Awesome dinosaur battles save an average shooter on a dated engine.
In this game, you play as the native Indian named "Turok", a member of a group of mercenaries who crash land on a planet with living dinosaurs and strange hostile research facilities.
The game lasts roughly 7 hours, the majority of which you are placed with a team of one or two merc AIs. Again, VERY similar to Quake 4. Turok uses a checkpoint save system, which can make the game feel more urgent, as you are forced to engage smartly to avoid repetition. There are a few times where you'll have to get through several tough battles in between saves, so you'll have to either take it extremely cautiously, or just remember the spawn locations for when you reload.
The game packs a solid arsenal of weapons. For the first hour or so, you'll probably be dual-wielding a combination of smgs, pistols, shotguns, and some sort of enemy-ball projectile weapon. Soon though, you'll drop dual-wielding in favor of more powerful weapons, because aside from your mandatory knife and bow, you have a limit of two optional weapons. The choices are a purse rifle that shoots blade shards at enemies but overheats very fast, a trusty chain gun that doubles as a deployable turret, or your atypical anti-vehicle rocket launcher.
Enemy AI are not very complex, and will often stand out in the open for you to shoot at. The human AI do not chase you or seek you out when you are behind cover, but show laser-like precision aim should you peek out of cover into their (or your) FOV. Dinosaur AI seek out and attack everything, and make for much more entertaining battles. In many cases it can be advantageous to hang back and let them dispose of your enemies before moving into the fray.
Storywise, the game plays out much like an B-rated Hollywood action flick. The game is very gratuitous in animations, it has many cutscenes, and also unique animations of killing moves whenever you use your knife as a weapon. The plot is cheese, but suffices as the action feel of the game is its main draw.
If you plan on getting this game, I would go into it without high expectations. While it provides a cheap thrill, there is nothing this shooter excels at other than the unique setting which lets you fight dinosaurs. With the FPS genre so saturated in AAA games, Turok is by no means a must play.