunter translate into this generation's gameplay and visual styles? Put simply, it feels like Gears of War mixed with King Kong, and doesn't seem to offer that much in the way of innovation.

I have to say, the one thing this game has going for it is visual style. The lush jungles and rocky cliffs mixed with the occasional military bunker look good. Looking off into the distance, you feel like you can make your way to your destination either via the cleared path before you, or in the thick forest that surrounds you. Unfortunately, this feeling is very misleading because while there might actually be a couple of paths to take, where those paths diverge and combine are never too far from each other, and at best allows for a slight bit of flanking strategy for the encounter that is right around the corner.

The environment isn't the only thing that looks good. All character models (both human and dino) are highly detailed and great to look at. I just found the world mesmerizing and much more enjoyable (plus, I rarely had time to marvel at the character models since I spent most of my time with them trying to kill them).

Audio is fairly bland. There isn't that much notable to say about the voice acting and weapon sound effects. They are there and get the job done, but are ultimately forgettable. If anything really stands out in Turok's audio department, it is once again the scenery since the surrounding jungle is filled with different noises that really help to make you feel like you are there.

While I remember enjoying the original games a lot, I have since realized that, in the grand scheme of things, the Turok line doesn't usually offer anything new to the genre and isn't really the best example of stellar gameplay.

While Turok's newest adventure definitely fits the next-gen mold, it still has several issues that, when combined, make the overall package very average and keep the game from standing out.

In this game, you play Turok, a space-marine type character who has joined up with the military to take down a rogue militant group of which he used to be a member. Well, of course, things go wrong almost immediately and Turok is left stranded on the base-planet of this group with only his knife and one of the squad's members. Eventually, Turok picks up other weapons (including his iconic, though modernized, bow).

Even though your space ship has crashed onto this dinosaur filled planet, your mission is still clear - find the head of the rogue group and take him out. Along the way, you will trek through endless jungles, take out small groups of enemy combatants and plow through waves of dinosaurs of various sizes. Unfortunately, because of this, it doesn't take long for this game to get repetitious.

Overall, the game feels like King Kong set in the future, only with more guns and sans the giant ape. It just doesn't feel like a Turok game. In the original title, the fact that the main character was Native American was different and interesting. While that aspect didn't really have anything to do with the game's plot (what plot there was), it still became a reference point anytime you talked about it. Since this latest version feels like pretty much every other FPS on the market, it seems like the developers wanted to not only make sure you knew your character was Native American, but bring up his lineage in almost every cutscene, as if that is the only way they can truly connect this game with the past ones. It just feels really out of place and, quite frankly, the game might have had a very different (and possibly better) feel if it was some other FPS that just happened to have dinos, instead of trying to force it to be a Turok title.

One of the main aspects that make this game feels like every other one is the single-player co-op. I still don't understand why every FPS these days feels the need to force another party member on you. I can understand it in Gears of War, because there was the option to have a friend join in over Xbox Live, but that option doesn't exist here. As it is, while the other character doesn't always get in the way, and does help some in a fight, I would still prefer it if he just wasn't there. I personally prefer being able to shoot at pretty much anything around me and not having to worry about my companion (either worry about not shooting him, or having to save him). It's just really getting to me that more and more FPS' feel the need to add a second character (not a whole squad, just one character) to your group.

As for the game's multiplayer, there is only one aspect here that keeps it from looking like every other network-based FPS, and that is the dinosaurs. While you can't play as or control the dinos, they do appear in the various matches, and can often turn the tide of a fight. While I am not the best in multiplayer games, there were times when I felt like I was doing alright, until an unexpected lizard popped out of the bushes and took me out. This part was by far more enjoyable than other aspects of the game, but since I'm not huge on online multiplayer to begin with, it wasn't enough to save the game's score.

While Turok had some hard moments, I found that I could always make steady progress through the game. I rarely found myself in what I believed to be a hopeless situation, or turned the game off in frustration because of a particular part. In fact, I'm pretty sure every time I put the game down, it was more out of boredom over the unchanging gameplay. What I did like about the game was its fairly well placed and frequent save points. When I did die, I found my spawn location to be just an encounter or two away from where I died, which helped to keep the frustration factor down quite a bit.

Turok's most interesting mechanic would have to be the previously mentioned food chain system. Like in King Kong, this is the idea that not all of your enemies are allies. On this planet, the two types of bad guys, humans and dinosaurs, aren't getting along. In fact, the dinos themselves don't really get along all that well. So, if you see a clearing up ahead with some dinos, but behind them are humans, you can try to get the attention of the humans and have them rush towards you, thus getting the attention of the lizards. The dinosaurs, most of the time, end up attacking the other enemies and you just let them fight it out. This is typically a good way to thin out your enemies. If you are only looking at a single group of dinos, and want to incite some chaos in them, the best thing to do is slap a flare on one of them. The other dinosaurs become focused on the marked beast and a fight breaks out.

I hate to say it, but in the end, Turok could be any FPS, just with the addition of dinosaurs and having the character's lineage talked about constantly. While the game had the occasional heart-pumping fight, it never really felt like Turok to me. Generic FPS fans looking for the next thing to kill might be the only ones to look at this game with any kind of favorable eye. As far as people looking to relive their old Turok experiences, you might want to hold off.