It's a well-done and dramatic start alright, and it becomes even weirder when Jen is seemingly awoken in hospital by a little stone gargoyle that turns out to be called Scree (although you find out later that his real name is Abdizur). Jen finds herself having an out of body experience and Scree takes Jen's spirit body on a journey of discovery and revenge that she'll never forget. It turns out that Jen is a bit of a Ferai demon and can transform into her demonic beastly form at will. When she's in this horned and more muscular body she is stronger, quicker and can dish out all sorts of punishment to any of the creatures that would do her harm during her adventure. During combat Jen locks onto any enemies that come close enough and vicious blows and combos can be dealt out with the L2, R2 & L1 buttons. She can block moves with R1 and change targets with a press of X. Once the enemies energy is completely depleted, a gory deathblow combo can be dealt out with a press of L2 & R2 together. As you progress Jen gets to visit other lands and gains the ability (sometimes unwillingly) to change into other forms of demon with different abilities and strengths. This combat feels a bit strange at first due to the use of the shoulder buttons, but you do get used to it.

Playing and looking a bit like a next-gen Tomb Raider, I was expecting lots of puzzles, lever pulling and climbing and searching for passageways and suchlike, and that's what Primal is like to a certain extent. The big difference is Scree, and the way that you cooperate with him as he faithfully follows you around, and that you even take control of him whenever you want (just press 'Select').

   

Although Jen can jump higher and fight better than Scree (although he does have his moments), he's invaluable as sometimes routes are blocked and you need his special trick (wall climbing) to progress. Once the going gets tough and the bad guys appear though, Scree usually just sits there and performs his other trick (turning back to stone in order to protect himself). At any point Jen can regain some energy from the little guy by leeching it out of him, and he'll recharge himself later either from the energy left behind from defeated enemies or from other sources like power stones. Unlike Lara, Raziel, Snake, Buffy, Sam, Indy and all the other 3rd person heroes, Jen doesn't have a dedicated jump button though (which seems strange). She simply leaps up to grab a ledge if you walk up to a wall or steps/clambers over a block if it's waist height or less. She automatically ducks into low spaces, and backs against the wall if any ledge shimmying is required. Although this looks great and feels clever sometimes as you don't have to press a jump, duck or crawl button, when traversing the expansive levels on foot you always feel like Jen should have a jump button in order to more swiftly clear obstacles or investigate ledges. Coming from the creators of 'Medieval' I was expecting more platform-style action and all this automatic climbing and jumping feels a bit confining. There's still plenty of exploration to do though, with secret areas hiding tarot cards (which unlock character art) and progress through the levels opens up DVD style extras; an actors' featurette and a 'making of' video.

Much like Jen, when controlling Scree your actions are rather simplified, to the point of looking around by holding R1, or turning to statue form with the circle button. When you want Scree to climb a wall you just walk up to it, and if he can he'll just start slowly up the wall. If you can interact with an object then you just press X. There's no leaping onto walls and quickly scuttling around, and most of his wall climbing antics are purely for the purpose of finding your way round a locked door to let Jen in and continue. I really feel that some excellent gaming opportunities were missed out on here as possibly Scree could have used his occasional lofty positions to scout areas out, or even get involved in some long-range fighting or covert reconnaissance. The cooperative aspect of the gameplay is well done, (if a little predictable and unimaginative at times) and the energy sharing is a clever idea. Due to in-game obstacles, it is obviously possible and necessary to part Jen and Scree, and if parted by too much distance Jen (or Scree) will reach an invisible barrier and won't go any further (Jen'll say: "I don't think I should go any further without Scree" or similar) meaning you'll have to find a way of re-uniting them at some earlier point. It was during one of these occasions that I experienced a couple of rather irritating bugs that will hopefully be removed by the time the game hits the shelves. The first problem is that sometimes they (Jen & Scree) don't want to join back up after being parted, and seem to ignore each other when you do get them back together - they won't acknowledge the other's existence and then interact as they should. Added to that, they won't continue past the previously described invisible barriers (because they don't think the other one is there) even if you take it in turns to get them to that point and they're standing side by side. This bug has happened to me twice and although I sorted the problem of them "ignoring" each other once by summoning Scree through a 'pull stone', the second time I fannied around for ages before giving up and reloading from my previous saved position (nicely, you can save virtually anywhere in Primal and saves aren't limited either). Secondly, I've also left Scree behind somewhere only to switch control back to him and find the little stony guy standing in mid-air over a pit or chasm. I could walk him back to ground level to continue after some fiddling about, but it was a glitch that shouldn't have happened. Although these bugs repeated themselves on the first world (Solus), neither ruined the game for me or happened on subsequent levels, but I'd have expected SCEE Cambridge to have found them and got rid of them.

   

Primal (although a bit on the bleak and grey side to start off with - it gets a LOT prettier) is a lovely looking game, with superb lighting effects and shadows, and buildings with impressive architecture and vegetation drawn with equal care and detail. Jen is the star without a doubt; she's a good-looking girl with nice tats (that's tattoos by the way) and is superbly animated throughout all her movements (including her transformations - although you really should have been able to skip it after seeing it for the fiftieth time). Scree looks suitably 'stony' too, and his ability to turn to stone looks good as well. Scenery textures look hi-resolution and detailed everywhere, and there are some truly superb water effects (particularly in water-world Aquis). After quite a long initial load the various sections of the worlds load seamlessly, and although the map system is sometimes a bit clunky, it always lets you know where you are, where you want to be and possibly even how to get there.

Although strangely enjoyable to the end (bearing in mind that I loved all the Tomb Raiders and Soul Reavers), Primal ends up being another one of the PS2's underachievers. Without the freedom of even early Lara Croft, Jen's a bit wasted, and sometimes the puzzles get a bit tiresome. But there are some superb graphics to be seen, possibly the best on PS2, and a good fantasy story to see (with excellent voice acting and haunting music). The self-effacing nature of the game and underlying sense of humour does it credit, and it's just a shame that it lacks the polish of top-tier PS2 games.