Publisher: Touchstone
Developer: Propaganda Games
System: Xbox 360
Genre: First-Person Shooter
Release date: Available now
Review by: Ryan Asher

Welcome to…wait a minute, what’s the name of this planet again? Oh well, that’s not important right now. What is important are the vicious man-eating creatures, the armed-to-the-teeth legion of soldiers and, oh yeah, the carnivorous dinosaurs, here to greet you. Of course, when dinosaurs are involved, that only means one thing: Turok is back. The franchise that originated over 10 years ago on the Nintendo 64 has finally hit the next generation, hoping to rebound from its last, not-so-hot installment.

In this iteration, you’re strapped into the space marine boots of Joseph Turok, the devilishly handsome newcomer to Whiskey Company. As Joseph, you were all primed to gear up with your new squadmates and go after your old mentor, Roland Kane, when the freakin’ jerk’s army shot down your space ship. (Yeah, yeah, you’re going to make him pay for shooting up your ride.) Now that you’ve crash landed on this God forsaken rock, your team of incredibly buff and beefy sounding comrades are scattered all over and, to make matters worse, you’re seeing strange things running around … namely dinosaurs. Freakin’ dinosaurs mate!

Of course, being a space marine means that good ‘ole Joseph is no boy scout. He has many abilities. He can kill with a bow and arrow, he can kill with a knife, he can kill with really big guns, and he can probably kill with that stellar Mohawk he has going on. (He also has a five o’clock shadow that Tom Selleck would be envious of.) It’s fortunate that Joseph Turok has all of these killing abilities, because if Jurassic Park taught us anything, dinosaurs don’t mess around. They play for keeps. And many dinos’ throats will need to be slashed before Joe reaches the end of his adventure.

In this new Turok, which is the first from publisher Touchstone Games, the developers continued the tradition of previous installments, and put a lot of emphasis on creating an engaging single-player campaign. That isn’t to say they skimped on multiplayer, which has its fair share of robust features, but with Hollywood voice talent, cinematic cutscenes and a lengthy adventure, it’s clear they wanted to compete for the gamers who just finished enjoying Orange Box and BioShock. Of course, it’ll take more than talking pictures and length to win the hearts of diehard FPS fans, so what else does Turok have to offer?