The first time I discovered Primal Rage was at the Summer CES in Chicago last
year. I remember the crowd around the Time Warner Interactive's booth
watching two guys playing with the arcade game on a huge screen. It was
spectacular and if there was something that impressed me at this show, it
is surely this game. However, despite all the excitement I had admiring
the wonderful graphics, I was a bit disappointed that it was only available
in the arcades and not for my PC. Then, when I heard that Time Warner
Interactive was going to convert it for over 10 different platforms, I
thought I was dreaming. Primal Rage was on its way to the PC and I to
heaven! After 14 months of anticipation, the PC version of Primal Rage finally hit
the stores in early September for my greatest pleasure and other beat 'em
up fans.
The action of Primal Rage takes place in a shattered world caused
by the collision between a gigantic asteroid and Earth. This catastrophe
left only few survivors and released seven dinosaur-like gods from the bowels
of the Earth where they were trapped for millions of years in suspended life.
The world is now divided in seven large territories and your goal is to
conquer all the territories to gain world domination through bloody battles
and raging fights.
The home version of Primal Rage features three new types of gameplay. The
training mode will allow you to practise with another monster of your choice;
the Tug of War is a mode where there is only one health bar for the two
players with the health balancing from the weakest to the strongest. Finally the
endurance mode lets you choose four characters with whom you will fight to
the death.
As in the Mortal Kombat games, Primal Rage features digitized graphics
for the characters that were taken from hand-painted latex puppets with
real hair and fur for an amazing visual effect. It is also the first time
that a video game uses true stop-motion animation, and this combined to the
quality of the graphics makes Primal Rage simply unique. As each of the
puppets were built from a steel skeleton with joints allowing hundreds of
different positions to be filmed, the number of actions is amazing. There
are over 70 actions per character, including fighting moves, special moves,
fatalities, combos and ready poses.
The game allows one or two players as in other fighting games. In the first mode,
you have to eliminate seven adversaries to reach the Bonus Round and the
Final Battle. During the fights, whenever your health bar is being reduced by
a hit, eating a human follower will give you a health bonus. When you defeat
an opponent, you will be rewarded with a new territory.
The Bonus Round is just to collect additional points and bonus health to
prepare you for the final battle in which you meet all your adversaries
again that have came back to life. The only difficulty is that you only have one
health bar during the final battle.
In the two player mode, the goal is to dominate the world by capturing the
most lands and to gather the most human followers. These humans will be
awarded each time you achieve various combinations such as finishing moves,
damages inflicted, etc...
Primal Rage has an option to turn off gory scenes for people who feel sick
when they see a drop of blood and also features several levels of difficulty.
Other options allow you to customize the keyboard, change music and sound
levels, etc... Notice that the installation lets you choose between a
small (less than 2Mb) and a full installation (over 30Mb). As always, you
will have to choose between space on the hard disk and loading times.
Teeny Weeny Games, the company that made the PC conversion did a pretty good job. The graphics look very much alike the original arcade version as so are the sounds. The gameplay, one of the most important elements in the beat'em up games, is good enough to keep players excited during the fights and afterwards.
486 DX-33 MHz or higher (486 DX2-66 recommended),
Min 4MB memory (16Mb recommended),
MS-DOS 6.0 or later,
Hard drive required with 2Mb free,
Double speed CD-ROM drive or faster,
256-color VGA video graphic card (VLB or PCI recommended),
Microsoft mouse or 100% compatibles.
Standard two-button joysticks, Gravis Gamepad supported.
Creative Labs Sound Blaster Basic, Pro, 16 and AWE32; Media Vision Pro Audio
Spectrum; Gravis UltraSound; Ensoniq Soundscape; Roland MT-32, RAP-10.
Time Warner Interactive,
2210 West Olive Avenue,
Burbank, CA 91506.
In Europe:
In UK:
Time Warner Interactive,
1 Rushmills, Bedford Road,
Northampton, NN4 7YH.
Technical Support: +44-171-391-4323
In France:
Time Warner Interactive,
49 Avenue Kleber,
75016 Paris.
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