You have to be at least 90% muscle to stop a raptor in its tracks and stab its brains out.

It's always nice to see a series once regarded as something special get another stab taken at it. I mean how many times have Sega fans hoped for Sonic to finally come back to life? The revitalization of past gaming franchises such as Turok always bears some hope for the series to take off anew and become something great. This stands true especially for Turok, which began its video game career on the Nintendo 64, then quickly spiraled downward into a vicious cycle of "maybe this game." A personal fan of the first, I enjoyed that a developer could level with me and make a game where all you do is kill dinosaurs with cool weapons, and with some reluctance had been hoping for the series to make a comeback. Since most games in Turok's position are hit or miss, the final reveal was even more interesting than I could have expected.

The story starts off with your typical squad of ruffian space marines, Whiskey Company, on a mission to capture a renegade soldier, Roland Kane. Of course, you'll be playing as Joseph Turok, who starts off pinned as a traitor in the midst of these fine men, but soon becomes one of the few survivors after the spaceship you're on is shot down. Crash-landing on a strange planet and just barely escaping with your life, you begin the mission of hunting down your mentor and coincidentally the leader of a Mercenary gang Wolf Pack while not becoming something's lunch. For one reason or another, the story sets up what could be an interesting yarn, but eventually drops an interest in telling that tale in favor of linear missions where you'll gun down anything that moves instead. Not being story-heavy isn't a bad thing in games, but it's confusing when a game begins and ends with one, leaving a large gap of nothing within in the gameplay.

And about that gameplay, does it match up to the likes of last year's poster boy Call of Duty 4? Fortunately it's more than competent as the control scheme isn't tough to get used to, and nor are the game's rules. It plays like a standard first-person shooter, with the nice inclusion of alternate fire on each gun and some melee or stealth kills. On note is that the primary fire is mapped to the Sixaxis' sub-par R2 button, sticking secondary fire on the much more acclimated R1 button. Additionally, weapon select is mapped to the D-pad and only two can be held at once as made popular by Halo. One issue I had which may or may not be a problem for some people was that in any action requiring you to do something other than shoot (slit someone's throat, wrestle a raptor, climb ladders), the game goes into a third-person perspective. While this has no bearing on the actual gameplay and only serves as an action-oriented angle, the constant pulling in and out of first-person perspective ended up bringing me further and further away from any sort of immersion I may have been swept up in.

One of my favorite things about the original Turok were the guns, and if memory serves right then it was also the first one which featured the cerebral bore-a weapon so malicious that it would seek out an enemy's head and drill their brains out as it tore deeper in. The shrill whine of the little gears coupled with the sickening crunching of human bone and flesh left an impression on me which I have always looked forward to seeing a return of. Turok still has some cool guns, but against the likes of Resistance they're simply child's play. I'm not the only one who was drawn to the game for just its weapons, but as one of the series' trademarks being the very imaginative weapons I was let down when setting my expectations at a level which only the earlier games had reached. The other curious thing is that despite how powerful the guns get, and even when dual wielding shotguns, that the damage these tools of destruction inflicted didn't seem to match the might of their design. Really, a soldier shouldn't be able to stand around while being eaten up by an SMG's fire.

There are definitely a few balancing issues the game didn't get sorted out before it was released, beginning with the guns seeming to have an issue in the power department and leading into the odd difficulty spike which hits every now and then. The game doesn't stray too far from the path, either, making any unexpectedly tough battle even more infuriating because it may just end up being the one that ends with players shutting the game off. Granted, Turok isn't a very difficult game seeing as how it provides players with ample ammo and not-so-smart enemies, but sometimes you'll just hit a section that's past challenging and into the realm of trying.

The other thing I noticed is that the game is largely a dark one. I adjusted the black levels and contrast on my TV several times before having to settle with the fact that my television set wasn't the culprit, but that the worlds do actually have a dark look to them. Turning up the brightness obviously lead to a grayed-out smoky shadow instead of black, leaving myself and the game at an impasse. It's not anything that kills the game, or even hampers it, but some like myself may be a little thrown at first when they sit down and have issues making out trinkets in the shadows. In any other case, it's not a bad-looking game. Those with an SD television may find a few sections yelling at them to accept that developers are designing for HD now and can put enemies as far away as they please, but that doesn't' mean the overall quality of the visuals is going to be sacrificed. The jungle feels wild, lava looks freakin hot, and the dinosaurs will scare the crap out of you in the right circumstances. There are some strange textures here and there, creating a mix of pretty and acceptable in how the levels look.

Aside from the campaign, the game offers online-only multiplayer to keep players around after they've had their dino-fill. The modes are traditional fare, as in deathmatches, capture the flag, and even a co-op bit. The co-op is slightly misleading though, since players can only select from one of three levels instead of being able to run through the entire campaign with a friend. Other online bits include the assumed leaderboards and ranked or unranked matches, so nothing really out of the ordinary is to be expected while it's still a decent supplement to the main game. Whether or not you're a fan of the gameplay and weaponry is the definitive factor in whether or not you'll be frequenting the net for some fragging.

While Turok is certainly reborn on the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, it's neither a monumental achievement nor an abomination. The edgy style, giant boss battles, big guns, and third-person dino-mauling bits certainly show that Propaganda Games have a lot of respect for what the franchise has meant to its fans, but at the same time it seems they either played it too safe or didn't let it sit in the oven long enough. There's even the reach made to involve the dinosaurs as more than just a neutral party, using them in a fashion akin to Bioshock to duke it out amongst each other or eat the bad dudes, doing your work for you. The story mode is a fairly linear affair, including accomplishments in the Playstation 3 title (not sure about the 360 at the time of writing, but I'm sure it's got its achievements) which can be unlocked through various methods through the gameplay. The game certainly has long legs, but will find itself having a hard time competing with anyone already taken with a different shooter as it doesn't bring anything very new to the table. Fans will enjoy it, but those who are simply curious may want to just dip their toes in before taking the plunge.