Highlights
Exoprimal isn’t your typical hero shooter. While I wasn’t kind to the game in my review, I am sticking with Capcom’s flawed live-service effort to see exactly where the future updates and developing story takes me. It’s already going to strange places, although I’m unsure its bold diversion from industry trends is doing it any favours when the fundamentals are so lacking.
When things will unlock, how many maps it has, or how its gameplay formula will evolve as you level up and advance the story is constantly a mystery. But when that story does advance, Exoprimal goes harder than it has any right to. I’m talking infected matrix dinosaurs where you and nine other players must work together to conquer it before time runs out.
Exoprimal only has a single game mode in the main menu known as Dino Survival. While you’re able to toggle whether the match you load into will be PvE or PvP, everything else is unknown. Which map, objectives, or basically anything else you might come across is a mystery. New maps and gameplay variants are thrown in at random, with narration in the background trying in vain to piece together the narrative reasoning behind these new locations and how exactly they link to mysteries of Bikitoa Island.
You’ll unlock new audio logs and dossiers after every match, each of which tie into not only the unfolding story, but what parts of the game you have access to. None of this is properly explained, so you just have to sort of figure things out as you go and roll with the sudden appearance of ten-player boss battles and fleshy tsunamis of raptors rushing towards you. These set pieces kick so much ass, but their random inclusion is their downfall. Why didn’t Exoprimal think to sell the entire game on this brilliance or at least go ahead and front load some of it to keep us invested? Instead, you’ll need to invest several hours on the same maps using the same exosuits to achieve anything satisfactory.
Capcom has created one of the most visually and mechanically badass dinosaur games in gaming but has decided to lock it within a live-service template that does it no justice - a crying shame when the core foundations are otherwise so compelling. Teamwork and similar dynamics between different exosuits can result in thrilling moments, while taking an innovative approach to single-player storytelling in an online environment stands a solid chance at pushing the medium forward, but not if nobody is playing Exoprimal thanks to its starting hand proving so mediocre. There is very little worth sticking around for because it never tells you what’s coming, it boils down to an obnoxious grind towards the unknown.
Maybe these occasional bright sparks are unfortunate exceptions in a game that fails to justify its $49.99 asking price. Doubly so when that doesn’t even unlock all the playable suits, as many of them are locked behind the baseline player level progression path. And I haven’t even mentioned suit variants, modules, and similar mechanics the Exoprimal isn’t eager to explain, so you’re piecing together the rules of a barebones multiplayer shooter which has more to it, but with no way of knowing you’re bound to leave it behind anyway.
Exoprimal is brimming with worthwhile qualities and untapped potential, and as I keep on playing there are splinters of light bursting forth from the darkness, but I fear the irregularity we’re seeing these ideas delivered and how much work is required to remain invested is bound to be its downfall. Maybe it will attract a cult following, or maybe it will die a sudden, uneventful death of its own making. I just want a good dinosaur game, no strings attached.