Primal Rage

"Are the developers primal too?"

Remember the time when Man hadn't been created yet and where animals were the sole beings on this planet ? Eventually, Man came, took care of those so-called prehistoric animals and moved on to kill each other because they didn't have anything else to do. Primal Rage tries to unite the same animals and humans but apparently, the programmers worked for a third party called Aliens which wanted to go home, but not without starting World War III on our dear planet first.

So, what we have now is not-so-prehistoric animals and mankind living on the same planet. Since technology hasn't evolved that much yet and there are no Terminator or Patlabor to ensure that Mankind and Undertaker remain the rulers, the animals have taken it upon themselves to wreak havoc everywhere until someone is kind (or stupid) enough to show them the ruler of the world. So, here we are, fighting for survival while the truth remains out there and never even bothers to show its feakishly ugly face.

Also, since Ryu was too afraid to show his skills to Ken and Akuma, the badass animals then decided it would be kinda cool to organize tournaments and to fight each other until there is only one winner. Eventually, that winner would be The One where he would absorb the energy of all the idiots he beat earlier but hey, he'd still remain as stupid as ever since nobody had an ounce of intelligence in the first place.

Lucky you gets to play as one of those animals. It would be better to pass upon the descriptions of the 'characters' in Primal Rage because taking a few colors and slapping them around didn't really look make me thing of graphics as I looked the final package. The designs are absolutely horrible with some of the fighters actually looking like that thing you release in the toilets every morning if you are a normal person. But imagine it as one hundred times worse ! Because while the aforementioned thing isn't necessarily that disgusting depending on what you ate (or did not eat) the previous day, the characters here can't even be outlined.

They quite amazingly 'belong' to the backgrounds and you can barely make out their hands and their legs during some moves. If you manage to perform these so-called moves, that is. Anyway, it turns out the programmers were very uninspired when they thought things out but I suppose they were watching Baywatch at the time they started working on the graphics. The animation is equally horrid with choppy framerates and major slowdowns almost everytime you are courageous enough to pull a move.

As unbelievable as it may seem, the backgrounds are even more horrible. The prime idea was obviously to have the backgrounds play an important role in the game. As you fight against your buddies among the blood that gushes out even when you are not hurt, you can pick up humans to eat them or to do whatever your want with them. As a side-note, I wonder why the humans don't even shriek when you catch them in your big paws. You would at least expect them to look frightened but they just look on. It's actually as if they are inviting you to bend over and slap them a few times before stuffing them in a joint and smoking them (there doesn't seem to be weed in this world).

The moves themselves could very well have been hilarious and well worth a look. You don't often see fighters fart and do other kindless stuff which actually deplete your opponent's life and allow you to win. There is indeed a vast array of moves, some of which you would never have expected but like I already said, the moves have been rushed through and, in most cases, are disgusting to look at. Picking up humans and eating them to recover some life sounds fun but this doesn't work for 2 reasons. Firstly, you can't even distinguish the humans from the backgrounds. Secondly, Primal Rage gets hands-down the award for the slowest fighter ever, so you can just imagine how it is when you turn towards the backgrounds for no apparent reason.

I don't even dare to think about the sound with lame background themes that should never have been in a fighting game. All the themes are as monotonous as can be and are utterly garbage. On the other hand, some sound effects are cool and very refreshing as opposed to the regular 'Hadoken' and 'SyoRyuKen'. But sincerely, what is the point of having good sound effects in a game where everything else sucks ?

And the innovative ideas are let down even more by the sloppy controls. Moves are extremely hard to perform and besides, what kind of gamer would bother to pull them if every single move has a recovery of a lifetime ? The controls never seem to respond. It just seems as if they were tired of being in such a game and fled without ever looking back which is actually a good thing because had they looked back, they would without doubt have been scared out of their pants by the ugly designs.

Whether or not you want to play the game is up to you since I can't just reach across and give you orders (mind you, if we were both in this game, I would have killed you a long time ago, you nerd) but don't be surprised if you feel like committing murder after barely one hour on Primal Rage. But heck, you probably deserve an award for having the guts to play this game for more than 10 minutes.

To end this review, I will say that Primal Rage is the best fighting game ever and gets a 10 right away. I'm joking of course. Games like this may me want to joke. I know this doesn't make any sense. Games like this make me strangely gullible. Yet another sentence that doesn't make any sense. Damn you, Primal Rage !

-- Score : 1 --

Reviewer's Score: 1/10, Originally Posted: 03/26/02, Updated 11/09/02