Do you hate dinosaurs? Like, really hate them? If you owned a shop, would you deny dinosaurs service? Would you walk across the street to push an elderly dinosaur over? If so, you're going to love "Turok," a first-person action game for the Xbox 360 and PS3 that pits you against the extinct beasts ... and a bunch of dudes. But mainly dinosaurs.

If the name sounds familiar, there's good reason. This is a relaunch of a series that fizzled out after its heyday on the Nintendo 64. Though the plot is still basically the same (angry Native American fights dinosaurs), the series has been modernized and "edged up" to the point where it'll almost be beyond recognition for long-time fans.

One of the nice improvements is that everything, from the jungle environments to the dinos that inhabit them, looks really gorgeous, even the human enemies are fairly generic. The jungle, though, is so real it's spooky and really adds to the immersive quality.

While the dinos look great, fighting them never seems as satisfying and fun as it should be. You'll still get a thrill from blowing them away every once in a while, but all the lizards are so very, very stupid it almost seems like an unfair fight -- and they're the ones with the razor sharp claws.

Sadly, their human counterparts are just as dumb as the dinosaurs, with them being able to detect your presence at seemingly random distances. Once the dinos are removed, this feels like any other action game ... and not a particularly good one at that.

Thankfully, much of the game is supported by a really excellent cast of voice actors including Powers Boothe and Ron Perlman. Just when a dumb enemy threatens to pull you out of the experience, their grizzled characters can get your head right back into the game.

Here's the bottom line with "Turok": I haven't had a lot to play lately, so I keep going back to it. But if this had been released in the fall glut of games, no one would have noticed. If anything, I hope "Turok" serves as a lesson for other publishers: A decent game can seem top shelf when there's not much else hogging the limelight.

Justin McElroy is a freelance writer living in Huntington. His writing appears on video game sites like Gamezebo.com and Joystiq.com.

Courtesy of Disney Interactive

"Turok" is a first-person action game for the Xbox 360 and PS3 that pits you against the extinct beasts.

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