Primal Rage is a very different, but very familiar, fighter for the Playstation.
Primal Rage is a traditional 2D fighting game pitting giant monsters against each other. This game is one of the only games rated "Teen" by the ESRB to have fatalities similar to Mortal Kombat, though Mortal Kombat is more violent.
The story of the game is actually quite cool. A meteor strikes Earth which wipes out technology, returning man to the stone age. With technology gone, rain forests start to cover the planet as some species evolve. Seven creatures evolve beyond the others and wage war on each other to control the entire planet, now called Urth. Some of them want to keep the peace, while others want nothing but chaos. These creatures have special abilities which represent different parts of nature, with each one being a god over their element. The battles begin.
The basic controls are pretty generic for a fighting game with each button doing either a light or heavy punch or kick. The combos and special attacks on the other hand are overly complicated. To do a special attack, you have to press a button and hold it while moving the directional pad. Button-mashing sounds better. As for the attacks themselves, they are pretty standard, with most being projectiles. The only three game modes are: Arcade, Versus, and Endurance, with all of them being self-explanatory.
The difficulty is another problem. Like most arcade-style fighters it is overly difficult unless you scale the difficulty to easy, a wise tactic in arcades but met with mixed feelings on a home console.
The Sound of the game is probably the worst thing about it. The music is cool but there only seems to be some in sound test and the character select screen. Unless it's just my copy, it's a shame they didn't use it. Also, the creatures sound for it's time.
The presentation in the game is quite stylish and unique. Your life meter is a long vein leading to a heart which explodes into blood when it is depleted. Beneath you life meter is a brain meter which when depleted leaves your creature stunned as the brain icon turns to mush. The monsters themselves, consisting of five dinosaur-like creatures and two apes, are well done and detailed. They have good animations, each one can make blood burst out of each other, which quickly pools on the ground before disappearing. The fatalities are bloody and detailed and so are the arenas that are performed in.
In closing, Primal Rage on the Playstation probably isn't as good as it's arcade counterpart, but it's a nice little fighter to play with friends, if you can overcome it's lousy special system.
Story: 9/10
Gameplay: 7/10
Sound: 6/10
Presentation: 9/10