Highly Annoyed with Primal Planet
Images that precede horrific events
I'm always on the hunt for a new Metroidvania.
I was pretty impressed with Primal Planet from the trailer and the first tiny chunk of gameplay; the controls are fluid, the 'Oh I can clearly see I'm going to need a powerup to get to that thing over there' level design is on point, the pixel art is gorgeous, there's co-op, there's DINOSAURS - this is extremely my shit.
But god damn if a trope after the first real boss fight didn't take me the fuck out of it.
Spoilers for the story follow
if you plan on playing the game and haven't made it to the first objective yet, I'll put a photo of a cat at the bottom you can scroll to instead.
In the opening moments, the caveman protagonist is separated from his family - this is what it is, I expected a sort of long-term quest to reunite with them featuring numerous "hey there they are on the screen! but yooooou can't get to them!!" moments with a reuniting at the very end of the narrative since the co-op character is not one of the family members, it's the pet dinosaur.
And to be fair the above "just missed them" thing does happen once, but then shortly after you actually just fucking reunite with them and they go on the adventure with you! It kinda rules?? The wife's bow and arrow is super helpful for taking down the large fish dinosaurs, there are buttons to allow your kid to ride on your shoulders and a button to hug your wife. The vibes are great!
So like - hell yea, expectations subverted! Right on!
Then shortly after you make it to the Village (your like first major 'objective' after finding your family) there's an escape sequence as the town is burned by skull-wearing bandits, followed by an attack by the spacecraft that have ominously been flying around in the background throughout the game so far. A large one lands and tries to attack you, becoming a boss fight which is kind of annoying given the limited toolset you have at this point in the game, but it abruptly ends with your killing blow to the ship causing it to fall over and brutally crush your wife to death.
There isn't dialog so the scene is this morose "kid and caveman try to get the wife's bloody lifeless body to get up, kid cries a bit, more ships show up to chase you, caveman hands kid a knife once they get to safety and they go off to Kratos and Atreus the stone age".
Within like 30-40 in-game minutes you go from a "find your family" trope to "fridge the Mom" like it's a goddamn disney film and it just feels so fucking needless. And like who knows? Maybe they'll pull an Ori and 'undo' the death later but it'd sure be nice to have "kill of women to spur on male plot" a thing of the past.
I really was having fun with the gameplay, I just couldn't believe we're still doing this.
OK we're beyond the spoiler section; here's the cat
I mean hey, I promised. Please enjoy Bison resting on the stairs next to the light up artificial pink christmas tree our neighbor in the desert gave us that we keep up year-round.
