Capcom might have raised the hopes of many when the initial footage of Exoprimal showcased a main character with red hair and plenty of dinosaurs to shoot, but much to the chagrin of many, this isn’t the Dino Crisis reboot that the streets were hoping for. After that initial disappointment, Exoprimal faces an uphill battle to establish itself within the already crowded multiplayer shooter/live service market, and while Exoprimal is incredibly fun, its long-term shelf life could see it going extinct before its time, either due to its repetitive nature or its steep asking price.
Set in the year 2043, you control the exosuit pilot known as Ace, who’s recently been assigned to the Hammerheads, a ragtag bunch of likeable misfits who are unfortunately forced to crash land on the island of Bikitoa. Almost immediately, Ace is then kidnapped by an AI called Lethiavan, who essentially forces Ace to travel back in time and compete in perpetual wargames against dinosaurs and other exosuit pilots, all to generate that sweet, sweet combat data.
A multiplayer PvPvE shooter, Exoprimal blends together horde and hero shooters to create something that’s fairly unique in the multiplayer landscape. Players form teams of 5 and enter these wargames, aiming to complete a series of PvE objectives faster than the other team. Eventually, the two teams will reach a final objective, which are either more PvE objectives, or are objectives which pit the two teams against each other, with the fastest team earning the victory.
Multiplayer games with stories that develop as you play are a rare breed, with Exoprimal perhaps being most reminiscent of the original Titanfall in that sense. However, Exoprimal has the good sense to make sure your progression through the story isn’t tied to how well you play. Just playing matches and earning EXP is enough for you to make your own story progress, meaning you’re not stuck in situations where you’re leaving and joining games because you need one win on a specific map.
As you progress through the story, learning more about the core mystery at the center of Exoprimal, the wargames themselves increase in intensity and ferocity, throwing new enemies, objective types, maps and other hazards at you. This makes Exoprimal a game that rewards those who are willing to stick with it, especially as you reach the halfway point as there’s a mission which completely flips the game’s rulebook on its head, making for a truly memorable moment.
The issue though is that these special missions can be few and far between, meaning for the most part, you’re doing the same old dinosaur culling missions with the basic dinosaur types, because the game has decided to match you with new players. If we had to guess, it seems like Exoprimal prioritises matchmaking to newer players, in order to ensure they progress through the story and unlock the better content, but that approach can easily lead to monotony for veteran players hoping to unravel the game’s mystery.
Exoprimal is a game that asks a lot of its player base, demanding they sink a good amount of hours into the game in order to unlock the tougher challenges, stronger enemies and more interesting missions. It’s a bold choice for a multiplayer game to gate its content in this way, as new players might just get bored with the same old content without even reaching the actual highlights of the game.
It’s a good job, then, that the core gameplay of Exoprimal is a lot of fun. Players can pick exosuits from one of three classes, covering the standard archetypes of tank, DPS and healer. Tanks are all about big health pools and drawing aggro from the huge dino hordes, while DPS have a wide range of abilities at their disposal to deal massive damage, whether that’s at range or by getting stuck into the thick of it. As for healers/support, they have the most impact on matches, ensuring a team stays alive while dealing out status effects that can mess up both dinosaurs and hostile players alike.
Facing down legions of dinosaurs is undoubtedly the highlight of Exoprimal, as nothing can quite beat the thrill of facing down a horde of a thousand raptors, or the team banding together to take out a really powerful threat like a T. Rex. When it’s just players vs AI, Exoprimal is at its peak, but when other players start being added into the mix, the game becomes a bit too chaotic. Trying to contend with the dino threat alone can be quite hectic, never mind when you have to engage in team fights or deal with Dominators, player controlled dinosaurs that can absolutely barrel through an entire team.
Fortunately for players who don’t want to bother with direct PvP, there is an option to play only PvE missions, but that does severely limit the pool of missions you can undertake, meaning those players will likely get bored even quicker. If Exoprimal is going to survive long-term, some new modes, objective types and maps are a must, and that’s without getting into potential new exosuit types and other content.
As much as there’s fun to be had in Exoprimal, it’s hard to escape the feeling that the game is a one trick pony. Once you’ve seen the spectacle of thousands of dinosaurs trying to maul your team at once, the effect wears off somewhat. There’s only so many times you can play the same hits over and over again before the player becomes bored, and while that might come at different times for some players, without new and interesting content, it will happen eventually.
Perhaps where most people will really run afoul of Exoprimal though is its pricing. For £50/$60, you’re looking at an online-only multiplayer game that doesn’t even have the decency to give you all the exosuits from the start, as you unlock three of them at levels 20, 30 and 40. You could purchase a Head Start Pack from your respective digital store though, which gives the game this scummy, pay-to-win feeling. The unlockable tank Murasame and support Nimbus in particular are quite strong, which doesn’t help that scummy feeling.
On top of that, there’s the Survival (see: Battle) Pass, which adds 50 tiers of cosmetics and other content, which is another charge for an already full priced game, one that you’ll have to keep making every few months if you’re planning on playing Exoprimal long-term. You could make the argument that Street Fighter 6 is also a full price game with these microtransactions too, but at least SF6 can offer a fully-fledged game alongside this additional content.
Really, Exoprimal might have just been better off as a free-to-play game, as it seems right now that the only reason it’s enjoying a healthy player base is because it’s on Xbox Game Pass.as most if not all games seem to be filled with Xbox players exclusively. As soon as Capcom removes it from Game Pass, Exoprimal is probably going to be dead in the water, meaning that the story content on offer here, which is genuinely interesting and worth checking out, will be extinct, and that’s without talking about live service games that have been sunsetted in the past.
If you’ve got Xbox Game Pass, playing Exoprimal is basically a zero loss commitment, and you should check it out, as you might find a new multiplayer game to enjoy with your friends. However, Exoprimal is a hard one to recommend if you’re planning on buying it, especially because it feels like the asteroid of delisting is looming over this dinosaur’s head.
A digital deluxe edition code for Exoprimal was provided by PR for the purposes of this review.
READ MORE: Will We Ever See Dino Crisis 4?
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