Bloody Roar: PRIMAL FURY! - Haven't We Seen This Game Many Times Before?

Wow, I seem to be playing an awful lot of Gamecube games lately. It's a good thing my friend and I have different systems of else we'd never get to try both sides of the proverbial gaming coin. Now if only I could find a kid who has an X-Box. Anyway, wow, second Gamecube review. And it's Bloody Roar: Primal Fury but the title right off the bat lies to you. There's no blood in the game. A game that lies to you through its teeth right from the beginning can't be good can it? No, didn't think so. What is really sad is that as soon as this new age fighter starts to pump up the action, it instantly turns into a bad Primal Fear rip-off. You remember that game with the fighting dinosaurs where you could throw people at each other. Oh the memories...

Bloody Roar - Primal Fury is a simple enough concept. It's a fighter with the standard tournament plotline. It's not even a real smart plotline as far as fighters go. Basically there are 2 kinds of people. People who can change into vicious animals and people who can't. Regular Humans and these "Zoanthrophes" have lived together and nothing bad ever happened. It was all hunky dory until a few stupid humans stole some Zoanthropes and started testing on them. So what do the Zoantrophes do? They sponsor a tourney for all the Animal-Changers to fight in of course. Makes perfect sense doesn't it? Yeah, I thought so. There are about 14 characters to choose from, all with their own unique "Beast Form" to morph into.

All the usual gaming modes are here. Arcade, Versus, Time Attack, all that good stuff. There's a nice training mode but since BR:PF is more of a button masher than a complex fighter like Virtua Fighter 4, you won't need it. I'd like to think of it as Super Street Fighter 2 Ultra meets The Zoo. The basic set-up of choosing your fighter and taking them through the circuit of beating the crap out of everyone who looks at you wrong is of course the biggest area of play. The game borrows obvious staple moves from others games, like Down-Down Forward-Forward Punch executes a fireball and so on and so forth. That's not really what concerns me though, because every game does that, what BR:PF does is give us the beast morphs.

As I said, every character has their own special beast morph. Whether it be a bat, an elephant or that Ponju looking rabbit, everyone has a demonic animal side waiting to be unleashed. My first time through I picked Jenny, yes I usually pick the little schoolgirl in the video game fighters. Why? Well, I think it's just the best thing in the world when you're playing a friend and the small little 15 year old girl kicks the crap out of the Shoalin Drunken Master. But that's just me. So anyway, say I pick Jenny, the nice quaint little schoolgirl who of course is well-endowed (Japanese Makers, *shrug*) and she looks like she couldn't hurt a fly. Halfway through the battle I decide to time to totally own, and with the press of a trigger, I instantly morph into a huge hulking beast of an animal and totally kick @$$.

So lil' ol' Jenny, cute, diminutive and nice by nature suddenly turns into a monster and starts womping on your @$$, looks can be deceiving eh? Bloody Roar: Primal Fury is fun because you can totally warp the tides and turn the tables on your opponent, and in a very cool way too I might add. Really though, that's all the game brings to the table. As soon as you get past that fact, it's just your normal adequate fighter. 14 fighters is a good amount but the single player mode will soon bore you. Versus mode is enough to satisfy you for a while if you have a friend or two.

The graphics are everything we've come to expect from Gamecube. From the glass to the neon signs in the street stage, everything looks luminous and vibrant. Most of all, the fighters looks amazing. Xion, the Devil May Cry look-alike is very nicely modeled and detailed. Long, the tiger morpher looks just as fine, with his brilliantly shaded suit and reflective glasses. The real sparks begin to fly when you morph into your animal. An electrical surge surrounds your fighter (another Devil May Cry gimmick, stolen from Dante when he powers up) and engulfs him in a light mist. Running at a supreme 60 Frames Per Second, the action looks crisp and never lets up for a moment. The lighting effects for the game are pretty decent too, especially for a Chameleon Morph where your character becomes transparent and reflective of things for a brief time.

If you've read my past reviews, you'll see I have a certain distain for the GC's controller, mostly because of its D-Pad and placement of other idiotic buttons that really aren't needed but here, it works. The reason is because you only use the Analog Stick and the other main buttons, there's no use for the other few buttons wandering around on the controller. The combo system if not a bit overused from other fighters works well here and it's easy enough to pummel your opponent quickly.

In the end, Bloody Roar: Primal Fury isn't really anything special and is pretty ho-hum in the world of superior Gamecube titles. It's still light-years ahead of any fighter ever released on the N64 but that's not saying much. Maybe with a few unlockable secrets and secret characters the game would be more fun but you drop the controller after just a few hours. The game doesn't pull you in enough to finish it with every character either. The only redeeming factor is the Beast Morphs which even get old after a while.

It may just be me, but I think the game would have radically been better if a Fatality system was implemented. The beasts could kill the other fights using different animal styles and such. Or maybe I'm just stupid. I'm not sure either. Oh well, this is a solid rent but a horrible buy, heed my advice.