Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Release Date: July 14th, 2023
Released For: Playstation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series, and Windows
Live Service, for like of any better way to say this, is here to stay in the video game industry. With the growing costs of development and a shifting landscape of constant acquisitions of course every publisher, Even Capcom, is chasing that one game that can financially offset their others. Exoprimal, unfortunately, is not that game.
To be fair, I wasn’t hyped for Exoprimal. In actuality, I had actually forgotten that the game was still coming until it was only a week away. There is something to be quietly excited about when it comes to a hoard shooter where you and your friends team up to fight waves of dinosaurs however and I was holding out hope this would surprise me. There was about an hour in there where it actually did but soon that excitement went downhill, and fast.
There’s A Story Mode In There!?
To dissect this mess you first need to understand that the game actually has a story. And not just a story, no no, a Single-Player that meshes with the multiplayer (the central construct of the experience) like oil mixes with water. It’s like watching two cats in an alley fighting over scrap food, it’s just that bad.
The story consists of two info-drop styles, all jarring in their own almost infuriating way. The first of these is cutscenes. These are the most palatable as you watch you and your crew attempt to escape the clutches of Leviathan, an AI forcing you into dino-killing war games, and Bikatoa island where you all crash-landed. These scenes almost always play out in the ship you landed, leading to a very stagnant feeling as, beyond the ever so often crazy reveal it feels like nothing is actually happening. At times I even zoned out for moments, only to return minutes later and not having actually lost any major trend.
Some cutscenes actually play out before, after, or even during missions. After joining a match, if a player is at the trigger point, or all players have passed it, story missions will enter player rotation. These scenes are unskippable (everybody’s favorite kind I know) and can take multiple minutes to get through, and once in rotation, you can logistically get these missions multiple times in a row as I was so lucky. There is also no synching when playing with friends. This means if each player is at different points in the story your friend can get a cutscene while you wait in limbo of lackluster customizations (more on that later) waiting for permission to start the next round.
The second Info drop is through lost data that your character gets after mostly every match. You can claim these through the archive section in your lobby, any annoying and arbitrary menu that feels even worse when you realize what the game is missing. These simply show dialog between characters in bland, Metal Gear-style codex sequences. These moments also play out for what could be 5 minutes and offer rather little to fully expand the experience. A strand of lost data scenes, for instance, revolves around a screwdriver used by a lead character… And it really doesn’t get deeper than it sounds.
Let The Wargames Begin
The core of the gameplay loop is also far too repetitive to realistically last. You pick an exosuit, which acts as a class for your character. These suits make up one of the shining points in the game as there are ten to choose from and they do change up your playstyle. They are divided into three types, attack for high damage, tank for mob control, and healers to keep your party of 5 alive. These suits can also be changed mid-match so you can always play to a smart team composition, or switch based on what role you want to fill.
From there, you jump into a wave-based multiplayer match where you attempt complete objectives faster than an opposing team that is in the same match, just not in the same instance of it. Once a team completes the first set of objectives they are sent to a final round. One of the misleading things in the game is that, while there will be a PvE mode added on the 28th of July, there is no true PvE mode in the game yet. The options for the sole mode in the game Dino Survival list PvP, Random, and PvE these all involve you competing against a second team. The only change is that the final round will feature direct combat in one, while the other is simply playing more waves while trying to beat the other team. Dominators, which allow players to invade the other team’s space as a Dinosaur, appear and work in both further making this feel like a poor choice for identification.
Your first round or two will feel awesome. A vortex opens up, dinosaur hoards pour from the sky, and you start blasting as best you can to clear them all. This fun fades fast. For starters, the massive dino hoards the game promised never seem to materialize. In most waves, you have a set list of kills to achieve which usually include 1 or 2 large dinosaurs and a set amount of smaller enemies. The smaller hoards can range from 100 to 300 which never feels grand or epic. Split 5 ways with your team this is maybe 25 kills a person. There are moments where you battle way larger numbers and even have an objective number of over 1000, but those are few and far between moments that are locked between hours of bland repetition to unlock story beats. Even after you have unlocked them they will not often come up on the rotation.
All of this is further compounded by the fact that the game has exactly zero stat tracking available in it which would be a bafflingly bad choice for a developer that has never made a game like this before, but it’s not like Capcom has not tried dipping their toes in the live service genre before with titles like Resident Evil Re:Verse or Umbrella Corp. The best you can do is check post-round medals to get a rough estimate of your kills, but don’t expect to find ANY form of running tally for kills or heals any place in the game. This will be especially hard for people looking to complete the games Trophy/Achievement list, but even for the average gamer just trying to see if they are doing well in heals will have a bad time.
All of this is a shame because the limits that the developers put on the game hold it back. Want to enjoy Dinosaur slaying? Only the meager amount we let you. What to check stats in order to change your play style or measure if you are making skill progress? None for you. It’s ultimately not a good look that hinders the experience by leaps and bounds. Hopefully, their added modes bring the experience back but that also works against it. The game doesn’t feel fully fleshed out now and now is going to influence my willingness to give it a chance later. I hope they do fix these issues and in a year I’m eating my words but given the state of Japanese live service games this year (Babylons Fall and Gundam Evolution both dying and others set too) I really question if the usual Capcom crossovers they have mapped out will be enough to salvage the idea.
Verdict
There is something here, and maybe that’s the worst part about this. All I wanted was stupid fun mowing down dinosaurs but the game constantly gets in its own way. The story would be Ok, or at least slightly passable if it didn’t constantly get in the way of the multiplayer component that feels like a big part of the always-online game. And even when it doesn’t the repetitive nature of the game will almost undoubtedly lead to burnout and fatigue after only a few hours, and that’s before the absurd limits on most levels keep the combat from becoming god forbid intense. Add to that the lack of stat tracking like every other modern live-service title and what you have is a quickly forgettable blip in the 2023. But hey, Capcom just needs this to last till Dragons Dogma 2 anyway
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Reviewed For PlayStation 5: Also Available For PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X, Windows PC
Exoprimal Is a 5v5 competitive hoard shooter from Capcom. The player fights both waves of dinosaurs and other players to win matches.
Pros:
Diverse Suit Types
Some Fun With Friends
Cons:
Repetitive
Invasive Story
Boring Wave Caps
No Stat Tracker
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EXOPRIMAL
