Primal

"A decent effort, a palatable adventure game."

Introduction
Primal is a game in action adventure style, with some role playing elements. You incarnate Jennifer, a rocker girl our world, day and age. By a strange set of events, she gets drawn into the surrealistic world of Oblivion. With the help of her sidekick called Scree, she will have to restore the balance in he four realms of Oblivion in order to protect our world, and save her loved one.

Artwork 80%
Graphically, this game is stunning, at least at the beginning of the game. The models of the characters and monsters are detailed and elaborated, and leave nothing to be desired. The environments are beautiful, and dark, in style with the setting and the mood of the game. However, as the game progresses, I found that the quality of environments deteriorates. The first realm of oblivion looks simply splendid, but it becomes slightly worse with each next realm. In the last realm of Oblivion, you'll be walking through rather monotonous corridors and caves, at it all looks a bit hurried and lackluster.

The sound effects of the game are good. Especially of note is the voice acting, which, for once, is actuallly of impeccable quality. The actors show a high degree of professionalism, even when the plot require them to say some rather nonsensical things. The music is also nice, but not extraordinary. It's a sort of ''sound wallpaper'' that helps to reinforce the mood of the game, and does so adequately. But there are no really memorable songs.


Story 70%
The settings of this game are great. Oblivion is a rather dark fantasy world. In each of the four realms of oblivion lives a different species of demonic creatures. In these four worlds, an eternal battle between Order and Chaos takes place.

The playable characters, Jennifer and Skree, are interesting. They are given depth through many cut-scenes and dialogs. The non-player characters however are to my taste a little bit too shallow, and leave me uninvolved. I found myself unconcerned at times in the game when I was supposed to feel for the tragedy that has befallen this or that NPC.

The plot is rather mediocre as a whole. The global story is a classic battle of good versus evil. There are some twists, and the fact that Jen and Skree aren't goody two-shoes themselves makes it all a bit more interesting. However, the plot is advancing very slowly, and is sometimes needlessly drawn-out. The ending is not really satisfactory, as it doesn't offer much closure.

Game play 70%
The brunt of the game play of Primal consists of walking or swimming around, trying to find our way through realms of Oblivion. From time to time, a puzzle or obstacle is set in your way. The puzzles are not that difficult, but often rather time-consuming, as you'll need to backtrack rather often.

Sometimes, you also need to fight. However, this is probably the worst part of the game. The moves of your character are based on the pressure sensitivity of the PS2 controller. Press hard, and Jen does a hard attack, press softly, and she does a quick attack. It all looks nice on paper, but in the game, it gives a rather clunky and uncomfortable feel. You gain no experience points and little significant power-ups from the fights. Also, you have no real inventory of items to use, a simplification that removes depth from the game play.

The game is not too short. I estimate I played it for about 25 to 30 hours to finish it. However, I think that apart from collecting the extra ''tarot cards'' there is little reason to play this game again. The game offers too little rewards, and there are better games out there that you should play first.

Conclusion

Primal is not a bad game. In fact, you can see that it's programmers have made a significant effort to make a good game. Unfortunately, I feel they oversimplified certain things, like the plot and character growth, whilst making other things, like the battle controls, needlessly complex. The result is visually impressive, but lack a bit of depth in the game play. In my book, that's a ''nice try, but no cigar''.

End result (not an average): 75% (rounded down : 7/10)

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 05/09/03, Updated 05/09/03