I’m a huge fan of twin-stick shooters going back to the original twin-stick game for the home console, Ape Escape. When the PSN went down two years ago, one of my free game downloads was Dead Nation. I absolutely loved that game. It was an isometric camera version of Left 4 Dead. It wasn’t a zombie simulation as much as it was an arcade shoot-em-up.

When I picked up DNS Development’s Primal Fears, I was hoping for largely the same thing except with keyboard and mouse. The trailer showed that it was fairly arcade-inspired with enemies dying in massive explosions and/or bursting apart under a hail of gunfire. A trailer wouldn’t lie to us right?

The story is for this game is told through newspapers that are left on the ground for you to find. As you progress the story pieces itself together. As such, the game may or may not have a story for you beyond shoot zombies and run forward. However, if you’re interested, this game uses the tried and true story of pesticide chemicals causing mutations leading to zombies. That means that you get to fight humanoid enemies and giant mutated ladybugs too.

As I said, the gameplay is pretty straight forward. You materialize at the start of a level and progress through it until the end which comes when you kill the level’s bosses. The locations vary but the premise doesn’t change. Run through the various zombie-filled areas until the level ends. You’ll occasionally have to pick up an item to progress like a key card or explosives. Using one of those requires holding the action key (default F) for about five seconds to make something happen. That length of time is oddly fitting for this game.

While the level design is uninspired and story is virtually non-existent, the combat is where this game takes a sharp turn for the worse. Movement is almost like a third-person shooter. While it looks like an isometric camera shoot-em-up, your cursor determines not only where you shoot but which direction is forward movement when you push the W key. This is a problem because you move faster going forward than backward but like a sloth when strafing left and right. Your character has a stamina bar but it last about two seconds of sprinting and takes an eternity to recharge. Basically, moving your character isn’t very well executed, either.

Weapons are utterly worthless. You start with an assault rifle and shotgun. The weakest of enemies need five shots from the slow-firing assault rifle to down one of them. The shotgun is usually a one-hit kill for the base enemies. The problem is that the shotgun’s base clip is two and you’re seldom faced with fewer than five enemies at a time. That’s why the movement and sprinting difficulties are such a major issue.

The weapons are upgradeable through the in-game store. Money is earned through finding it or killing zombies. The problem is that, again, your weapons are woefully underpowered. Even weapons that you would think are high damage like grenades and missile launchers aren’t guaranteed one-hit kills for anything above the base enemy type. The problem is that you can only get ammo through the store and you need ammo because your weapons are so weak that you go through a lot of it. For some reason, ammo costs the same whether you’re buying one shotgun shell or your max carrying capacity. Try explaining that. Also, health drops are annoyingly rare and health is the one thing you can’t buy through the store.

So if you can’t move very well and your weapons are terrible, how do you keep from getting killed? Not very well, actually. The only strategy to employ is to fall back as far as the game will let you. Fortunately, the enemy AI isn’t too bright. You’ll get swarmed but enemies will often run past you which gives you a momentary break. It seems that they have the same eight movement directions you have (up, down, left, right and the diagonals). They can also hit you if they start they’re melee attack within about five feet of you. That also includes through walls. Yes, the enemies can hit you through walls. The big enemies can phase through doorways that they shouldn’t fit through so no using doorways as a barrier to keep the enemies off you.

Progression in this game isn’t story based. (Like I said, telling a story wasn’t a priority for the devs. Quite frankly, I think they would have been better off not attempting any story elements.) In order to advance to the next level, you have to earn enough points from killing zombies to unlock the next level. When I finished playing through the first level, I was about 4,000 points short of the threshold to unlock the second level. Yes, this game doesn’t let you progress if you aren’t up to its arbitrary standard. And, yes, I had to force myself to pick the game back up after that. It’s not a good first impression Primal Fears makes.

The game does have online co-op for up to four players. However, when my sister asked if me if I thought she should buy this game, I told her not to. As much as I wanted to give the multiplayer component a try, I didn’t want to buy the four-pack to give copies to friends nor did I want to make anyone I know blame me for wasting $10 of their money on this.

Graphics and audio are poor. The graphics aren’t terrible. There are some dynamic shadows from your flashlight but all other shadows are at a fixed angle. Animations are stiff. The user interface for the store is bad as you have to scroll through the individual items rather than click through a list. Mind you that’s only an issue because using the store doesn’t pause the game. The textures aren’t bad. Mind you, the camera is zoomed out so far that any detail is lost on you, even if the textures are next-gen good, though I doubt it. Most sound effects are what I’d expect if I was listening to the game through a telephone. They’re muffled and lack any bass. The only clear sound is the death screams of the larger swollen ladybug zombies.

For all the problems that one can find with this game, the most unforgivable is the camera. As I’ve mentioned, it’s an isometric camera view which is almost but not quite top down. The problem is that the camera has no autopan and the terrain has no transparency. Therefore, if you get too close to a building, you can disappear behind it and not see where you or the enemies are. Normally, this sort of game would make the buildings translucent or give characters glowing outlines so you can see what’s happening. Primal Fears does no such favours.

Conclusion

The only thing that truly scares me about Primal Fears is playing it. It’s not that there’s scary stuff in the game, like you would find a Dead Space, BioShock or any one of the many well executed zombie or horror games. I mean I actually don’t want to play this game. I was ready to give up after beating but being stuck on the first level.

While the game is functional, that doesn’t mean it’s good. When you see a horde of mutated insects and zombies, you shouldn’t have to back pedal because you don’t have adequate firepower to mow even the base level enemies down without wasting a quarter of your assault rifle’s clip. There’s a time and place to run away from enemies so you don’t get killed. The time and place isn’t the whole damn game.

Normally, I can find something redeemable in a game. I can’t here. It’s playable. That’s it.

TL;DR? Don’t buy this game. If you did, ask for a refund. If you see this game on sale, wait until the discount is at least 75%. Even at $5 (or 50% off), you’re overpaying. In the theme of Inauguration Week, the only thing we have to fear is Primal Fears itself.

RATING: 2.5/10

Primal Fears is available exclusively on PC. Your impressions may change based on your computer’s specs, if you play solely in co-op mode and your sanity.