For all you of the old school Contra fans, the gameplay will feel similar; in Acclaim’s Turok. Turok: Evolution is a decent attempt to recreate the glory years of the 2-D shooters. However, Turok: Evolution for the GBA fails to recapture that lost and elusive magic of the side scrolling 2-D shooter genre. The concept of a 2-D shooter appear quite simple; your main character runs, jumps and shoots, collects weapons and fights huge level ended boss battles. However, great 2-D shooters go well and beyond the basic concepts, there has to be a delicate balance between the main character and the enemies on the screen. The balance of how far and how fast the enemies’ projectiles travel, how often the enemies respawn, how fast the enemies move, how many hits or shoots it takes to kill an enemy, to name some of the balance issues associated with 2-D shooters; this balance is something that Turok is seriously lacking.

The game’s tedious hit detection scheme is frustrating and at most times it feels like the game is cheating you. Enemies respawn as soon as you leave the screen and the enemies’ projectiles move much too fast to be considered fair. Like the games on the home consoles Turok has a large number of weapons to select from, but, the weapon menu is frustrating to use, and happens during live in-game time; the number of times I died trying to change my weapon was enough to make me want to hurl my GBA against a brick wall.

Graphically Turok is pleasing to look at; the main characters are large and easy to see, and the dinosaurs are great looking as well. Also for a GBA game the animation is put together quite well, sadly for the system it is on, this might be the best looking of the Turok: Evolution series. For the most part the levels are well designed, and are very well-lit and easy to navigate through. However, at times the levels seem bland and lifeless; the missions were so cookie cutter it really felt as if I just played them over and over again.

All in all, Turok is an insanely hard and mediocre shooter for the GBA. Graphically Turok is one of the better looking games on the GBA to date, but is lacking balance, charm, and solid gameplay. With a lack of good 2-D shooters on the market, you might want to pick up this title just to scratch that itch. But if you already own Mega Man Zero or Contra, you could easily pass on this one and you would not be missing very much.