“Okay rookie, time to get your feet wet. Remember, there are no innocents here. No prisoners, no witnesses.”

There are two reasons why I was excited to revisit Turok, an otherwise surpassingly ordinary sci-fi military shooter. First is that you have the ability to stab dinosaurs in the face even as they savagely attempt to eat yours. This maneuver amounts to little more than a player-initiated quick-time event, but the canned animations are integrated well and give the knife-to-tooth combat a satisfying sense of brutality reminiscent of the chainsaw bayonet eviscerations in Gears of War (2006). Second is that the use of a compound bow allows the player to quietly pick off human enemies and occasionally pin them to nearby walls. These two elements give the game a sense of identity and make its periodic stealth segments a good bit of fun.

Elsewhere, though, it is marred by bland level design, frustrating checkpoints, unrefined gunplay, cheap enemy spawns, obnoxious difficulty spikes, and a lowbrow B movie storyline that takes itself too seriously (think Aliens or Predator played straight).

It does sporadically inspire a sense of awe as the player encounters alien vistas with Brachiosaurus protruding above the treeline and Pteranodons gliding against the painterly sky. And the voice cast, sparse music, and atmospherics are solid (thanks Disney). But its monotonous setting, linearity, and bog-standard arsenal prevent the game from recapturing the joyous exploration of vibrant jungles and ancient temples or the thrill of solo dino hunting that made Turok: Dinosaur Hunter and Turok 2: Seeds of Evil classics of their era. In fact, little besides the name, the dinosaurs, and the first person perspective recall those earlier titles at all. My comments may suggest that Turok is a total disaster, but it’s not quite that. It’s a fine popcorn action type of game—it’s just a poor reboot of a once-great franchise.