Dino Strike is not a great looking game in any way. The scenery is pretty bland in texture and color, and pretty predictable in most ways. Lets see, who was betting that this mysterious island that time forgot had an ancient temple or a volcano. Oh look! It has both! The dinosaur varieties you meet are also pulled almost directly from Jurassic Park - ok, except for the Anklyosaurus. Sorry, it does have an Anklyosaurus, so that's one thing it has over Jurassic Park. There are just so few dinosaurs as well: only five total species in the entire game.

Animations are also very repetitive. Shoot a dinosaur and it will go into the same damage animation every time. There's no variation in damage shots, no matter where you shoot the beast, making it a little pointless to try to hit it anywhere other than on its largest hittable area. It also starts looking a little ridiculous when you're taking down a group of dinos and they're all repeating the same animation over and over like some kind of ridiculous dance game.

Music is about what you'd expect from this Jurassic Park-worshipping game. Orchestral movie-like scoring gets you through the game, but it's nothing you'll really notice unless you concentrate on hearing it. Like the rest of the game, sound effects are pretty bland and forgettable.

The story in Dino Strike is that you're shiprecked on an island. You discover through your walkie-talkie that you're not alone on the island and there's a woman exploring the island for her own reasons. There are dinosaurs. She has a plane. You gotta get on that plane, man.

If you threw the dart at the plot board and hit, "She's there looking for her missing father, the researcher/explorer," congratulations, you're right! Dr. Buckland had set out to study the dinosaurs of the island. That somehow ended up badly for Dr. Buckland because, well, there were dinosaurs on the island. Amazingly enough, the dinosaur population of this lost world consists almost entirely of predators. Sadly, we'll never discover the secret to how that was remotely sustainable because the island's volcano decides to erupt. There are dinosaurs and a volcano erupting now. Man, you gotta get on that plane.

And that's about it. You'll discover a handful of weapons along your journey. You'll also get the opportunity to pick up pieces of Dr. Buckland's journal and piece together more of the dramatic volcano/dinosaur story. I didn't manage to pick up all of his journal, but he probably doesn't explain how a giant population of predators like velociraptors and T-Rex's managed to sustain a food chain. Man, that would be like finding a waterfall made up entirely of rattlesnakes running through the middle of Yellowstone National Park. It would be pretty cool, but let's face it, just a dream.

On Medium difficulty, Dino Strike is not difficult to beat on one playthrough, but it is aggravating. You expect cheap hits on an arcade shooter, but on a console, it's pretty annoying. The dinos' attack animations are deceptive at times, and they seem to be able to hit you from several feet away. Never mind trying to play this game on the single wield setting. The game is designed for two guns at once, minimum. You're simply not given enough ammo to use the machine gun or any other weapon consistently when the action gets intense, so you've got to rely on the infinite pistol you're given. If you're not dual wielding pistols, you're going to have a tough time with crowd control.

Watching those attack animations is vital to success. You can stun a dinosaur out of its attack by shooting it, and the stun lasts for a good while. This means you can prevent yourself from getting hit by stunning the dinos in a sequence. It's not exactly riveting to watch, but it gets the job done.

The game also has a generous number of continues for you to use, which is the main factor in making this an easier game. Continues place you exactly where you were when you died, making it easy to continue through the entire game. You can earn more continues by shooting eggs throughout the level as well.

Dino Strike is a simple, on-rails shooter. With the Wii-motes, aiming and firing is pretty natural. You also have the option to dual-wield remotes, which helps immensely. It really does double your firepower. It also seems to be the only control scheme the game was really designed for. That's a shame because you've got a big "Compatible with Wii Zapper" sticker on the front of the box. It is possible to single wield the Wii Zapper fairly well, but because the reload button (A) is on top of the controller, it's very awkward. I found myself using a second hand. And, of course, if you need two hands already, chances are you're not going to get the dual-wield scheme to work in this situation.

Multiplayer modes also help out immensely, but the game limits you to only two dual-wielding hotshots at a time. Otherwise you can have four single guns aimed at a screen at once. But come on, if you could really bring together eight guns on the screen at once, you know that'd be such an unfair, and hilarious dino slaughtering time. Whatever the limit for connected controllers on the Wii, that should totally be an option. I'd buy this game for a crosshair-covered screen of chaos.

The hit-boxes for the dino adversaries seem a bit off as well. It's the classic, "I KNOW I HIT HIM!!" scenario over and over again. After a while, you just sort of resign yourself to missing a few shots ever so often.

I do what I can to make reviews entertaining, but I can't do much for this game. Dino Strike is just not a great game. It's laughably short: you can easily finish the game in an afternoon. Besides that, it's dull, repetitive, and really not that interesting even for dinosaur fanatics. Heck, the dinosaur species aren't even all identified in the game, and there are only five of them! This is just not a game I can recommend unless... I'm sorry I can't think of an "unless" for this game either. I can say that Dino Strike is a game that lets you shoot dinosaurs, there you go.