Primal Rage
Sega Genesis
Nostalgia Factor:
Back when I was 13 or 14 years old, I was a big fan of games like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. When I first caught wind of this game, Primal Rage, it immediately worked its way onto my radar of games to check out. A fighting game where you took control of monsters and dinosaurs? Sounded awesome!
I ended up renting Primal Rage from Blockbuster Video. I got home, popped the game in my Genesis, and was immediately underwhelmed. This was near the end of the lifespan of the Sega Genesis, and I expected a lot better. The graphics were ugly, the character animations were choppy, I didn't like the game's controls. I couldn't even figure out how to do any of the game's special moves, as my rented copy of the game didn't come with an instruction manual of any kind. No typical Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter button combinations seemed to do anything, so I was relegated to using run of the mill punch and kick attacks. Obviously, I couldn't figure out how to do any of the game's fatalities. Back in 1995 or 1996, we didn't have the internet in our house, so I couldn't even look to that for help.
Primal Rage gave me a serious case of renter's remorse. I could have used my six bucks to rent something, anything I would have enjoyed more than this.
Let's move forward in time to the year 2018. This is about 23 years after the game first hit store shelves. I have this box of Sega Genesis games that my cousin Ryan loaned to me. If you have been loyally reading this blog, this is the same mythical box of Genesis games that I have been mentioning off and on for a few years now. I was looking for something quick and easy to play and review, so I picked Primal Rage. I hadn't played the game in 20 plus years. I turned it on, and was once again immediately turned off by the game. I played it for about ten minutes, got my butt kicked, and turned the game back off again. I hated the game for all the same reasons I did the first time I played it back when it first came out.
I didn't beat the game, so I didn't write a review. I kept telling myself I would come back to it and play it again and get it out of the way, but I never did. This was seven months ago. Just now, today, I came back to finish off Primal Rage once and for all. I got sick of looking at it sitting there next to my TV. Would I still hate Primal Rage, or would I finally begin to see what all of my friends who love the game see? Read on and find out.
Story:
There is really nothing to report here. I still don't have an instruction manual for the game, so I don't know what it says in there. There is literally NOTHING in-game that explains what is going on. If you don't press any buttons after turning on most fighting games, it will show you little story scenes before you actually start playing the game. Primal Rage does not. When you do decide to press start and begin playing the game, there are no introductory story sequences. When you beat the game, it is just like "okay congrats you conquered the world byeeeeeeeeeee". That's it.
When I look at the Primal Rage Wikipedia page, there is a synopsis of the game's storyline. Something about humanity nearly going extinct, and the beasts rising up from underneath the planet's surface. The remaining humans worship these beasts as gods. I don't know. It is nice to know that the game does have a storyline, but at the same time I wonder why it isn't even in the game at all. If I have to look it up on Wikipedia, does it even count?
Gameplay:
Clearly, the game's controls are styled after Mortal Kombat. You move left and right. You hold back to block. Up makes you jump. You have a high and low punch attack (or head snap if your character has no arms or short arms), and a high and low kick attack. Those are the only buttons you use.
Single player mode has you fighting through each character in the game. There is a game map after each fight that shows which areas you have conquered. Conquer all the areas and you beat the game. Simple stuff. A playthrough of the game lasts about 20 minutes. I am extremely glad I didn't buy this as a kid, or I would have been so upset. With no proper storyline to speak of, there is little to no replay value to be found here.
Controls are clunky. Hit detection is terrible. Now that it is 2019 and I have internet access, I was able to look up how to do each character's special moves and fatalities. The special moves helped a bit. I am glad I was able to look online, because I never in a million years would have figured out how to do any of these moves. Most of them involve holding down multiple buttons at once, and then inputting directional combinations into the D-pad. It is a pain in the butt. Why couldn't they have just had simple "down, right, punch" button combos like every other fighting game?
Even with a list of how to do each fatality right in front of me, I still never managed to pull off a single fatality. Not even one. Insult me and say I suck. I don't care. I have no idea what I was doing wrong. To me, this is a flaw in the game design. Seeing as how I don't enjoy this game very much, I wasn't going to spend a whole lot of time trying to figure it out. I ended up watching a YouTube video of all of them instead.
Graphics:
This is not a pretty game. As I alluded to earlier in the review, this game came out relatively late in the lifespan of the Sega Genesis. I expected so much better. It's sloppy, it's pixelated, it's grainy. The character animations are choppy, and their movement is not smooth in any way, shape, or form. If I had to say anything positive about the game's graphics, it would have to be that the stage backgrounds are... decent?
I should add that I have never played the arcade version of the game. In fact, I have been to many arcades in my life, and I have never even seen this unit anywhere. When I was looking on YouTube to see the game's fatalities, I stumbled upon a video with footage from the arcade version of the game, as opposed to the Genesis one. The graphics for the arcade game are SO MUCH better than the graphics here. It is unrealistic to expect a home console port to look as good as the arcade version, but this is just unacceptable. I know the Genesis can do so much better. No way around it, this is simply a bad, sloppy port.
Sound:
You know a game is not very good when I would say that its music and sound effects are the highlight of the game. The sound effects are relatively unremarkable, but nothing stood out to me as annoying or out of place. I liked the burp and fart noises Chaos made when performing his special attacks.
None of the game's musical tracks stand out too much, but they do the job pretty well. I did like the music when they showed the game map in between fights. It had kind of an Ecco the Dolphin vibe to it that I thought was pretty cool.
Overall, I would say that this is the area where the game excels the most. Which really isn't saying a whole lot.
Overall:
In case you can't tell from my comments so far, I didn't enjoy Primal Rage. I didn't enjoy it back in the mid 90's, and I don't enjoy it now.
Playing it again was certainly an interesting trip down memory lane, but that is about as far as I would go. I am never going to play this game again. I wouldn't recommend this game to anyone else. I know there are people out there that love this game, but it is what it is. I tried to give it a shot, but Primal Rage is just not for me.
Final Score:
D-
If you liked my review of Primal Rage, check out some of my other game reviews:
Side note:
Kind of funny, the only two other fighting games I have reviewed, Mortal Kombat I and II, got a D and a D- respectively. Now this game gets a D-. Can you tell this is not my favorite genre?
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