Turok is a great game with a great story and awesome dino killing. However, many glitches and problems hold it back.
Good: Stunning Visuals, Great Story, Awesome Knife Kills that never get old, and the fact that you can kill dinosaurs.
Bad: No Auto-Aim feature makes aiming very difficult, Human soldiers dont have blood, Few checkpoints within the story, Battles with the MG soldiers are too long and frustrating, poor online matchmaking system, Wierd glitches with the T-Rex that make you die automatically.
Turok is a good game. Not great, not bad, but right in the middle. Ill explain my good points about the game, then the bad.'
Good-
Stunning Visuals: anyone who loves good graphics will love Turok. The characters, from Turok himself to Slade are very detailed, including the enemies. The dinos look as realistic as you can get. The game also features real-time damage to enemies. Dinos will have blood in their mouths from successful attacks, and will also show gruesome marks on their bodies from the work of your guns. Dinos can also blow to bits with a successfully placed grenade.
Story: As Joseph Turok, you are a member of Whiskey Company, an elite special forces team, sent to eliminate Roland Kane, a war criminal and head of Wolf Pack, of which Turok used to be one of. Unfortunately, things go awry when your ship crashes on a planet that is inhabited with wild creatures. (No spoilers here)
Knife Kills and Killin Dinos: Turok features a special cinematic knife kill system, where when you get up close to enemies, when the RT prompt appears, you press it to initiate a cool knife killing sequence. Its fun to kill dinos with this as you'll find Turok just stab a Raptor in its head, and then just kick it over. Plus, killing dinos is fun!
Bad-
No Auto Aim: the fact that there is no auto aim (all shooters have this feature to help players with their aim, because aiming with a joystick is hard anyway) makes this game very difficult and frustrating. Since most guns have a high recoil, its hard to keep a steady aim on a target while constantly firing. You might overcome the fact that there's no auto aim, but since the dinos (the most you fight are Raptors) are very agile, its still hard to even shoot them.
No Human Blood: while the dinos have tons of blood to spill, the human characters have no blood at all. When human players get shot, its like shooting a metal wall. Theres no blood, just sparks. Its a little odd to see, but its not that big of a deal.
Few Checkpoints and LONG Battles: the story mode is not chock full of checkpoints. In fact, they are few and far between. Plus, most battles with MG soldiers are long (im talking like, 5 minutes long or more). When you factor most of the bad things about Turok, they all add up to make the game VERY frustrating. If you are almost done a battle, but then die, you have to fight the entire battle from the beginning all over again. Not very good.
Wierd T-Rex glitches: not to spoil too much, but you DO fight a T-Rex in this game. However, these battles can be very difficult, because the points at which the T-Rex can kill you are very glitchy and bugged. For example, the T-Rex will hit you with its head, and you get knocked back about 10 feet. But, you take no damage. When you run for cover, the T-Rex instantly pops over to you and eats you in one move. Not cool. This can sometimes make these battles not worth playing because it seems as if you wont win, ever. But you can beat them, so dont give up.
Bad Online Matchmaking: simply put, the matchmaking in Turok is slow and cant detect players easily. This is also due to that there are not yet many people playing online, but time will tell if this problem gets better.
I havent explained online that much, but to put it plainly: it is fun. When the dinos are added to the mix online, battles between players can go bad at random times due to the AI dinos. Its a good twist to the game, and its fun to watch other players get mauled by dinos, or to help your friend with a dino that is mauling him. Since dinos are attracted to flares, its possible to send a dino after an opposing player and run away, which is very satisfying. Plus, the special knife kills are also in online mode, and work pretty well in an online game.
All in all, Turok is a fun game with many problems that put dents into its shiny armor. If these problems were fixed beforehand, Turok would be much better. Rent it first to decide if you really want to buy it or not. Yes, this review is long, but its meant to give you, the reader, a close look into a very good game.