Review – Exoprimal

Exoprimal, the latest third-person shooter from Capcom launched on the 14th of July and takes players into a Player versus Environment versus Player (PvEvP) battle with a difference as they take on other players and dinosaurs, not only for their own survival, but in a race against another team to survive quicker. The reason I write PvEvP, and not PvPvE will become more apparent as you get further into this breakdown. So, let’s throw facts as fast as the game throws dinosaurs.

Exoprimal initially launches players into a competitive PvE environment as it adds an aspect of another Player, well team of players, throughout key components of the game. Each game is essentially a 15–20 minute race to the finish by two teams of five players which culminates in a PvE or PvEvP focused end-game game mode. This is the first decision that the player must make as they begin the game in ‘how do they want to play this title’. You can select the PvE end-game option, opt for the more competitive PvEvP option or just let the game decide and put you in the next available game, for some bonus XP of course.

In the simplest of terms, the game sees each team complete several objectives in parallel in a race to the endgame. Players then either complete another set of objectives (PvE) or complete a main objective culminating in teams competing in a broader arena while the environment also tries to kill them (PvEvP). This PvEvP endgame sees a variety on offer including familiar objective-based game modes where players can also kill and affect the opposing team directly. Both modes are enjoyable, and the game brings enough variety to keep it interesting.

The player will take on other players, and the environment around them using one of eleven exosuits which provides the player with a variety of offensive and defensive options and can be broken down into three basic classes in Assault, Tank and Support. Each exosuit has a specific set of abilities to address the situation at hand, but each player isn’t stuck with that suit for the whole match as the game allows the player to chop and change on the fly. This is a huge positive when your team lacks a class, or the challenge differs from the previous mission. The other side of this battle, which can also turn the tide of the game are Dominators. These are large player-controlled dinosaurs, randomly selected from a pool of the mini-boss style enemies the player encounters such as a Carnotaurus, Stegosaurus, Triceratops or T-Rex that can enter the other side of the game and create havoc. These drop on the battlefield a small number of times each game and provide the collecting player with a set of attacks to help slow down the opposing team.

The environment and enemies that player’s battle in and against are varied with the variety of locations and difficulty being based on the players progress through the campaign. There are few locations on offer and the variety comes through the various spawn and mission-start points that take players across inner-city and tight cavernous regions. The enemies on offer bring more variety as players battle the grunt-like raptors right through to the mammoth T-Rex and everything in-between.

The controls to pilot these exosuits, and control Dominators, are also very straight forward in the fact that one button is one attack type or ability allowing players of any skill level to pick up and play. The challenges come with the controls later in the game around cooldown timers, timing of abilities and more as the player attempts to be victorious against a challenge that escalates in difficultly and size.

What you see with each exosuit is what you get as each skill is not interchangeable. This doesn’t mean that you can’t customise what’s on offer to overcome challenges though as each exosuit can be enhanced using modules. These modules offer players the ability to enhance various aspects of the character with generic and specific exosuit focused modules that can increase repair rates, durability, recovery and more. This is where the player can fine-tune their suit to their playstyle and gain that competitive edge over their enemies.

One thing that can be easily missed is that there is a significant and interesting story to the game with key aspects of the difficulty and type of battles reliant on its progression. The story’s progression is straight forward in that the more you play the more you discover, but making sure you manually progress key information via the Analysis Map is something easily missed (which Capcom are addressing through player education). These key aspects of the story’s progression also bring with it special story-specific missions all culminating in a key PvE battle by putting both squads against a much more advanced enemy which also brings together all aspects of the game discovered in the lead up. If I can leave one piece of information for all players is to make sure that you check the (story progression screen) regularly to ensure you’re getting the most difficult and interesting battle possible. It is a story worth playing through, and rewatching if you’ve skipped key cutscenes. The campaign took this gamer roughly 20 hours of game time but may be more or less depending on how well you remember to progress the story.

This is a game set in a simulation that brings the killing of dinosaurs and has an M rating for In-Game Purchases, Online Interactivity, Coarse Language and Science Fiction Violence. It doesn’t bring the jump scares and blood-soaked bodies of many other titles that may be targeted at a more mature audience though. What it does bring is stylised deaths and bodies that see pixels float off into the ether as they would in a videogame simulation.

Based on what I have played, this is one that the older children could easily play, and one that is not likely going to offer too many issues for some of the younger ones either. As the game is worth playing, I would recommend parents give a go and make the decision for the younger ones if needed. Playing with family will bring its challenges though as this game provides only multiplayer only and doesn’t bring with it any couch co-op ability at all. The online multiplayer works perfectly well though, and a well-coordinated group of mates can take on, and beat any challenge thrown at them.