Let’s just be honest with one another: dinosaurs are awesome.

Anyone care to dispute this?

I thought not.

In a desire to tap into the universal adoration dinosaurs receive from every demographic (except, perhaps, the Geico cavemen) Tatem Games launched Carnivores: Dinosaur Hunter last week for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

The game is ostensibly a shooter – indeed, it looks and feels like a shooter at first glance – but in reality, it is not. Carnivores is a strategy game of surprising depth that is perhaps a bit too ambitious for its platform.

There are two game modes: Survival and Hunt. Survival is a tacked on arcade version of Hunt mode in which you stand motionless with a shotgun while waves of dinosaurs attack you. It’s not really worth talking about.

Hunt mode, on the other hand, is rather intriguing.

Before you head out and start slinging prehistoric lead, you have to select the area you wish to hunt in, the dinosaurs you wish to hunt, and the hardware you wish to hunt them with. You start out with fifty points which you can spend on these things, enough to start on the free map with one or two varieties of dinos and a pistol. As you rack up the kills, you earn points which allow you to unlock more areas to hunt in, more challenging adversaries (up to the mighty T-Rex himself), and better weaponry.

You’re placed on the map with a limited amount of ammunition for whatever guns you have with you and basically set free to stalk dinosaurs, which isn’t as simple as it might sound. You have to take into account how much noise you make, the wind direction, the time of day, whether your target is a carnivore or an herbivore and what, if any, camouflage you take with you into the field (wearing camo to cover your scent or reduce visibility, making it easier to stalk the dinos, but also incurs a point penalty). There’s a wide variety of dino life on each map, but you only get points for the ones you chose to hunt before you started.

It’s a lot to think about, but when you get used to it, it works.

What doesn’t work is the learning curve. This is an iPhone game that requires -requires – a read-through of the manual. On a platform that caters more naturally to the casual rather than the hardcore crowd, this is a bit of a concern. Jumping straight into Hunt mode without doing a bit of reading will result in frustration. I suspect that most of the people trying this game will give up after only a few minutes of confusion, which is disappointing as the game does get better as it goes on.

The main frustrations are due to the limitations of the platform. The graphics processing power of the iPhone is impressive, but not quite impressive enough to do this game justice. The wide open sandbox maps populated with dozens of dinosaurs are all displayed surprisingly smoothly, but the draw distance is a critical problem. You usually can’t see your target well enough to actually line up a shot until it sees or smells you and either heads for the hills (herbivores) or heads for your jugular (carnivores). This is alleviated a bit once you gain access to the sniper rifle, which allows you to zoom in, but it takes a lot of hunting to earn enough points for that.

The only other real problem is relatively minor – the controls are a little difficult. When I first picked up the game, I noticed that it was in first-person perspective and that I had a gun, and so I tried to play it like a shooter.

Unfortunately for me, this game is not a shooter, at least not in the sense that I was expecting. Much like Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon is more strategy than shooter, this is a first person strategy game with guns. Once you realize that, the sluggish controls become more bearable because you stop trying to run around spraying bullets at dinosaurs.

Though if you feel that need, there’s always Survival mode, minus the running around.

Carnivores: Dinosaur Hunter is an ambitious game for the iPhone – perhaps a bit too ambitious. But for those looking for something a little slower-paced and strategic for their stuck-in-the-waiting-room gaming, I recommend it wholeheartedly.

Jerod Jarvis is an independent gaming journalist and founder of Duality Games. He maintains gaming columns for The Washington Times Communities and for The Outpost. When not blogging madly about games, he freelances for the Spokesman-Review in his hometown of Spokane, Washington and attends school at Whitworth University. Check out his presence on Facebook and Twitter to stay up on Duality Games updates and the inside scoop on the gaming news you care about.