It’s raining dinosaurs! Exoprimal feels like a Sharknado movie with an oversized budget. We’re tossed into a bonkers future in which (for some reason) purple portals are opening in the skies and thousands of Velociraptors (and the occasional Triceratops, Carnotosaurus, and T-Rex) are falling out of them.
Naturally, this is playing havoc with the whole “human civilization” thing, so the only sensible solution is to develop hi-tech anti-dinosaur ‘Exosuits’ and send brave warriors into the fray to blow apart the prehistoric menace. It’s… well, it’s a pitch alright!
In what’s always a great sign of a game’s quality, Capcom sent out Exoprimal review codes just one day before the official launch. As such, my full review will arrive next week once I’ve beaten the main campaign and put some time into figuring out each Exosuit, though I’ve already played a good few hours and have some early thoughts.
The Good
Exoprimal works. The primary game mode sees two teams of five players competing against each other to achieve objectives first (almost always blasting dinosaurs) before being thrown together in the final moments to achieve one last objective. I had my doubts about combining player vs player with player vs enemy, but you’re only directly competing against real opponents in the final minutes of the match and it really is a nice way to mix things up.
I’ve also played a few rounds with each Exosuit available at launch (there are three further ones locked behind level gates). Each fits a typical video-gamey niche (soldier man, big tanky boy, sniper lady, melee ninja) but though the styles are generic, they all have their own quirks and special abilities to appeal to various playstyles. You won’t know which Exosuits the players you’re teaming up with have picked, but over the matches I played, I never had a dud team (and anyway, you can simply switch suits mid-match if you’re desperate for a healer).
I’m also a big fan of the “Dominator” power-up that’s occasionally accessible to your team. This lets you summon a boss-level dinosaur, take control of them, and then wreak havoc on your opponents. The power fantasy of charging around chomping on the other team is a rush and these higher-level dinos can take a serious beating before going down. The flip side is that it’s terrifying when the other team does it to you, but just that’s the way the cookie crumbles.
The bad
Even after just a few hours, Exoprimal is getting repetitive. The vast majority of my attempts in the core “Dino Survival” mode have been on the same city map, grinding through the same objectives, and finally defending a moving data bank to score a win against the other team.
I assume there are going to be more maps unlocked as I progress, though even having the option to select something else would mix things up a bit. But even if the maps were continually changing up, blasting endless swarms of cannon-fodder velociraptors is already getting boring, and right now it’s not clear if the game is ever going to truly mix things up.
At around 20% into the story, I’m not really feeling that either. I know you don’t come to a game about cyborgs shooting dinosaurs expecting a world-class story, though for the most part, it’s told via static pictures with voiceovers and only an occasional fully-animated cutscene. Maybe the real reason for the dinosaur invasion will shock me to my core, but right now, Exoprimal is firmly in iffy Saturday morning cartoon territory, complete with broadly sketched stereotypical supporting characters.
All that said, I’m looking forward to pouring in a lot of hours over the weekend and figuring out which Exosuit I’m going to main (so far I’m leaning towards the surprisingly engaging Witchdoctor support class). If you have Xbox Game Pass then I’d recommend at least giving Exoprimal a whirl: it’s not as disastrously bad as naysayers predicted and I have a grudging respect for it swinging for the fences with its loopy conceit.
But whether Exoprimal has any longevity remains to be seen. There’s a road map of future content but players will be all too familiar with these turning into broken promises. Right now, I’m quietly hoping this finds an audience, as there’s clearly some gameplay meat under all this high-concept dino crisis story.