Dino DNA
For several years now, Capcom has been on a bit of a winning streak, delivering one hit after another. From the latest entries in Monster Hunter to Street Fighter, and Resident Evil, it seemed that Capcom was not only back to form, but in due part to largely sticking to franchises that seem to be safe bets. However, all that has changed now due to the bizarre existence of Exoprimal, a multiplayer experience that sees you piloting Exo-suits to combat time-traveling dinosaurs while attempting to escape an island taken hostage by a murderous AI. While Exoprimal’s premise does make for a wild ride, it’s not the smoothest one, that’s for sure.
While fans might have hoped that Exoprimal would be in some way connected to 1999’s cult hit Dino Crisis, especially given that a certain character is literally the spitting image of its heroine, Exoprimal is nonetheless an entirely separate experience that almost feels like Capcom’s own version of Overwatch, given the class-based hero characters and its similar objective-based multiplayer. It certainly feels like its influences don’t end there, but for the most part, this is Capcom’s attempt to enter into the hero shooter space.
Taking place in two time periods; 2040 and 2043, Exoprimal has you taking on the role of an Exofighter, a soldier outfitted with a mechanized rig that was tested and perfected against swarms of dinosaurs, pulled into our world through a series of temporal vortexes. Each mission has you pulled back to 2040, on a day that has great importance to the events that are now transpiring. And you are not the only ones pulled back to this day as separate realities are also connected to this disturbance, pulled in through these same vortexes, as they weave in and out of the main story. This whole ordeal is the plot of Leviathan, a murderous AI that has taken you, your crew, and this whole island hostage. While Exoprimal’s whole story isn’t as creative as this initial concept, it does certainly have its moments, even if I feel that most players are simply going to skip it.
To further push players away from the story is how Exoprimal delivers it. As you return from missions, regardless if you are successful or not, you’ll unlock key data files that start to illustrate just exactly what went wrong and how you just might be able to destroy Leviathan and go home. The problem isn’t with the story but how it’s piece-mealed to you. As you collect smaller files they will eventually start to provide enough context for major moments to occur. These moments are usually in the form of fully acted cutscenes, instead of the codec-like face panels that are provided with voice-overs. While many of those are pointless events about a screwdriver or just random chatter, the moments when this game is focused on its story are good but are simply too few.
It also doesn’t help matters that the Database menu itself is the most bizarre thing I’ve seen a game attempt to do with telling its story. Thankfully, there is a button to click at the bottom left to simply play the next cutscene or conversation, instead of using the controller to move a cursor around to tiny nodes that feel more designed for a mouse, which to be honest, is a criticism I have for the whole UI. Regardless, this whole narrative structure on how the files connect is a nice idea, but the visual representation of that idea is just not well executed here.
As you create your own personal Exofighter, you’ll be transferred to a ragtag group called the Hammerheads, comprised of some pretty enjoyable personalities. However, before you meet them, you’ll use the pretty limited creation suite to customize your own pilot. After playing dozens of hours in Street Fighter VI, I was pretty disappointed in the tools here to create your own character. There are very limited face and hair options that really prevent you from creating someone that isn’t the ugliest protagonist I’ve seen in some time. And due to the limited options here, I must have seen other players using my exact character at least a dozen times, right down to the same mark on their face and identical hair color and style.
When it comes to the Hammerheads, you have a few characters that will be with you every step of the way, especially one that feels as if Capcom is having a laugh with its fans, teasing them maybe a bit too much. From your leader in Lorenzo to the smart-ass engineer in Alders, you also have Sandy, an AI model android who handles everything from combat support to personal counseling. However, the last member of the team is Majesty, a woman who is the spitting image of Regina from Dino Crisis, albeit with a completely different accent and heritage, but wearing the aesthetic of the character down to a T. Capcom certainly knew what they were doing as fans immediately assumed this was Regina when the game was first revealed, only to be let down by this intentional coincidence.
Currently, at launch, Dino Survival is the only available mode, playable either in PVP or PVE, even if the entirety of what Exoprimal offers is nonetheless PVPVE. Dino Survival sees two teams of five Exofighters racing through objectives to come out on top as you stop at predetermined intervals to cull a large-scale force of raptors, triceratops, pteranodons, pachycephalosaurus, and many more. You can select whether the final battle is a PVP affair or just more of the same PVE gameplay, largely completing the same basic objectives all over again. You can also let fate decide and make it random if you like as well. While the PVP aspect of that Battle isn't anything new, I strongly believe that the game is in need of some balancing to make those encounter even remotely engaging.
As you make your way throughout the game, you’ll often have some missions dig into parts of the story, such as following a character named Magnum around as he gathers data, to taking on massive threats that see both teams acting as one unit, complete with limited respawns and a timer, even if one of these encounter is an absolute shit-show. These story battles really showed how decent the multiplayer component can be when you inject the story into these rinse-and-repeat missions. And thankfully, these pop up from time to time when other players are at those moments themselves. In fact, I wish these missions were selectable in the menu to give you the chance to immediately queue up and play them again.
While I do prefer the PVE aspect to this whole ordeal, the PVP mode does feature better late-game activities, such as guarding a moving object or capturing bases. It’s a shame that these modes were not designed around the PVE mode as well with maybe bots controlling the other team or ways to include these activities but negate the need for PVP in the final mission. Regardless, Dino Survival can feel drastically repetitive, at least until Capcom provides more content to dive into.
I would say that around 5 hours in, this mode started to evolve a bit, offering additional objectives, new scenarios, and most importantly, new enemy types. At first, during those initial hours, I saw the same dinosaurs in the same places and the same rotation of the same maps. It’s a shame that there isn’t some sort of AI Director that keeps the action fresh and unpredictable, especially given that an AI is at the heart of the game's narrative. While this does make each expedition feel hand-crafted, it also means that you’ll be diving into the same exact mission countless times on repeat. That alley, yup, a Triceratops will be there every single time. That basketball court? Yup, raptors at the top of that faraway alley, each and every time.
However, when you get to the part in the story where you start to see more enemy types and objectives, it does breathe a bit of new life into that same routine. Yes, you’ll still find those maps that have those aforementioned issues, but the new bits of content are nonetheless welcomed as the game continues to offer up new things as you progress, even if it feels like the progression is far too slow and feels drastically drip-fed. I personally feel that having more than just Dino Survival at launch would have helped matters here to break up that tedium and provide you with additional things to tackle instead of just spamming the only available mode for hours on end. Don’t get me wrong, the gameplay is often a blast, but it doesn’t make up for the fact that most missions repeat just far too much.
At launch, Exoprimal has ten available Exo-suits with three being initially locked behind paid DLC, or as part of the Deluxe Edition. While you can pay to have them available right from the start, you’ll unlock each of them at level 20, 30, and 40, respectively, Freely available from the start is Deadeye, Zephyr, Barrage, Roadblock, Krieger, Witchdoctor, and Skywave. The additional three Exo-suits as part of the Head Start Kit are Nimbus, Vigilant, and Murasame. While each Exo-suit has more or less the same control scheme, they belong to various archetypes to provide a balance across the team. And to help maintain that balance, you can swap to any Exo-suit that is available at any time during the match. This is crucial since the bulk of my time saw me join teams that had no one wanting to play support.
Deadeye, Zephyr, Barrage, and Vigilant are your Assault Class, providing your basic soldier structure with fast-based characters that have fairly limited armor. Deadeye is the Exo-suit you’ll start with initially, coming across as a fairly well-balanced choice and ended up being my go-to for the majority of my time with the game. Apart from your standard assault rifle, you’re also stocked with a rifle grenade, allowing you to clear swarms of raptors in a single action. Zephyr is melee based and is equipped with a dual set of tonfa’s that get the job done. You’ll likely want to equip Zephyr with a cannon as their secondary weapon since that will be the only means for any sort of ranged attack here. Barrage fires off a series of mines as well as a stun grenade, making them a class that should always keep moving. Lastly, Vigilant is the sniper of the group, making them ideal for holding back and surveying the chaos. They also feature an icy cluster shot called Frost Lock that causes dinosaurs to freeze in place.
For the Tanks of the group, you have Roadblock, Krieger, and Murasame, who provide some decent damage and can certainly take it as well. Roadblock is the group’s chonky boy with a shield to block incoming dinos as well as a haymaker swing with its enlarged armored fist. Krieger packs a massive minigun as well as a series of homing missiles, causing some decently ranged damage. While the minigun deals out a lot of pain, it is subject to overheating pretty frequently to balance it out. Murasame wields a katana that is longer than he is tall, as well as performs a huge horizontal slice to anything nearby.
Witchdoctor, Skywave, and Nimbus both offer heals, but do so in marginally different ways. Witchdoctor simply lays down a huge area of healing, as well as their overdrive ability serving as an emergency heal if things get dire for the whole team. They also come stocked with what is called a Feed, which is a lasso-like cable that can heal allies, boost their movement speed, or zap energy from dinos for your own needs. Their method of attack is a neuro rod that electrocutes enemies in front of them. Skywave performs an attack that both heals allies and harms dinos, making it more of an individual healer than that of a group format. They also have an optics hammer shockwave attack as well as a gravity cage to pull in enemies to a collection area. And finally, we have Nimbus. which, similar to Skywave, has an attack that damages enemies as well as heals allies but requires you to change their ammo type first. Nimbus packs a dual set of handguns and can fire off waves of bullets in a pretty decent spread.
Each class, as sort of hinted at with Witchdoctor, has access to a special attack called an Overdrive. This attack charges throughout the match as you deal out damage. This ranges from a hail of gunfire from Deadeye, to a massive shockwave of damage and heals from Nimbus. Each class’s overdrive is designed around being an emergency ability that defines their class or alters certain aspects of what you’d expect, such as Skywave’s overdrive being built around their gravitation attacks instead of their heals. I found that matches were long enough that you can usually fire off a second use of your Overdrive at most, provided you don’t save it throughout the whole match.
Each class has a max level of 20, with each level providing a few items as a means to reward you. While most of these are emblems, banners, or the game’s form of currency, Bikcoin, it is largely the player-level bonuses where you’ll get skins to change up their look or modules that allow you to tinker with certain stats bonuses, like damage chains, better and more swifter recovery methods, to boosting your overall health. As you unlock them, you can equip up to three modules at once, leveling them up to make them perform slightly better. You can also purchase and equip Rigs, which are your bonus equips such as a cannon, catapult jump, shield, or personal healing device, should your healer be downright miserable, because it can very well happen.
Unlike your pilot, Exo-suits have a decent array of customization. From color variants to wildly different skins, such as Deadeye’s Football player aesthetic, you can also apply different skins to weapons, attach decals to three areas of your Exo-suit, to charms that dangle as you move around during combat. While you also have stamps and emotes to equip, these are likely the less appealing items to unlock, as was the case with a game like Overwatch.
As mentioned, you have a player level that is where you’ll earn far better customization options than simply leveling up your Exo-suit. While you won’t earn them every level, you’ll earn loot boxes that feature three items that range from stamps, banners, and skins, to pretty much everything else I’ve mentioned. Each item has a rarity, such as common, rare, or legendary, with the typical colors to match them. However, you also have a Survival Pass that features the typical two tiers; one free and one that you’ll pay for. While it doesn’t appear to give any sort of timer on this pass, it’s fairly cheap at $12.59 CAD (Game Pass discount / $13.99 regular price) and provides a ton of decent unlocks to earn, such as some of the game’s best skins. While I can see people having issues with its inclusion here, I personally only purchased it due to its low cost and variety of skins for the Exo-Suits I used frequently, even if a few of them were of Exo-suits that I didn’t currently have unlocked or purchased at the time. I'll also state that had the game not been part of Game Pass, I likely wouldn't have purchased the pass, let alone the game at its launch price.
For the vast majority of what is here, Exoprimal is a solid-looking game that benefits from the RE Engine. Dinosaurs, the Exo-suits, and most of the environments all shine, as one would expect. However, some areas of the levels have pretty disappointing objects, such as some trees that border on being incredibly basic and low end, as if their assets don’t quite line up with the rest of the game’s quality. That said, some of these assets may be trimmed down to support the dozens if not hundreds of raptors that flood into most locations. Regardless of those few blemishes, Exoprimal is still a very good-looking release.
In the end, I am a bit at odds with how I feel about Exoprimal. I’ve enjoyed my time with it for sure, but can see how incomplete it is from a content perspective. The story mode is fine for what it is, but I can’t see someone simply buying this game solely for it. I think several months down the road once new content drops, especially a new game mode, then I think there would be something more to recommend here. As it stands, Exoprimal can be a fun time with some chaotic action, especially with friends, and most certainly through Game Pass, but it lacks the depth and replayability to not feel incredibly repetitive at times. Exoprimal is certainly a risk for Capcom, but given their current run of stellar releases, I have to applaud them for taking a chance on something like this, even if it feels a bit under their current level of quality.
Developer - Capcom. Publisher - Capcom. Released - July 14th, 2023. Available On - Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5, Windows. Rated - (M) Blood, Strong Language, Violence. Platform Reviewed - Xbox Series X. Review Access - Exoprimal was downloaded via Xbox Game Pass.
Jeff is the original founder of Analog Stick Gaming. His favorite games include The Witcher III, the Mass Effect Trilogy, Hi-Fi Rush, Stellar Blade, Hellbade: Senua’s Sacrifice, and the Legend of Heroes series, especially Trails of Cold Steel III & IV.