Primal's gameplay, to be entirely honest, isn't anything new or unique. Basically, you travel around the various worlds of Oblivion completing quests and finding power ups. During your quests, you'll encounter various monsters which must be slain, puzzles which must be solved and learn a little more about Jen's dark side. Jen, as you will learn, is part demon, and as such learns how to shapeshift into one of four demonic forms. Each form comes with unique strengths and weaknesses, which you'll need to utilize properly to finish the tasks you're assigned. Along with controlling Jen and her demonic forms, you are oftentimes required to play as Scree, her stone companion who can climb walls, possess statues and function as a life-force fuel pump. When Jen gets hurt, she can call on Scree to funnel energy to her, which restores her demonic energies. Scree obtains this energy from the corpses of Jen's kills and from magical stones found throughout the game.

Most of the game will be spent exploring the levels and meeting up with an assortment of creatures that will lead you into some really great-looking cut scenes. These scenes serve to unravel the Primal story, and are pretty awe-inspiring. Anyone who enjoys quality storylines will enjoy watching the story unfold through these sequences. After each sequence, you'll be given another task to complete until you finish them all. It's a very linear style of gameplay which has limited exploration value, but it's still good fun.

Combat is, unfortunately, a bit oversimplified for my liking, and anyone expecting a real fighting system or weapons combat can forget it with Primal. Whenever you enter a fight, you'll lock onto your nearest foe automatically, and then you just mash the L1, L2 or R2 buttons to deal out a variety of blows or use R1 to block. The buttons are pressure sensitive, which allows you to land heavier blows, but the computer automatically chooses the combos for you. Due to the feeble AI, which uses scripted combat actions, you'll rarely lose a fight or take any sort of heavy damage. If by some odd chance you should sustain any injury, Scree will be right there waiting to channel more life force back into you.

While most of the time you'll play as Jen, there are segments of the game where you'll take the reins as Scree, her living gargoyle buddy. Scree's powers include possession, wall climbing and healing, all of which will come in handy at different points in the game. Possession allows Scree to take control of statues, which usually work as a sort of key to doorways. Other statues can aid Jen in combat, which you'll need to defeat later bosses. Scree's wall climbing ability is a lot of fun to use, you just point him to a brick wall (it has to be brick) and he'll start climbing. The camera works quickly and fluidly to keep up with the changing angles as Scree climbs up, down and across the walls. Lastly, there's Scree's healing power, which, when activated, re-energizes Jen's demonic forms.

Primal is unique in the fact that even with the admittedly weak gameplay elements, the story is so engrossing that it will keep you coming back to finish more and more levels. Even when you hit those horrifying moments when you discover you have to backtrack through an entire level to find one small hint, you'll be more than happy you did once you're greeted with another meticulously crafted CGI sequence that sucks you right back into the story.

Primal rates pretty high on the PlayStation 2 graphical quality scale, with good texturing and well-developed character details. When you use the camera to focus in on Jen or Scree, you'll find the facial details are amazingly realistic, and even the skin tones are natural looking. When not zoomed in, you'll still be able to notice details such as belt buckles, clasps and even the wrinkles in Scree's skin. Many of the NPC's you'll encounter, from Lords of Demons to their evil demon wives look great, with just as much detail as the main characters. Sadly though, the standard enemies you encounter are not nearly as detailed and tend to have little visual appeal.

Motion within Primal is about as fluid and lifelike as you'll see in any game. Jen can sneak, walk, or run, and all these variations of movement are flawlessly animated. The camera, which is very important in a third person title such as Primal, moves just as fluidly as the characters, and almost never jumps around or causes and sort of disorientation as it changes angles. One of the best features of the game is the ability to immediately recenter the camera by tapping the R1 button when standing still, though you'll rarely need to do so since the camera tracks you so well.

The cinematic sequences are what really make the game in Primal. I can't think of a single time I wasn't "wowed" by them. Character models and animation are smooth as silk in these sequences, giving you the sensation that you're watching a high-quality CGI film.

While the graphics are very good, they aren't perfect. as there's a good bit of clipping in Primal, along with some odd moments where the camera randomly zooms in and out. There are also moments where the game can't properly judge the distances between objects, so much so that at times you'll be unable to get into a location that you need to in order to move ahead. The only way around this distance issue is to restart the level, so my advice is to save often, especially before taking on a fresh puzzle or challenge.

If you enjoy quality voice acting, you're in for a treat with Primal. It's obvious that professionals were used because the voice acting is truly great. Jen, Scree and all the NPC's have voices that reflect their character and mood, and react to the situation at hand. Jen in particular has a perfectly fitting voice, a mix of young naive girl that can get tough as nails when she switches to demonic form.

Outside of the voice acting, the in-game sounds are respectable, but not great. With all the effort put into the voice acting, it would have been nice if the sound effects were equally as good, but that's just not the case here. The sounds effects are hopelessly average.

The soundtrack is a mix of ethereal gothic and metal, which adapts to the current situation. While you're exploring the landscape, it will switch to a low-key gothic beat, yet when you enter combat, it'll switch back to the metal format. On occasion, the game will lose track of what's just happened, and you'll find yourself listening to the metal edged soundtrack for a minute or two after the last fight you had.

Primal is a simple adventure title on rails. There's not a lot of free exploration available, nor are there many unlockables, both of which are necessary for a title like this to have any replay value. Since most tasks require that you find every single power-up or hidden element within the level, you won't have any need to go back and retry a level once you've passed it.

What Primal lacks in replayability, it more than makes up for in depth, as you'll be spending hours trying to finish the game. Don't expect Primal to be four or five hours of gameplay and then you're done, as there's probably two dozen hours worth of gameplay in there.

This game is far from having the depth of other adventure titles such as Dark Cloud 2, yet the story is so compelling, you just have to keep playing it. There are some really frustrating bugs that crop up, and therefore I encourage you to save your game frequently and use multiple save files, but overall, it's a really enjoyable title. The voice acting is top notch for almost any title I've seen on any platform, and the graphics are top-notch for the PlayStation 2. If you enjoy adventure titles, give Primal a shot; it's a lot of good fun for the PS2.