Exoprimal – Review

Exoprimal has been on my radar for months before release, but now it’s finally here, it joins the unfortunate list of being the worst kind of my favourite games.

In the world of Exoprimal, the near future is blighted by the discovery of a unique energy source, that can fix the worlds energy crisis in a heartbeat. Naturally the only way for Albias corporation to harness such power, is to spawn hundreds thousands of dinosaurs and when killed, harvest the energy cursing through their veins.

Obviously filling the Sahara desert with camels was out of the question, but at least they’ve created Exosuits to help eliminate the dinosaurs, in 2040, these experiments went slightly haywire and caused what’s known as the Bikitoa incident, and now you’re thrown back (and forward’s) through time, to relive those experiments, thanks to our friendly AI known as Lethiation.

Lethiathon is hell bent on collecting the valuable data produced, to create the ultimate exosuit (which will obviously make harvesting the energy, and keeping the world alive much more efficient (maybe global domination by AI machines, isn’t such a bad thing after all).

Our protagonist, Ace, is thrown into a group called the Hammerheads, there’s a mixture of personalities which seem a little superficial and stereotypical at first, but as you progress through the game, you’ll learn plenty about the Chief, Maj, Alders and the onboard AI robot Sandy.
While there’s no long narratives mixed with AAA set-pieces, you’ll find pieces of the story well-delivered every few battles as everything starts to unfold, there’s a handful of antagonists to deal with, but this is mostly seen through the story presentation with just a handful of “boss” fights scattered in when you reach certain milestones.

Actual gameplay is one impressive aspect, as you’re thrown into the map, with a few objectives at hand, cull dinosaurs, defend a point, simple straight-forward tasks, with only a few thousand blood-thirsty dinosaurs in your way.

There’s a total of 11 suits (at launch), each providing a very different approach to one of 3 classes, Tank, DPS or Support. Two that stood out for me where Vigilant, the DPS sniper and Skywave, probably the least popular support character, but after getting used to her slow projectile speed, I felt equally at home with both characters offering a vertical aspect to keep the team healed, or with Vigilant, the opportunity to work away at larger targets.

Each match is built with 2 teams of 5, the game is designed as PvPvE (Player vs player, vs environment), so while you’re dealing with the environment (thousands of dinosaurs) you’ll have the end section of each mission where you’ll also have to content with the enemy team.

There’s also a “PvE” option, which makes that end stretch a race to the finish line, rather than spending ten minutes shooting at each other, but there’s always PvP elements at play.
Personally, (while I much prefer co-op play) I never found the competitive aspect too daunting, most of the exosuits are incredibly well balanced, and win or lose, you’ll still harness some valuable data for Lethiathon and be rewarded with existence and the chance to carry on fighting again and again.

As well as progressing through the storyline, you’ll increase your player level, which has a selection of rewards to claim, including warchests which give you three random cosmetics, and there’s a survival pass (which works similar to any other season pass), which is the only in-game microtransaction, giving you a 3-month season with premium rewards, which are generally more fruitful than most battle passes will give you, with a high-tier exosuit skin and weapon skin available for all suits.

Before looking at the negatives, it’s worth confirming how fun Exoprimal is to play, even with 4 completely random people on your team, it always feels like a team effort, and there’s a few set-pieces within missions that will leave you in awe, such as watching hundreds and hundreds of Raptors spawning in the distance and charging towards you… It’s chaotic mayhem, it’s fun, rewarding and generally looks fantastic and the overall audio is great too.
I’m not going to peep at every pixel, but when a game can look like this, while throwing hundreds of dinosaurs on screen, it’s an impressive graphical feat, some websites will point out that there’s a loss of detail when you’re jumping, shooting and looking at more than 73 dinosaurs, but let’s be honest, nobody really cares about that, when 99% of the time, you’re going to be more bothered about not getting your face chewed by a T-Rex.

There’s various dinosaurs small and large, the smaller Raptors and Ptera’s are easier to kill, but deadly in numbers, while larger beasts like the Anklosaurus, Carnotaurus and Triceratops are just a few to join the ultimate threat of the T-Rex. Many of these can be controlled by the enemy team when a “dominator” is randomly awarded by Lethiathon, which adds another threat to that final stretch of both PvE and PvP missions.

Sadly though it’s not all fun and exploding dinosaurs, as there’s one area that’s not just stopped Exoprimal scoring considerably higher, but it’s also lead me to delete the game off my heard-drive.

It will take many people about 30-35 hours to work through the entire story, and there’s a lot of fun in doing so, I’ve enjoyed using the various exosuits, there’s some really great unique missions (which are sadly so unique, you could play for hours and not see one, and then have a few close together the next day) and there’s the recently added “Savage Gauntlet” which promised pure “PvE” with just a single 5-suit team against insurmountable odds and lots of angry dino’s…

But beyond that… There’s really not much at all.

Having carefully studied the road-map, we’ve got new “Alpha Variants” of each exosuit – coming in August, but I’m struggling to find any excitement about doing the same thing again and again in a slightly different way. I’ve spent so much time enjoying Vigilant and Skywave, play time with other suits is minimal, so throwing another variation of each at me, just doesn’t leave me excited for the next few months.
I was really hoping Savage Gauntlet would provide more content, especially with the promise of “new missions every week”, but it’s not “Missions” it’s been a single mission that feels VERY similar to the base game, and was finished in 7 minutes… 7 minutes of content, each week, on the same map, doing the same things, just doesn’t bode well for the future.

It’s worth noting this is season 1, in October when Season 2 launches, there’s the promise of a new map as well as a street Fighter cross-over, maybe the Survival pass will be a little more than the 50 levels it currently offers and maybe that new map will offer enough variety to bring me back, but after completion of the story, there’s just not enough right now to keep me coming back.

One saving grace, is Xbox Gamepass, If only available as a £50 purchase, I fear things could have been a lot worse for Exoprimal, but when so many people can play, with the Gamepass subscription it gives the game enough legs to carry you to at least story completion and 30+ hours of gameplay.

Some might think the future looks bright, others will feel that the roadmap just doesn’t offer enough content in the near future, but any game that provides so much fun to play, while remaining pretty unique is well worth considering.

For me, Expoprimal sits beside Rainbow Six Extraction a game I looked forward to, played to death until completion, but struggled to find the enthusiasm to play after that. Sadly, Extraction hasn’t improved much, There’s been improvements and additions over the last 18-months, but not enough to pull me back to a game I played for many hours, every day during those first few weeks.

I truly hope Capcom can come up with enough content to keep Exoprimal growing moving forward, but right now, while it’s easy to recommend for a week or two, I just couldn’t list it as a game I feel most will still be playing beyond that.

If you’re after some mindless fun, shooting hundreds of dinosaurs, while working through a well delivered storyline, Exoprimal is sure to please, but if you’re expecting it to last more than a few weeks you may be left disappointed.

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