Primal:Primal

Primal is an Action Adventure fantasy video game released in 2003 for the Playstation 2. The game has been re released on the Playstation 3 as part of the PS2 Classics program on Feb 28, 2012.

The battle to save the outside world starts within as Jennifer Tate, a young woman of our world, faces the demons of alternate planes and discovers her own supernatural origin. In Oblivion, there are four distinct realms, each occupied by a demon race. Two are aligned with order and two with chaos. But the scales of balance are overthrown, and chaos is engulfing Oblivion.

Description
Jen Tate was attacked when leaving a nightclub with her boyfriend Lewis, singer in the club's industrial music band. The attack leaves Jen and Lewis unconscious in a hospital. A short, dark figure approaches Jen's bed and raises her spirit up out of her body. The figure reveals itself to be a small stone gargoyle named Scree. Scree explains that Jen's body is close to death and she must come with him to the Nexus.

Through the long path, Jen and her gargoyle companion Scree will fight through four elemental realms in order to restore balance between Order and Chaos. Along the way Jen gains the ability to transform into four demonic forms.

Controllable Characters

 * Jennifer Tate, a snarky Goth girl.
 * Slim enough to enter spaces too narrow for Scree.
 * Jen obtains forms with different abilities in the various Realms. One of the forms is an almost unique aquatic form. This permits a full water level, as well as watery paths in later levels.
 * Jen will do most of the fighting, using only melee attacks, despite the fact that some enemies have ranged attacks. During combat Scree freezes into immobility. If Jen can get clear of combat Scree will loosen up enough to let Jen heal by drawing energy from him.
 * Scree, a possessed gargoyle statue. Powers include:
 * Able to walk up some dressed stone walls.
 * Carry a torch for light and incendiary purposes.
 * Collect lodestones.
 * Possess some statues, if he has sufficient lodestones.
 * Store elemental energy from fountains, energy stones, blobs of energy and enemy corpses.

Jen's Elemental forms are healed by drawing elemental energy from Scree that only he can collect. Her human form is weakest, but regenerates naturally after a short time of not being hit.

Progressive Scan
Primal is one of the relatively few PS2 games that supports HDTV. It's a limited form known as 480p. There is no menu option. Progressive Scan can only be set when Primal is booted up.

What you need:
 * Component Cables to connect the PS2 to the TV.
 * Required for Progressive Scan.
 * TV that supports Progressive Scan (most LCD TVs do).

When starting up Primal hold both the Triangle and X keys.
 * Before it gets to the New/Load Game screen it will give the option to enter Progressive Scan mode.
 * Click right one and press X.
 * If the TV successfully makes the switch with no visual problems, press Square to confirm.
 * Otherwise the game will switch back to NTSC (or PAL) mode.
 * This is failsafe in case Progressive Scan doesn't work with your TV.

If you have a widescreen TV, or don't mind playing in a letterbox, switch to widescreen mode. Somewhere under the Display menu switch to widescreen mode. Be sure your TV is set to handle widescreen to display this properly. On my LCD widescreen TV the proper setting is simply "FullScreen".


 * It's been reported that SCART RGB cables are the equivalent of component cables for PAL (European) TVs. The same source claims they look better with SDTVs than component cables with HDTVs. Be that as it may, they should permit progressive scan on TVs that support it.

Development
The Primal project was developed by SCEE Cambridge, the development team responsible for MediEvil and its sequel.

Soundtrack
The Original orchestral soundtrack was composed by Paul Arnold and Andrew Barnabas, performed by the City Of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus. It was nominated for a BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) award.

The Combat Soundtrack by 16Volt, an American industrial music group.

Both soundtracks were released commercially.

Voice Actors

 * Scree - voiced by Andreas Katsulas
 * played G'Kar in Babylon 5 and
 * the one-armed man in the Harrison Ford movie, The Fugitive
 * Jen - voiced by Hudson Leick,
 * who played Callisto as a recurring role in Xena Warrior Princess and Hercules The Legendary Journeys.
 * Jared - voiced by Sean Pertwee.
 * Son of Jon Pertwee of Doctor Who fame.
 * Sean also voiced the Aquis Engineer uncredited. (You can't mistake that voice.)

Voiceovers were also done, by different actors, for French, German, Italian and Spanish. Like Ico, Primal was attempting to reach the broadest possible language base.

Re Release
The game was released to the PlayStation 3 system the february 28, 2012, for north american users as part of ps2 classics. However, this PS3 release is only digital.

Trivia

 * The Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London had an exhibition of original artwork from the Primal project, as documented at the now defunct website www.primal-art.com


 * Along with European (PAL), USA(NTSC), and Japanese versions, a PAL "Collector's Edition" was issued with the game's initial release.