Primal

Just as Lewis and Jen leave the venue for the night, the evil-looking hooded giant with the piercing eyes follows behind, seemingly intent on dealing the rock star some damage. Seconds later Lewis is in a world of pain, and both are knocked unconscious in the fracas. We know the music was bad, but he could've just asked for a refund…

Days later, Jen awakes to find a strange gargoyle by the name of Scree at her bedside. Strangely, her body remains motionless on the bed, while Jen's 'spirit' form looks down on her. Needless to say, this causes Jen to freak out a tad, but Scree convinces her that she has to come with him and whisks her off to a central hub of the game world, the 'Nexus', where there are four realms (two evil and two good) that you must explore, each inhabited by a distinct demonic race. Trouble is, evil do-ers are inflicting chaos on the kingdom, and Jen - with Scree's assistance - must restore the natural order. That's what you get for going out with scary Goth blokes. Didn't we warn her?

Fantasy channel

We wouldn't normally go to such pains to explain a game's background storyline. After all, most of them are clearly knocked up by amateurs down the pub, and written on the back of a beer mat, but in Primal's case there's been plenty of effort made. Although a significant proportion of your playing time with will be taken up watching cut scenes, Chris Sorrell and co. at Sony's Cambridge studio have clearly treated Primal as a labour of love. It serves to remind you why you're there, what you've got to do next, and thankfully it's nowhere near as intrusive as, say, MGS2, and certainly much more accessible.

The fantasy setting won't be to everyone's gaming palette, but the game tries hard to build a cohesive, believable fantasy world - much more than your average tacked on wafer thin plotline. In some cases the narrative is there to provide useful information - and for the early part doubles up as both an intro to the world and a gameplay tutorial. If you're looking for instant action you can always skip it, but it feels good to know why you're guiding around a fit lass and a gargoyle. Without this it would be easy to dismiss Primal as A N Other third person action adventure on the usual hunt for random objects and battling it out occasionally.

Influenced

It does, however, for all its grandiose poise, draw heavy amounts of gameplay inspiration from plenty of revered sources with a nod to the likes of Tomb Raider, ICO, Project Eden, Soul Reaver and Devil May Cry - so if you got on with those games, you've come to the right place. For starters it's got a character that bears more than a passing resemblance to Lara (like it or not), and has its fair share of combat and puzzle solving, but that's about where the TR comparisons should end. It builds on some of the cooperative mechanics of Ico and Project Eden, has the Devil Trigger style transformation of DMC, and the dark atmosphere of Soul Reaver. All round a good basis for "a dark and violent fantasy for a mature audience" - a description given to the game by Sony itself.

In the three or so hours that we've played the game, we've been wandering around the land of eternal night and eternal winter known as Solum, home to the demon race known as the Ferai. It's a richly detailed, atmospheric environment, built using a visually impressive game engine that has allowed Studio Cambridge to really pack in tons of high-res textures as well as plethora of neat heat, light, weather and water effects. The characters are particularly well animated - especially Jen, who strides around convincingly - while the detail never ceases to impress wherever you roam, even when you're very close up, which as PS2 veterans will admit is something of a rarity.

Sadly, the camera in this 'almost finished' build still needs some tweaking, while there were a few odd seaming issues, especially when running into a tunnel environment, with entire chunks of wall suddenly popping up - which we trust will be sorted out by the time the game goes gold. We're curious to know which version various print magazines have been reviewing - as it's clear the one we've been given (review build 3) is by no means glitch free. Tut tut. Aside from the odd minor flaw, however, this is certainly feature complete.

Just keep movin'

The game kicks off with a few simple puzzles, some straightforward combat and - of course - some object collection. Throughout the game you can control either Jen or Scree, the stone gargoyle, with the option to switch between the two by pressing select. Control of either character is via the left stick, with camera controls assigned to the right stick, and with X the 'action' button handling the various switch pulling and door opening situations. Jen, however, is a bit handy in the combat department, and can pull off various kicks, punches, swipes and blocks with the shoulder buttons. Unusually for a game of this type, there's no jump or duck control, but for the most part the game takes care of a variety of moves dynamically, so if there's a low space to crawl into, the character will perform the move without any extra effort required on your part. Similarly, climbing, shimmying and leaping are carried out automatically once the situation requires it, leaving you with a very clean uncluttered control system.

From our experiences so far, the combat is slightly limited, with Jen capable of dispatching most baddies by stabbing one button, not bothering to block or even move out of the way during a group attack. However, once Jen is capable of transforming herself into demon form, things start to get interesting. The Ferai enemies become much more challenging, often hunting in packs, which requires a much more tactical approach. There are still big question marks over the AI in this build, however, with some enemies standing off waiting their turn to be attacked. Having said that, we'd be wrong to dismiss the combat and AI so early on, given that it's still not a finished build.

As each enemy is defeated, Scree is able to suck out their spirit energy from their corpse, which he can then pass onto Jen to replenish her Demon energy. Each of the four realms has its own unique demon race, with Jen able to transform herself into a subtlety different type of demon form in each. We're certainly curious to see how she performs in her various guises.

The puzzles, however, caused us much gnashing of teeth, for completely arbitrary reasons. While pressing triangle (as Jen) gives helpful advice from Scree, sometimes it's not as clear as it could be where you're expected to go next, and thanks to the Jak & Daxter-esque sprawling 'no load' environment you can find yourself traipsing miles off course before you realise your 'mistake'. Not only is the game poorly signposted at times, one of the early objectives involves collecting six glowing objects in order to open a door. But if you've overlooked the fact that one of them is placed miles over the other side of the first realm, then you're in for a major trudge to locate it, with absolutely no clues or guidance from the game as to where it might be. As we said, hardly Mastermind standard puzzles, but frustrating enough to warrant a few racking fracking curses.

Drawn to the dark side

Still, like we said, it's early days for us to be writing Primal off just yet, as we near the end of the first realm. There is clearly lots to be discovered about Primal yet, and we'll be in possession of final final code very soon. Apart from some irritating, but minor foibles, we're starting to be drawn into Primal. Expect us to furnish you with an in depth, definitive review shortly before its April 11th release date.

Primal screenshots (PS2)

Primal interview (PS2)

Primal earlier impressions (PS2)