Soul Reaver + Feminism = Primal Urges in Male Gamers

Video game review of "Primal" for Sony Playstation 2 (PS2).
Published on ciao.co.uk, September 2003.

Well, if you like Soul Reaver, you’ll like this.

Imagine Soul Reaver, except starring a curiously foxy, leather-clad (hubba hubba) twenty-something girl clubber, instead of the tormented, rotting corpse of a vampire. Also, imagine that when morphing takes place, it’s the person rather than the scenery that morphs.

Not that the scenery isn’t varied in Primal. It is – with four demon realms in addition to ‘Mortalis’ a.k.a. Earth where you travel from at the beginning of the game. You might need to turn up the brightness on the TV a bit (though there’s an in-game option for this) but once you do, you’ll see very expansive, detailed levels. Being completely fictional, the worlds aren’t restrained by trivialities such as physics, so the programmers have ‘carte blanche’ to make each world as characteristic of its inhabitants as possible.

Each realm also comes with its own wildlife as well as weather, scenery, and architecture. The wildlife is usually bad tempered and spiky, even sarcastic where the “Aetha” realm is concerned. The upside of visiting each new demon realm is that sooner or later, Jen, our heroine, will assume the ability to morph into the demon form represented by that realm. These abilities are probably the second-most anticipated part of the game, with each morph being really quite cool and including Jen growing horns, elongated – Wolverine style – fingernails, the ability to breath underwater and communicate via telepathy, or the chance to morph time when running or fighting. The latter ability is similar to bullet time in the Max Payne games except a lot easier to use and control. Weapons and battle combos also vary with each realm, ranging from a simple double punch to some pretty useful manoeuvres with either a whip or twin energy swords. You get a little pep-talk when Jen has acquired a new ability so it doesn’t go to waste.

“So what’s the most eagerly anticipated part of the game?” I hear you ask. Well, once you get into the game it becomes apparent that completing Jen’s list of chores in each realm will have an impact on what happens next. There’s a plot y’see. The whole reason Jen’s in this mess is because her boyfriend got nabbed outside a nightclub on Mortalis by a big nasty demon. She’s chasing him to rescue him. As you start to look as if you’re going to complete one realm, you develop a hankering to see what the next one’s like. You don’t know the sub-plots for each realm until shortly after you enter them, which also keeps the game fresh, and there are bonuses in the form of tarot cards to be collected along the way. These unlock anything from game concept art to a, “The making of…” video. It’s handy sometimes that the ol’ PS2 plays DVDs too!

Jen’s newly-acquired abilities help her to navigate the various landscapes, as well as solving the puzzles along the way. It might be that you need the Ferai ability to jump higher than usual, the Undine ability to swim, or the Wraith ability to slow down time – handy for scuttling under the occasional portcullis before it slams shut. Thinking laterally and therefore using the appropriate demon form to solve a puzzle becomes more and more important as you proceed, though I don’t think this is exploited to its fullest potential (I’ll explain later). If you get stumped completely on a puzzle, then it’s probably because you should be playing as Scree rather than Jen.

Scree is not only a stumpy, overly-polite gargoyle with no patience for Jen’s flippant sense of humour, he’s also Jen’s guide. Scree also helps connect Jen to the ‘bigger picture’ plotline, which is that the two forces balancing the four demon realms are…well…unbalanced. Basically, there’s too much chaos and too little order for the first time in eternity, and if Jen doesn’t sort her act out then it’ll all go a bit Pete Tong, including on Mortalis. Imagine it being the January sales on Oxford Street for every day of the year and in every town and you’ll get the picture – total bloodthirsty anarchy combined with a complete lack of social responsibility to yourself and others.

OK, so, we’ve got objectives, we’ve got the opportunity to play as either of the main characters (that follow each other around in case you were wondering), a plot, a few sub-plots thrown in for good measure (including Scree’s, which is revealed late on in the game), and the chance to kick a lot of arse along the way. There’s decent background graphics, good animation, good beat-em-up-ability, characters with differing personalities, and some half-decent puzzle-solving in-between. There’s even a twist at the end, and the size of the game means you’ll probably get your money’s worth out of it. All in all it sounds quite good, but there is room for improvement here.

I said that Primal was a bit like Soul Reaver. Well…it’s actually VERY like Soul Reaver. I swear that even a couple of the sound effects are actually the same. The layout is very similar, and the huge size of the realms mean it takes ages to traipse from one end to another - especially if you’re dragging a stone gargoyle with you, no matter what diet he’s on. The supposed ‘fix’ to this problem is the rift gates (read ‘teleport’), which crop up regularly in each realm. Trouble is, you can never remember which one’s which in relation to the rest of the realm, so while you can crank one up and supposedly stroll great distances in one step, you end up warping backwards and forwards all over the place until you can remember where that flippin’ door was that you just pulled a lever to open from somewhere ten miles away. If you ignore the rift gates then the miles and miles of realm you found so cool on the first time through turn out to be a bit of a pain. There needs to be some sort of better linking between the in-game screen and the map screen here.

One of the cool things about Soul Reaver was the ability to backtrack to old places when you’d acquired new abilities, making the hunt for bonuses all the more satisfying. In Primal, during Solum – the first demon realm visited – you wander past many a pool or lake that looks worth investigating if you could only swim. You learn the swim later on, but you can’t get back to Solum once you’ve left it, so you’re left wondering what delights rest at the bottom of that river. Maybe game bonuses where you ring a special phone number to be included in a special international Primal ‘experts’ club, perhaps a preview of Primal 2, maybe an opportunity to design a level that ‘The Gauntlet’ game did so successfully on the Sega Megadrive – who knows?

The puzzles aren’t as puzzling as they might be. Once you get the knack of it, then the major difficulty in completing the game becomes finding the time to play it, not calling all your mates that are playing it to see who’s figured it out first. This reduces the ideal age of the player, though in the process serving as a useful step up for a young gamer taking on something a little more adult. Mind you, there’s a lot of blood in it too. Also, when fighting, there’s no tuition on combos. People who play Tekken as the Bruce Lee-style character (I can’t remember his name) will love this ‘cos it’s all about walloping the buttons as fast as you can. Anyone else will get fed up with the funky moves in the demo sequences that seem to be impossible to replicate when you’re actually playing the game.

Overall, I’d say it’s not one of those, “Omigod, I gotta have it the minute it hits the shelf” games. However, when you’re wandering around Game or Electronics Boutique with a couple of games to trade in, I would say to look for this in the pre-owned. If you haven’t played Soul Reaver then the format will seem new to you, and it’s still a good game even if you have played Soul Reaver. It’s nowhere near as dull as some of the PS2 magazines said, and the bonuses available do make it worthwhile checking every corner and behind every tree. A promising start, and if all the faults are taken into account then Primal 2 would become a must-have purchase.