The evening sky is littered with smatterings of stars as my fellow exosuit pilots and I stand atop the remnants of a broken highway. On the horizon, yet another portal appears before us prepared to rain down a waterfall of prehistoric nasties. Thousands of prehistoric beasts snarl and claw their way towards us with the single, immovable goal of tearing our party to pieces. With the odds clearly stacked against us, we stare down the threat and live to fight another day. We have no other choice, trapped within the clutches of a hostile AI who wants to flood the world with dinosaurs capable of wiping out humanity. So we do it all again.
Ironically enough, this purgatory in which we’re cornered is meant to be a compelling narrative device, but instead highlights how Exoprimal is so often a clichéd, unimaginative multiplayer experience with only a handful of cool ideas. Its creativity is sadly scuppered by Capcom trying pathetically to chase trends and turn a brilliant concept into a rusted online hero shooter that tries to push boundaries. But its ambition only becomes so painfully repetitive that I was convinced I was playing it wrong. Nope, it’s made that way and somehow manages to light my heart on fire before extinguishing it with a bucket of ice-cold water. A shame, because the highs I came across are still worth writing home about.
You’re the new ace pilot of the Hammerheads, a group of mercenaries consisting of nerdy scientists, buff redheads, and a sexy robot lady called Sandy. A routine mission to the long dormant Bikitoa Island has you crash landing and pulled into a new timeline by ravenous artificial intelligence that has enslaved countless different squads throughout the multiverse into performing the same tasks on the same day for seemingly no real purpose.
Every day you are forced to kill dinosaurs and complete objectives on the same selection of maps with the same arduous tasks in service of gathering combat data for Leviathan as your team on the outside does everything they can to thwart its systems and pilfer information we can use to figure out exactly what brought this island to ruin. The narrative is pieced together after each match in the form of unlockable audio logs and cutscenes within a literal web of lore; you're expected to sit through reams of exposition instead of watching the story unfold naturally in the midst of matches. Thanks to the occasional set piece and some excellent character moments, this does happen from time to time, but there is literally no way of knowing if and when these instances will take place, turning Exoprimal into a mundane waiting game.
The act of killing dinosaurs is mostly thrilling thanks to a generous selection of exosuits to choose from each with their own class archetypes and unique abilities. Like Overwatch, it splits the cast into Assault (i.e. DPS), Tank, and Support roles while encouraging each team to consist of an even split of them all. I grew fond of Nimbus, a Support hero on roller skates with dual pistols capable of jumping between offensive blasts and healing bullets for buffing my allies. Combine this with a warp ability, and you soon become a swift, teleporting mistress of the battlefield capable of dealing as much damage as you heal. There’s also Assault heroes like Vigilant who can snipe from afar while sending out bursts of ice to freeze dinosaurs for a few precious seconds. Tanks are a little more generic but aren’t without their bright sparks thanks to the samurai sword-wielding Murasame who can dive into crowds and cut them to pieces while soaking up damage. Suit variants can be unlocked too, however the gameplay is far from varied enough to justify grinding to unlock them.
Each exosuit has its own levelling system and modules to customise which can completely alter its abilities, and there’s a malleable synergy to squad dynamics capable of turning the whole game on its head if half of the lobbies weren’t filled with bots less than a week after launch. For every unique positive, Exoprimal is drowned by a laundry list of negatives. I’m free to fall in love with the variety of exosuits and find one that perfectly fits my personality, but this all feels fruitless when the single game mode offered becomes tiresome in a matter of minutes. There’s no way of knowing how and when the story will progress either, so there are never any larger scale matches or set pieces to look forward to because it’s so random.
Depending on whether you choose PvP or PvE, you will spawn in one of the very few maps and follow markers before completing objectives that always involve either killing dinosaurs or defending a point on the map.
Eventually you’ll be transported to a final mission where a similar goal must be achieved, but now you’re in the same instance as the enemy team. It turns into a deathmatch against the clock that never does enough for me to forgive what is otherwise a diabolically repetitive moment-to-moment affair. Dominators are a rare saving grace. These pick-ups that allow you to transform into a dinosaur and invade the opposing end of the map, turning matches around with the right amount of ferocity, although once it’s over you’re back to the same, nauseating grind. It could have been cool, and did put a smile on my face the first couple of times I stepped into the hooves of a raging Triceratops, but the excitement quickly fades away, and I’m left with nothing else to look forward to.
The lack of variety is astounding, and having a narrative that centres on a time loop doesn’t excuse game design that recycles the same strong ideas over and over again until all you want is to leave them behind
forever. Exoprimal’s user interface feels akin to a decade-old Call of Duty game while being outfitted with seasonal battle passes and progression for so many different level permutations that it quickly becomes overwhelming. It’s a homunculus made from online design conventions from several different genres except dinosaurs have been thrown in for good measure. I should love this game - all the ingredients are there. But it seems Capcom would rather chase trends than create a game that actually means something.
Exoprimal is a prehistoric relic of its own making, and a harsh but necessary lesson for a developer who has been sitting atop the pile for far too long. Future seasons could salvage the flashes of excellence on display here, but I doubt players will stick around long enough for that to become a reality. And to think we could have had a new Dino Crisis instead.
