Primal Dominion

It’s not every day when you get a game that exudes such raw 80s nostalgia and over-the-top survival action as Primal Dominion. A game that puts you and a team of other survivors against giant carnivore dinosaurs is always going to be a great time – make it double if you can control said dinosaurs in a PvP match like you can in this game.

Following in the footsteps of some of the most successful survival sims of recent years, Primal Dominion aims to shake things up with its stellar presentation and solid gameplay modes. But are all the bells and whistles enough for this game to survive extinction? Let’s find out!

Adapt and Survive

The game takes place in an advanced dinosaur park in the late 90s. As is always the case with this sort of facility, the dinos eventually break free and start gulping everyone on the park’s premises. Your job as a park ranger, other than survive, is to hunt the rampaging reptilians. Sounds easy enough, right? After all, we’ve all played Dino Crisis before.

Here’s where things get interesting with Primal Dominion, though. The game gives you the option to play as the dinosaurs to shake things up a bit. Other than that, you can also play as a mercenary that’s just there to take advantage of all the chaos.

It’s a simple idea that we’ve seen in other titles before, but Primal Dominion definitely fills a niche that’s so easily overlooked these days. After all, dino fans just can’t live on ARK: Survival Evolved alone for all of their dinosaur hunting needs.

As you scale through the ranks of each faction, you’ll be given the chance to improve your weapons and overall lethality, turning you into a force to be reckoned with. Character progression feels natural and fun, making the overall gameplay loop feel more like a fun diversion rather than a grinding chore.

Pve or PvP

While other games, like the aforementioned Ark, feature a main plot that you can complete together with your pals, Primal Dominion takes this idea to the next level, including a fully-fledged campaign that can be enjoyed either alone or online.

Other than that, there’s also the game’s Extraction mode. This works similarly to Subnautica’s Hardcore mode, where the player has a single life to complete all of the tasks the game sends their way.

Additionally, the game features some of the most common multiplayer game modes to keep things interesting. Things like team deathmatch and a dinosaur hunting mode similar to Carnivores are some of the highlights of the whole package.

It’s worth pointing out that, during our time with the game, we ran into some noticeable performance issues. The game looks stunning in almost every circumstance, but this takes its toll even on modern hardware. If you hope to live through this Jurassic experience to its fullest, be sure to come prepared with a beefy rig.

Thankfully, since the game is still in early access, we can expect the performance to get better, and the dinos to get larger as development moves along.

Pros

• Great visuals
• Good selection of guns and dinos
• Entertaining campaign missions and solid multiplayer modes

Cons

• Performance can be somewhat unstable at some points
• Some animations still lack some polish