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Dom Robinson reviews
Sony 
- Price: £39.99
- Players: 1
- Widescreen: Yes
- 60Hz: Yes
- DTS sound: No
Lara Croft, Tekken and Resident Evil are three of the influences in Primal,a game that features you as Jen, a sword-wielding goth-rock chick, with anaccompanying helper, Scree, a dwarf-like gargoyle who can crawl up stone wallsand possess statues.
It’s also one of those games where you can swap control at any point betweenthe two characters in case you need the other one to perform some task thatcan’t be done by both of you. At all times, the non-selected character willfollow in your footsteps.
The plot goes that you must travel across four realms in the parallel worldof Oblivion, your appearance changing as you go, and as you’ve been draggedinto the Nexus, you must restore the balance in the world between good andevil. The opening intro screens go on far too long and make it sound morecomplex than it really is, but does it have any balls beneath this?
If there’s one thing this game does have going for it, it’s the graphics.There’s a small amount of jagged edges visible as you run about, but onceyou do make your moves, the camera sweeps along gracefully behind you.
There’s a slightly haunting score playing along and reasonable backgroundsounds and SFX, but nothing particularly out of the ordinary.
Playability is textbook stuff too. If you’ve played any of the previousgames I mentioned, then you’ll have no trouble getting to grips with thesimple controls here.
For those who like bonus extras to a game, this one allows you to view previousCGI intros and tarot cards collected along the way.
Where this game falls down is that it’s simply very, very boring. I presumethe game’s creators through that if you take a bunch of attributes fromsome other games and stick them together in a new one, tied into a plot thatsounds so other-worldly not even J.R.R. Tolkein could’ve conceived it, thengamers would’ve flocked to purchase it.
Sadly, however much effort they’ve put into it, it has as much atmosphereas an ITV sitcom and I don’t take kindly to action/adventures that make merun about over a barren landscape for hours on end with the promise that theremay just be something on the other side. We need something to happen to sustainour interest levels.
Primal is a good game engine in search of a game.
SOUND EFFECTS AND MUSIC
PLAYABILITY
ENJOYMENT
OVERALL
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.