Prehistorik feels like a game that was made by a computer artist. I don't know this for sure - I just get that impression from playing it.
This, as it turns out, is not a good thing. For, while the game features nice sharp cartoony graphics, it plays like something rather more amateurish.
Indeed, it seems at times as if the developer hasn't played a game since the early '90s.
Reinventing the wheelMore specifically, Prehistorik plays like one of the myriad sub-par 2D platformers that followed in the wake of the golden period of Mario and Sonic games.
You must know the sort. Lots of pointless knick-knacks to collect, arbitrary goals to meet, flabby, formless levels that go on for far too long. Oh, and terrible, terrible controls.
Our caveman protagonist's movement varies between frustratingly slow and alarmingly quick, depending on whether you've tapped or double-tapped a direction on the virtual joypad. The trouble is, it's easy to activate the latter when you're modifying your orientation.
And you'll feel inclined to do that frequently, as our hero has a disconcerting habit of scooting along the ground an extra few pixels every time you stop running. Not in a weighty Mario-style way, you understand. In a vague glitchy way.
Bit of a dinosaurVarious other platformer no-nos are commited in Prehistorik. Blind leaps of faith, enemies that respawn the second you move away from their immediate location, a general lack of clear direction, and numerous poorly signposted insta-deaths.
It's also a real pain to read the speech bubbles that pass for story and tutorial sections - they scroll in from the right in a hard-to-track, bunched up font. It's enough to give you a headache.
If it doesn't, the game's perplexing humour might. Within the first few minutes you'll have been presented with a poo joke and a frankly bizarre throw-away joke about a flasher and his large club.
We'd say that Prehistorik was aptly named, but that would be to do a great disservice to the many perfectly mediocre also-ran platformers of yesteryear. This is more of a broken fossil.
Prehistorik
A bizarrely stilted, poorly executed 2D platformer that fails to match its sharp art with anything like the same standard of basic mechanics
Jon Mundy
Jon is a consummate expert in adventure, action, and sports games. Which is just as well, as in real life he's timid, lazy, and unfit. It's amazing how these things even themselves out.