Primal Carnage

Before I get into this, I’d like to apologize for being late. I was going to review another game, but it’s so f*cking crash happy that I couldn’t stand playing for more than the 2 minutes it took to lose connection. Instead, you get a review of another game.

Nothing says rage-quitting, whining, and abuse quite like these two words.

Sooo Primal Carnage, yes. I can already hear you asking, “But Cajun, you handsome, sexy beast you, another dinosaur game?” To which I respond, no, another half of a dinosaur game that wasn’t thought through quite well enough and was released way to early. So, come with me my fri-… acq-… the people reading this. Lets be mean.

Primal Carnage took Team Fortress 2, got it nice and liquored up, then had Jurassic Park go at it like the football team at the unpopular girl on prom night. It could have been good, it really really really could have, but the developers (Lukewarm Media) were so dick hungry that they released it way too early and screwed the pooch, the parrot, the goldfish, and the cat.

Why Lukewarm? WHHHYYYYY?
(okay, no more rape jokes, I sw-… pr-… F*ck it I’ll try… Wait, does that count?)

Lukewarm released their game, made you pay for it, and then had the audacity to say “well we’re working on it.” I mean, they released on Steam, had a full list of achievements, buuuuut you couldn’t actually unlock any of them. If you game as much as I do, you love achievements, they make you feel good for doing nothing important and sometimes they’re hilarious, so to have them, but not being able to earn them, is like dating a nun. You could probably stare at it all day long, but you sure as shit ain’t getting any.

So wait, if you have to buy the game, why is it in a blog about free-to-play games? Well because, it is, in fact, free to PLAY. You pay to own it and keep Lukewarm in business. Why we want that God only knows because they’re too f*cking stupid to make an entire game.

When it first released, all Primal Carnage had was death match, that’s it, just death match. No objectives, no ranks, no anything beyond Dinos, Humans, and dying. Oh, and the game was ridiculously unbalanced if, like 99% of players, you didn’t have a premade group to play with. Since then you know what they’ve done? Added 1 mode, that’s it. It’s not even a full f*cking game STILL.

Not only that, the game is so unbalanced that if you don’t end up on the Dino team I am actually not going to blame you for quitting a match. Accuracy is non-existant with anything beyond the sniper rifle, you’re fragile as shit, and most of the Dinosaurs have a one hit kill whereas the human’s most powerful weapon, the grenade launcher, has a splash range of roughly 2 1/2 feet (0.762 meters). That’s f*cking retarded on an international scale!  I mean, if one of your achievements is for you to blow up four Dinos with a single grenade, then it better be able to reach them even if they aren’t all f*cking in one long Dino daisy chain.

I can’t believe Google actually had results for “Dinosaur Daisy Chain”

Not only that, but the units are so racist I cant believe one of them isn’t wearing a f*cking kilt while another communes with the totem animal spirits and a third enjoys watermelon, grape soda, and fried chicken. Is there variety? Meh. One unit has a net gun (not as cool as it sound), another has a chain saw and flame thrower (not as cool as it sounds), and one has a tranq gun (Do I seriously have to say it a third time?). The Dinos are way more varied, but you only get to play the dinos every other match so you get to enjoy hopelessness, frustration, and utter dickery for a whole match before you get to be the puss-spewing rectal wart (Not even gonna google that one, just think of the average Call of Duty player).

From left to right, Token, Sidekick, Drunk, Eyecandy, Dickhead

Gee, there’s no way this could possibly be unbalanced!

Everyone’s cocky until they have to be human, then the game is suddenly bullshit. It was bullshit the whole time, the only reason I still play is because I have this urge to hurt myself, and I hold out hope that me calling the developer at 3 in the morning to complain will have an effect (You’re next if I don’t get a new Starfox game Miyamoto).

The community does have its upside though, there is a really fun server out there where the sides swap halfway through a match, and all the players are friendly and funny. You start shit there and they all will give you hell, friend and foe alike. That’s what I like to see, a community coming together to curb-stomp a cockbite (I refuse to Google that one).

This is your average Call of Duty player. Also, Curb-Stomp A Cockbite is my new band name.

Okay, back to gameplay. If you’re going to have a unit that automatically one hit kills people just by walking up to them, then I demand the grenades do realistic damage so that the player who gets said Über-unit doesnt get fifteen kills per death. This encourages unit camping (When they cry baby jackoffs will stay in the unit select screen with the Über-unit selected until its available for them to use) which 2 out of 10 players in Primal Carnage do. I’m aware it doesn’t seem like alot, but think about it in these kind of terms, the average weapon camper for Xbox Live games is 1 in 200 (I HAVE DONE THE MATH MYSELF).

I’ll give the game this, it will be fun when it’s finished, but until then its kind of like jamming a fork into an electrical socket after taping it to your genitals, shockingly stupid. Lukewarm needs to quit trying to make a new game and first finish the one they half-assed the half-ass all the way to half-assedton while riding in the Hyundai Half-ass getting forty Half-asses to the gallon. I mean, game companies always claim to be about the players, but they don’t really care about us or they wouldn’t do this kind of shit constantly. You want to make a good game? Hire actual players to look over your shoulder every step of the way. If you do something stupid or greedy they ought to get to hit you with an Electric Fly Swatter (now available in a variety of motivational colors and even more motivational amps!).

Could whoever keeps mailing these to the game companies post this one on the Primal Carnage facebook page? I’d love players to see this more than I care about the companies.

Dino Storm

Big brother is watching you…

Come on, look at that title! You can tell right there some five year old came up with this game and his dad stole it, right? It doesn’t get any better from there, but I’ll get to that. Dino Storm is a recent addition to the Browser gaming circuit, though you can download a launcher, please don’t, it has more bugs than an entymologist’s work space. They don’t even bother to hide behind the BETA tag like most games though, they give you the finger right out of the (what I would consider pre-Alpha at best) gate.

First though, Dino Storm does has Cowboys, Dinosaurs, and nifty looking guns, buuuut that’s about it. You get three faces per gender and start off on a “Coelophysis” which actually sounds waaay sweeter than it actually is.

That’s as good as it gets, my DS has about the same graphics for the three or four dinosaur games I have on there. You get a total of 3 areas to explore, 3 guns to use, and 7 Dinos to unlock and ride. The loot system is completely, and I mean utterly and totally, composed of vendor trash. You get implants and mods for your weapons, but they’re the same exact implants and mods every other person in the game gets, meaning your variety is about as limited as a Jersey Shore cast member’s vocabulary.

Let’s take it piece by piece shall we? First, the dinos. They’re the same 7 Dinos every game with Dinosaurs would use. Your little run-about, the Coelophysis, Your early game DPS, the Carnotaurus, THERE IS NO EARLY GAME TANK, then your mid-late game run-about, the Pachycephalosaurus, your mid game jack-of-all-trades, the Parasaurolophus, your mid-game tank, the Centrosaurus, then two late games, the tank and the fuck-you-and-your-friends, the Brachiosaurus and T-Rex respectively. The Dinos come with all of 3 stats, and while they can be upgraded, and their appearance changes (see also, spines, size, not much else) two of the same Dinos are going to upgrade exactly the same, you don’t get to pick and choose. You also don’t have to fret jumping through hoops to  get any of these dinos, the last one you get, the T-Rex, boils down to you GETTING A JOB. Not exactly a raid level drop honestly.

Weapons on the other hand literally scream “I’m giving you the finger and counting my cash!” There are three, that’s it, just three. A Pistol, a Pistol, and a Sniper Rifle. They’re the three same guns you get, I get, the mouthy kid from where-ever the hell he’s from gets. THERE IS NO UNIQUENESS.

The first pistol is the Hammer. As you upgrade it, it turns into this stupid looking tube you fire rockets out of with one hand. That sounds cool sure, except for the part where each gun gets only two skills, and the rocket has a minute and a half cooldown. So what’s that leave you with? A weapon that you can fire really cool once, but only by surprise, since you have to be far enough away to use it. In actual combat range you can’t fire the rocket because, you know, cowboys on dinosaurs need that tiny little bit of realism.

Next weapon you get is the Burning Colt (The name Colt is trademarked by the way). Its a pistol with a flame-thrower. That sounds awesome, but once again, two skills, minute and a half recharge. the good news is this weapon has some CC and DoT (Crowd Control and Damage over Time) the bad news is that neither one is useful in a game where only 1 in 200 enemies is aggressive and you have to click to target and attack anyways, so you’ll never end up with a group of enemies on you. It’s another great gimmick, but that’s it, a gimmick.

Finally, we have the scopeless, psuedo long-ranged, slow to fire, Peacemaker. The Sniper Rifle of the game is really more of a single fire combat rifle than anything. It doesn’t zoom, “long-range” just means the enemies take four seconds to attack back instead of two, and the DPS is so abysmal that you might as well cuss at them. It’d be faster and more hurtful. Oh, and you fire it one-handed, so if you didn’t catch my sarcasm about realism earlier, here it is in stereo. YES, BECAUSE A GAME ABOUT COWBOYS RIDING DINOSAURS NEEDS THAT LITTLE DROP OF REALISM.

Speaking of drops, all the drops you get are vendor trash, literally all of them. There’s no armor, there’s no common, uncommon, etc. There’s no healing items that pop out of a dinos ass. It’s boring, but you need that trash since none of the quests give you in-game cash. That’s right, the entire economy in the game is run by one man who buys that crap. All the missions, none of which are unique by the way, (they do a loop so you can pick them up again and again and again) give you the garbage stuff you need to upgrade your Dino, upgrade your guns, upgrade your upgrades.

So lets talk about the upgrades then. Over the course of the game, your dino gets bigger, it gets pointier, supposedly its stats beside health get higher (though I have yet to see it). As you upgrade your ride and weapons, you unlock slots to place implants (for your dino) and mods (for your gun). Here comes that same song and dance though, the implants (there’re 7) and mods (there’re 6) are the exact same ones that every other drop in the bucket gets. They don’t even have any special effects, they’re flat stat bonuses. I implanted my Coelo, and then asked about the set up. 17 PEOPLE HAD THE SAME SET UP! I’m a unique butterfly just like everyone else, its like being an emo at a poetry slam.

So, how about we move on to the “everyone else” part of the game, guilds, RP (Roleplaying), and PvP (Player versus Player). I’ll admit, the game has huge potential for RP, but its all wasted because there aren’t private channels besides tells and there aren’t private zones where you can’t be attacked. Guilds are garbage, you can join a guild, but what’s the point, all that happens is you get dragged into a fight with another guild you’re vegan (you have no beef) with just because one of their guys, or even one of your guys MISCLICKED! Yes, clicking another player leads to PvP, except there is no accepting the challenge. If another player wants to fight, even if he’s 20 levels higher than you, then screw you. There isn’t a way to avoid PvP either, eventually you’re just going to meet captain cockbite.

That’s about all the irritation I have in my system at the moment. OH WAIT, THERE’S MORE! They have the daily rewards like the stupid facebook bubble games. You know how I feel about the stuff you have to use the “premium” coins for when you can earn the coins just by logging in every day? It’s like, “here, pay money for this crap since its so freaking expensive, or keep logging on so we can at least say we have a huge player base.” That kind of reward is like a blowjob, in the prison-rapey, “here’s your reward now swallow it all” sense of the word reward.

They took a great idea and ruined it for an actual experienced company who wanted to make a great game, since I have no doubt a similar game would be met with lawsuits, slander, and mean looks. So once again, browser games shout “Screw you, gamers!” at the top of their lungs, then expect you to bend over and give them a condom made of your money to screw you with.