Back in the days of the ZX Spectrum, there was a budget line of games from Mastertronic priced at a pocket-money friendly £1.99 each. You were never going to get the best games in that range, but they were cheap and would provide solid entertainment for a few hours.
If Mastertronic were still around, Primal Carnage: Evolution would be part of their range. It is undeniably a bit rubbish, but it is also undeniably fun, and undeniably cheap at £14.99 on PS5.
Primal Carnage: Evolution is an asymmetrical PvP game which pits human hunters against an impressive range of dinosaurs, from a stomping T-Rex to swift Novaraptors. The first Primal Carnage game launched on PC way back in 2012 with a PlayStation title, Primal Carnage: Extinction then arriving on PS4 at the end of 2015. Evolution is an upgraded version of the PS4 game with all 150 cosmetic items for free, new graphics and sound.
There are five game modes, the most commonly found is Team Deathmatch, but there’s also Evacuation, which is essentially capture the objective, Capture the Egg, a horde mode called Onslaught, a Sandbox exploration mode, and a very handy single-player mode, which allows you to get used to how the various characters play. The servers do appear rather empty when you first load them up – the most I ever saw was four games running at once – but as soon as you join one the player count usually ramps up to full teams very quickly.
The human characters all represent a class type with some questionable stereotyping when it comes to the character design, but alongside the usual selection of shotguns and pistols, some characters have dino-specific abilities. For example, the Trapper (clearly based on Jurassic Park’s Robert Muldoon character) has a gun that can be fired at the dinosaurs, wrapping their jaws shut and restricting their attacks.
The dinosaurs generally fall into three types: smaller creatures that can move and attack quickly, flying creatures that can spot enemies from the skies, and behemoths that have massive health and are slower, but can one-hit-kill humans. Five of the dinosaurs including the Brachiosaurus and Stegosaurus are restricted to playing in the Sandbox mode.
The idea of a humans vs dinosaurs game is extremely appealing, but Primal Carnage: Evolution lacks finesse in its execution. A lot of this has to do with the fact that dinosaurs vs humans is inherently imbalanced. The smaller dinos can run very fast and attack very quickly, the flying creatures can turn on a dime, and the larger creatures are just tanks with around 15 times the health of your average human. Sure, it’s more realistic than a single human cannot take down a T-Rex, but it’s not great gameplay.
There are also technical issues, with the heads of larger dinos clip through walls and floors allowing them to eat humans that really should be out of range. Some of the guns also feel very underpowered, and the automatics don’t even have an aim-down-sights option so it’s a case of spraying bullets in a general direction and hoping for the best.
These and other problems mean most encounters result in a dinosaur springing out from around a corner and the human character flailing around trying to keep track of it while it speeds around them. The lack of a HUD map means you have no idea where the creature has gone and have to rely on keeping it in sight, which is almost impossible in some of the more maze-like maps. Weapons and health are limited, but if you do manage to escape an attack, a health pack is never more than a few seconds away at top sprint.
Playing as a dinosaur has its own issues. Flying is particularly cumbersome, and some of the camera angles (humans are first-person, dinos are third-person) mean that the sides of the larger dinos clip across your screen and block your view. Each dino has unique abilities which range from spitting to acid to the endlessly amusing ability to grab a human player in your claws and drop them from a great height if you are in control a flyer. It is more difficult to regain health as a dino as you have to find some meat and stand still while eating, leaving yourself open to attack.
I also have a personal ick with all the skins that are included. It may be fun to have a Velociraptor wearing a Santa hat or a Spinosaurus with a natty black top hat, but it is just a bit too silly and distracting for me
Having said all that, get a decent team working together, and you can ignore (or just learn how to avoid) the gameplay issues. Setting traps to capture the larger dinos in a crossfire is very satisfying, and having someone covering your back while you thrash wildly around from air attacks really helps. The modes that force the human players together to execute an objective can be very tense, huddled in a building with everyone peering out of doorways and windows trying to spot a sneakysaurus.
The upgrades to the sound and animation for Evolution are welcome, and it does look quite impressive on some maps, but if Primal Carnage is to be the best humans vs dino game series, then the next iteration needs to focus on the technical side to bring up to modern standards. For example, there’s no mantling and humans (and indeed, dinosaurs) just jump around platforms like it’s 1993’s Doom. Cross-play with the PC version would also help with the player base. The balancing also needs a look at – you really should not be able to spawn as a 3000 health Spinosaurus if there’s only one human on the map.
