Primal Carnage: Extinction Review - Greenlight Failure

Published: April 8, 2015 9:00 AM /

Reviewed By:


Primal carnage

I often see the good in everything, because of this I've been scolded for giving too many positive reviews. Then sometimes a game comes along that has almost no redeemable features and I can't help but feel angry that I wasted my time on such a pile of bugs, and Primal Carnage: Extinction is one of those times.

primal carnage extinction2

As there isn't too much to say here I'll start off with the positives. Servers are really quick to get on to which is nice. The concept is awesome. You can choose to play as either Team Human or Team Dinosaur as you battle to the death in your small environment. The range of dinosaur is pretty good as there are 12 different dinosaurs for you to play as with differing amounts of speed, durability and attack power. The humans also have a decent range. There are 5 different humans to play, all with different weapons, including one badass flamethrower, and each of these classes does a lot to vary up play style. There are several different modes of play: Human V Dino, Objective Missions and Free Roaming no kill modes which are a great idea even if they don't actually function properly.

What else is good to say ... the textures look nice I guess. A lot of the environments do look pretty good even if Primal Carnage: Extinction is completely unplayable.

primal carnage extinction

So let's move on to the bad. Primal Carnage: Extinction took almost 2 hours to install so I was expecting something epic when really I should have been expecting something that wasn't fully optimized. Even on the worst graphical settings the frame rate was so slow on my Macbook Pro that the game was virtually unplayable. One second you'd be jogging along and the next frame you've already been slaughtered.

Primal Carnage: Extinction is awfully speciesist. Playing as a human is somewhat decent with the first person view and wide range weapons, but dinosaurs are just a mess. You play third person and spend most of your time running in circles trying desperately to hit anything. There is no lock on, and dinosaur's attacks must be so precise that your opponent has to be almost standing still to do damage. Even then a human will take several bites to finally take it down, where as your mighty dino is dead in just one hit. Hunting in packs soon becomes essential.

Primal ExtinctionMostly things just don't feel finished. Look how here instead of a third class you can see just a place holder for the text. Bugs and glitches are rampant. Users often complain of spawning into the floor (this is EXTREMELY common around 75% of spawns), static characters litter the map, dinosaurs can run completely into walls and floors and are prone to seizures, and more than once I accidentally ran off the edge of the environment through the sky and out into the black abyss.

But what about all the different modes of gameplay? They gotta be good right? Well I'm sorry to predictably disappoint you but no. The objective missions see you running around aimlessly as there is no progress, direction or on screen map to tell you where to go, meaning that I couldn't figure out what to do and couldn't complete a single objective. While Free Roam sounds a nice way to explore environments let me tell you that in no way is it "no kill". You still get points for killing enemies, and it is still completely and entirely possible. Your server basically relies on the good will of other players not to kill you, and then some idiot like me comes in thinking that kills are impossible and busts up the place with her flamethrower before quickly exiting.

primal glitch
Guess where I spawned

The only playable mode is Human VS Dino where dinosaurs have to outnumber humans 2:1 to make it a fair fight. That being said even then frame rate is so poor you have to play in open map like the test area above in order to see anything, and that sort of destroys the whole point of the game being pretty.

I can't say much more than avoid Primal Carnage: Extinction at all costs. The worst part is that they actually expect $20 for this pile of turd, AND they thought it was in an acceptable state to send out for review. If you want something similar that actually functions I suggest Evolve.

My copy was free from the developer but if you like torture you can purchase yours from Steam.

Review Summary

2.5

Just don't buy. If you like the concept maybe buy Evolve instead.

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| Former Staff Writer

Georgina is a former writer for TechRaptor, you can find her on Twitter!