Primal Demo - Played it last night!

I was in Gamestop yesterday and the manager gave me a copy of the demo for Primal.  The game looks interesting, but it was very buggy.  

The graphics are amazing, but the fighting system is a little too easy.  Basically you press the R2 button to fight and R1 is to block.  When you wear an enemy down to no health you have to press L2 and R2 to execute a finishing move.  No, its not like MK, but rather just a way to put an enemy out for good.  If you don\'t do the finishing move the enemy will eventually attack you again and recover health.  

The gameplay in general is pretty good, but without instructions I still don\'t get how to heal myself, which leads me to another unique thing about this game.  Basically you have 2 characters the girl and some little gargoyle guy who follows you around.  You can switch between the two at any time by hitting select.  The gargoyle (for lack of a better word) has the ability to scamper up walls, but once again I couldn\'t figure out how to get him to hop over the wall.  He also can posess different statues, but he must have acquired enough "load stones" aka powerups to do so.  He also can heal the girl when she is low on health, but once again I couldn\'t figure that out either.  

The coolest thing about the game are the girls demon forms that she can take - sort of like DMC, but she can do them at any time and for as long as she wants.  I noticed a big difference in her abilities when I switched to the first demon form and it was actually quite fun.

That being said, and I know this is only a demo - it was buggy as hell.  The game would lock up when I had the wrong character to go do something or it would continually loop when I jumped off a ledge.  You can\'t save in this demo - so I basically had to start over every time something happened.  I don\'t know how far this demo goes, but it is a full disk and if I am interested to see how far into the game it goes.

Reminds me a lot of DMC with some new features...

[MPTheory]

I played the demo too.  It needs to be sped up a bit and the ability to jump is always nice.  It has a cool concept though.  Im sure I will rent it when it comes out.

Is that why I couldn\'t get over the wall?  No jump! LOL

[MPTheory]

yeah.  it doesnt seem like thats going to be added either.  Im sure of it

No jump?  That seems odd.

At least we know there won\'t be any annoying platform jumping.

At least we know there won\'t be any annoying platform jumping.

No, but there\'s plenty of boring combat to make up for it.  Honestly, they should have either cut down on the combat or made it a little more interesting.

[MPTheory]

well,  Be fair.  You have to wait for the final product.  I remember playing the demo for soul reaver 2 and it was very slow and choppy.  The backgreounds werent very good, and on top of that, there were plenty of glitches.  But, soul reaver 2 happens to be one of my favorite games for PS2.  and the final version was nothing like the demo.

I\'ll still give it a rent when it comes out...I like the concept...what I played was below average  (and I\'m being generous)

[Kurt Angle]

I didn\'t think it was that bad really. Yes it has a few bugs, but it is only a demo after all.

There is jumping!

The first form--ferai--makes her much tougher, able to run faster, to jump higher.

- From the Gamespot Primal Q&A

I thought it sucked, it\'s on the new mag. Mortal Kombat was the best demo on that disk.

i played a bit of the demo, seemed very cool..... yeah no jump, but press x next to a wall, and she climbs it. i think i will get this ione

I enjoyed this demo and Heat I agree! Mortal Kombat was the reason I bought that disk and it\'s an excellent game and I pickin my copy up feb 14th, but anyway, back to Primal...the combat system is a bit slow and it\'s just button bashing although the demonic Jen is cool and her fatality is great (well boring after a while) I like the idea of having to switch between both characters but I\'m not too impressed with the early stages of Scree, I\'m gonna have to go deeper into the full game when it\'s released...

and why in the blue hell is everyone comparing it to Tomb Raider? Jen is female, I\'ll give you that, but I played the demo and parts of it reminded me of Soul Reaver 1&2!