Primal Carnage: Extinction

Gameplay

The game has an asymmetrical design with two playable factions: the human team and the dinosaur team. Both have different methods of control and the perspective shifts from first-person as human to third person as dinosaur. Each side comprises several distinct classes, each with its own unique specializations and attacks. Every class possesses a stamina bar that drains when sprinting, jumping, or using certain class-specific abilities. The game uses a more classical life bar system instead of regenerating health, meaning players routinely need to use health items to restore lost hit points.

Dinosaur gameplay

Dinosaurs generally move faster than the human classes, and possess powerful disabling attacks with a number of one-hit-kill abilities. However, their playstyle requires using a higher degree of stealth and agility, meaning stamina management is especially important for dinosaur players. All of the primary dinosaur attacks are melee-based, promoting more close quarters action, with hit and run tactics being favourable. Each dinosaur class has a special Roar Ability that when activated gives a buff to the player or their nearby team mates. Once used, it has a lengthy cooldown before being available again. All dinosaurs must eat to restore their health fully, this is done at various herbivore carcasses placed around the maps, usually a dead Iguanodon or Parasaurolophus. The large Tyrant classes are the only members of the dinosaur team that can restore health purely through eating enemy players. When a dinosaur is low on health, the game's visuals desaturate and nearby carcasses become highlighted in red.

Dinosaur Classes

The main dinosaur classes from the first game return, along with the "premium skin" dinosaurs, now transformed into sub-classes available to all players, each having their own differing statistics and special attacks...

Flyers

Predators

Spitters

Tyrants

Chargers

Unlike the first game, Spinosaurus can now be played in any game mode. Two other dinosaurs, Ceratosaurus and Pachycephalosaurus, were originally planned to be added to the game over time. However, these have yet to be formally announced and the development team have stated adding more classes is beyond their ability for the foreseeable future. Several other dinosaurs such as Brachiosaurus and Parasaurolophus are NPCs in the game that roam outside the playable areas. Compsognathus appears as an AI enemy type in the Survival game mode, which includes a "boss wave" with hordes of the creatures. On the PC version, NPCs can be controlled by the player through cheats.

Human gameplay

Gameplay on the human side takes the form of a first-person shooter, with additional elements such as throwable weapons, placeable land mines and quick melee attacks. The commando, pathfinder, pyromaniac and scientist classes all have equippable backup weapons (desert eagles, flaregun and dartgun respectively). Most human classes can select from a variety of throwables, but the selection from which to choose from differs for each class. These items can be either tertiary weapons such as a tomahawk, or helpful utilities such as ammo and medical kits. Players on the human team can stock up on supplies at health & ammunition crates scattered around the maps. When critically injured or low on ammo, nearby crates become highlighted to the player.

Human classes

All five human classes from the original Primal Carnage are present and expanded in Primal Carnage: Extinction:

Game modes

Primal Carnage: Extinction contained three game modes during Early Access. Circle 5 had an open Trello roadmap where they stated their plans to develop additional game modes as free future downloadable content updates. New gametypes added post-launch include Hunt mode and a re-imagined version of the original game's aborted Capture The Egg mode.

Post-launch:

Customization

Primal Carnage Extinction features extensive cosmetic items for players to customize themselves with both weapon and character skins. This includes all cosmetics from the original game, and ownership of any DLC skins for Primal Carnage prior to purchasing Extinction transfers to the sequel. Extinction has Steam Workshop support, with many cosmetics added to the game being submitted by community members.

The method of obtaining cosmetic items differs depending on platform. The PC version uses the Steam Economy system, rewarding players with a set number of random loot drops per week. The in-game store is the only place to obtain certain items on PC, with some skins only available for limited time purchase. Conversely, the PS4 version offers skin rewards for completing matches as each class and earning trophies, alongside purchasable skin pack DLC. Later updates to the PC side introduced item crafting and a ranking system that provides another way to earn items, with each level up awarding a random skin.

Recode & Genesis

Originally, a single-player prequel to the first Primal Carnage was in development by Lukewarm Media. Dubbed Primal Carnage: Genesis, it was announced as a PlayStation 4 launch title, one of the first to utilize Unreal Engine 4, as was showcased in two tech demos at the 2013 Game Developers Conference. After publicly announcing the game, Genesis ran into production problems as Lukewarm Media did not have the funds or manpower to produce such a large project. Instead, it was decided the team would overhaul the original game, recoding it to allow for faster development and adding new features. After announcing a delay for Primal Carnage: Genesis, the recode became the full focus of the development team, with additional assistance from Melbourne-based Pub Games. However, internal management struggles and a lack of progress after months of work led to the Lukewarm Media team disbanding.

Circle 5 studios, a group of indie developers formed from the modding scene, acquired the rights to future games in the Primal Carnage brand during 2014. A small number of former Lukewarm contractors were hired on by Circle 5 after the transition, with Pub Games providing technical support. The original game was decided to be in too broken of a state to fix, a situation exacerbated because Lukewarm Media had not kept adequate documentation. Despite obtaining the prior company's assets, large chunks of the game's code were either missing or unreadable. Because of this, there would be no future updates to Primal Carnage, which is still on sale in a buggy state by Reverb Publishing, who retains ownership of the first game.

Early Access

On October 27, 2014, Primal Carnage: Extinction was announced for PC & PlayStation 4 as a sequel to the original game. It would be a co-production between Circle 5 and Pub Games. Primal Carnage: Genesis remained on indefinite hold. Like the first game, Extinction was built using Unreal Engine 3, a decision made to accommodate users with low-end hardware. The game launched on Steam Early Access shortly after it had been announced on December 3, 2014. The developers stated their goal was to gather feedback on the game from the community while it was still in development, perfecting its systems and balance in response.

Panic Button Games was brought on to help finish porting the game to PS4 after the intended Q1 2015 release date was missed. Extinction exited Steam Early Access on 4 April 2015. Upon its PC launch, the game had several major bugs, most notably that players would regularly teleport outside of the map upon spawning. Patches were quickly issued to fix this and most of the larger problems, but many smaller bugs remained.

Post Launch & PS4

The first major content update for Extinction was released for the Steam version on June 6. Its key features, including a new playable dinosaur (Acrocanthosaurus), a new AI-based game mode, new weapons and extra cosmetic items were detailed in a promotional micro-site. When interviewed about the PlayStation 4 version's status, producer Aaron Pollack claimed that development was "going very well", and would release later in the year. The importance of having the game run at 1080p 60fps on the console was emphasized. Primal Carnage: Extinction's official PS4 release date was subsequently announced by Panic Button on the US PlayStation blog, along with its ESRB Teen rating. On October 20th 2015, Extinction released for download on the North American PlayStation Store. Despite earlier promises, the game was locked to 30 frames per second on console. It would not launch in Europe for another month, with other territories following significantly later.

With more updates came additional game modes, a ranking system on PC and festive seasonal celebrations, alongside continued bugfixes and balance adjustments. There is an Open Testing beta version of the game available to stress test new features and hone balance. New content is added to the PC release first and is then ported to PS4 by Panic Button at a later date. Although new updates continue to be released, the team size of Circle 5 has shrunk significantly and in November 2016 a new virtual reality game, Primal Carnage: Onslaught, was announced with Pub Games in the lead.

Reception

Upon its official PC launch in April 2015, Primal Carnage: Extinction was heavily criticized for technical problems that were still present after months of Early Access. On TechRaptor, Georgina Young said that, "the concept is awesome," but, "bugs and glitches are rampant," calling the game "virtually unplayable" on MacBook Pro (the game does not officially support Mac) and giving it a 2.5 rating out of 10. Writing for Blast Magazine, Grant Bickelhaupt called it, "a thoroughly good time," however, the balancing was criticized, with the human gameplay described as "punishing." The review gave Extinction 2.8 stars out of 5, with poor ratings in the story and lasting appeal categories.

In a later review for GameGrin, Ryan Davies wrote, "A simple, but fun, FPS that could have been so much better. The dinosaurs are certainly fun, but it won't take long for you to grow tired of the game at large," giving it a score of 6/10. HookedGamers awarded the game a Fun Score of 6.8, praising the dinosaur sound design, saying that it "gives the game an added boost." When describing the game as a whole, the reviewer docked points for clipping issues and having few game modes, noting that, "it does lack that little bit of polish that would make it a great game," but summng up with, "Primal Carnage: Extinction is still worth your time, especially if you love dinosaurs." CanadianOnlineGamers praised the game's dinosaur animations, sound design and music, scoring the game a 70/100 and called Extinction, "A fun dino romp for fans of these giant (and not-so-giant) lizards. It doesn’t really bring anything else new to the table in the team deathmatch genre, but what it does bring, it does it well."