Exoprimal is a game that if I didn’t have Xbox Game Pass, I’m not sure I would have played at first. Having been burned by great marketing in the past (looking at you, Anthem), the sixty-dollar price tag is a bit steep for a game I never quite showed any interest in at first. That’s the benefit of Xbox Game Pass, it allows me to play games that I wouldn’t normally buy. There’s no risk on my end because I’m subscribed to the service and I’ve found multiple gems in the library.
I remember Exoprimal being announced last year; honestly, I could care less. After seeing the trailer, I never thought about it again. That is, until a day before it launched. Since it was being released on Game Pass, I figured, why not? As it stands, I’m sitting at 35 to 40 hours of play time in Exoprimal, my player level is 80, I haven’t found a definitive answer on what the level cap is, the highest I’ve seen is level 200. I’ve logged one hundred battles and my survival pass (the battle pass), is level 40 of 50. Exoprimal is a good ‘ol fashion co-op shoot’em up that provides hours of fun with an engaging story that kept me coming back for more!
So, having installed Exoprimal, I sat down to give it a go and ran into a major hurdle. Before you can play the game, you must connect your Capcom account to the platform you are playing on. This by far was the biggest pain point for me. I had a Capcom ID that was connected to my PlayStation account, but I had the hardest time getting my Microsoft account connected to it. Ultimately, I created a new Capcom ID, and I was ready to play!
Just What Is Exoprimal?
The character creator is a bit basic, it has your standard options such as gender, eyes, hair, etc. As a person with locs, I notice when a game doesn’t have an option to have hair like I do, but I digress. Outside of switching exosuits and the results screen, I didn’t spend a lot of time outside of my exosuit. Exoprimal opens up with a cinematic news sequence fronted by an Android that is on the Aibius PR team. The coverage then cuts to scenes of dinosaurs swarming a decimated city and we get our first look at the exofighters and our main antagonist Leviathan, a next-gen AI.The viewer of the broadcast is then introduced to each exosuit with a flashy intro scene and in dramatic fashion my character jumps out of a plane to start my new job at Aibius as an exofighter.
The screen fades to black and I’m being teleported into the tutorial. It’s your standard tutorial, Leviathan the AI I talked about earlier, appears as a floating orb guiding me through walking, running, shooting and jumping. After a brief shooting range exercise, I follow Leviathan to a live-fire training room. This is where I get my first chance to pew pew some dinos! I run through a series of tests with the Deadeye exosuit, Leviathan hovering over me giving directions on the functionality of the suit.
There are a number of craftables in Exoprimal such as walls, turrets, and platforms that appear as yellow items on the battlefield. I then have the opportunity to hop into the tank exosuit Roadblock to go through his abilities and finally switch over to the Witchdoctor exosuit which is in the support class. The best part of the tutorial is when the dominator is put into play. The dominator gives you the ability to open a vortex, pull a dinosaur out and control it! With the dinosaurs’ excruciating-sounding death, the tutorial concludes and my character learns that he’s been assigned to the extremely “safe” detachment, the Hammerheads.
There are three exo classes: tank, assault, and support. I tend to lean more towards support characters, but something that’s really cool about Exoprimal is that the player is free to change their exosuit at any point in the game. Depending on the scenario and the classes your teammates have chosen, it comes in handy! I found that depending on the mission, certain exosuits and their abilities perform better than others. Each exosuit can be leveled up with a reward system that includes the in-game currency (Bikcoins), new abilities, and cosmetic items. After I leveled up my Witchdoctor and received all of the rewards, the progress on your exosuit does not stop. I’m assuming Capcom made this decision to future-proof content down the road for the exosuits.
The tank and support classes have two exosuits and the assault class has three exosuits that can be used out of the gate. There is an additional exosuit for each class that can be unlocked after reaching a certain player level; the new suits become purchasable with Bikcoins. By the time the exosuits were unlockable, I had plenty of Bikcoins to go around. You earn them from running missions, opening war chests and progressing your player and survival pass levels. There are ten exosuits in total to choose from, which allowed me to customize how I played and strategize on which exosuit fits the needs of the battle.
I’m introduced to the crew of the Hammerheads by a cinematic cutscene which gives me a glimpse of each character and their personality. The crew then encounters a vortex storm causing utter chaos and hitting the ship causing it to crash. I hop into my exosuit and jump out of the ship and fly down to the surface of the planet where we are greeted by Leviathan. Leviathan proceeds to materialize into its true form, a monolithic white face with a digital body. Bewildered, Leviathan teleports my fresh recruit three years into the past to its research facility. The facility is an island contained within a bubble. Now that our boots are on the ground, I bump into a person in an exosuit that I’ve never met. This is the point that I begin to understand what type of game Exoprimal is. Leviathan unleashes a swarm of dinosaurs and bot exos are teleported in. Think of this as the tutorial for the main game mode, Dino Survival.
Before I get into the Dino Survival mode, I want to point out that this mission was the first time that I was learning Exoprimal is a PvPvE game. Now I swear that I haven’t been living under a rock, but I saw ZERO marketing for Exoprimal since the first time I saw the trailer. I feel like Capcom’s marketing team missed opportunities to get the buzz going for Exoprimal. Personally, I think Xbox Game Pass is a major reason why people are playing the game. From a marketing standpoint, I get the feeling that Exoprimal may have been lower on the priority list and didn’t receive as much funding in the marketing bucket. Of course, this is just me speculating; Let's move on.
The Dino Survival mode consists of two teams of five going head-to-head in a race to clear areas of dinosaurs and advance to the final mission. Your team and the opposing team start by being teleported into a loading area where you can emote, switch exosuits and try out your exo’s kit. Once the battlefield is set, Leviathan teleports each team into the stage. Survival mode is twelve different mission types randomized into a playlist. There are a variety of modes that are both familiar and new. The data key security mission is akin to escorting a payload or the uplink control mission which parallels the domination game mode in games like Call of Duty. Some missions are dedicated for the final mission, which takes place after each team races to finish eight sub-missions to progress. After each round, Leviathan hilariously rubs whether your team is faster or slower than the enemy team. This is coupled with a red outline of the opposing team, giving your team a glimpse at how fast or slow the enemy team is going.
Your team is then teleported into the waiting area with Leviathan before being swept away to the final mission. A really cool mechanic that I appreciate is that story missions are intertwined in the final missions. Based on my story progress, periodical cinematics pop up, which is really annoying if you’re further along in the story because you can’t skip them. However, there are points in the story that cause both teams to form a ten-person team for what’s undoubtedly going to be a challenging battle. Those scenarios don’t happen often, so I found myself facing off against an enemy team of five.
Certain missions, such as Omega Charge and Energy Taker, seem to be exclusive missions that only show up during the final mission. This is the only time in Dino Survival mode that I could get my PvP fix in. Do you remember during the tutorial how Leviathan showed us about dominators? Well, this is where they come into play. I’m not sure what triggers Leviathan, but during the final mission, it’ll drop in a dominator for each team. The dominator can make all of the difference when it comes to finishing the final mission and sneaking in a win. Once the mission is completed, the losing exofighters are ripped to bits, and the MVP is showcased, followed by commendations for the other exceptional exofighters. The results screen is then displayed, which breaks down how much exp I gained, and how many Bikcoins I received based on my performance and my player and survival pass levels.
Each exofighter has awards they can receive based on class-specific goals and overall goals for the Exoprimal that rewarded me with Bikcoins and bragging rights. The final results screen gives an overview of your rewards, level increases, medals obtained, and the player list to compare your results with the rest of your team and the enemy team.That’s the gameplay loop in a nutshell. What makes Exoprimal hard to stop playing are the quick matches and variety of missions. Every time I load into my exosuit, I have a different experience.
The Story
Once the game loop is in full effect, I noticed data caches that would show up in my rewards. These caches unlocked the Database tab, which is where I spent my time unlocking pieces of the story. Exoprimal starts out with plenty of cinematic cutscenes, but at this point, Capcom uses audio logs, video logs, and cinematics to convey the story. I found myself losing interest in the story at this point. I didn’t realize that I had to use the database to progress in the story so
I had some stagnant time with no story progression, but I was enthralled with the gameplay! Once I realized my mistake I was quickly engrossed back into the story, the video logs and cinematics contained the biggest points within the story. The Hammerhead's main goal is to find a way to get off of Bikitoa Island. The writers crafted a fun story riddled with mysteries and perhaps a bit of foreshadowing with the way AI technology is progressing. Although farfetched, Capcom crafted an engaging story that only adds to the fun factor in Exoprimal. I was able to complete the story in about 25 hours, so it’s not too demanding and flies by because of how much fun I had playing the game loop. The story was really a pleasant surprise that I didn’t expect!
Some Bumps in the Road
Now we all know you can’t have the good without the bad. There aren’t a ton of cons that I personally experienced, however, one of the biggest issues, in my opinion, lies within its cross-play. I would love to know who made this decision. For some odd reason, Capcom made Exoprimal so you can cross-play in matchmaking, but you cannot create a cross-platform party. It’s a big misstep for an online co-op game, especially because so many other games have that functionality.
It’s like they started to do cross-play and were like, “Meh, this is good enough for now!” I can’t even play with my friends that bought it on Steam. It’s ridiculous! On Exoprimal’s website, an important announcement is listed below the Season 1 details banner. The announcement reiterates that you can only create “Buddies” with people on your friends list within select platform combinations. Xbox network can buddy up with Xbox network friends, Playstation with Playstation and Steam with Steam. Here’s the exciting part of the announcement, the statement reads, “A game mode that lets you play together with your friends on other platforms is currently under consideration. However, this may take some time, and will be considered for future title updates.” It’s good to see that Capcom is acknowledging the misstep, but how did no one question their cross-play method from the jump-off?
Playing on my pc through the Xbox platform, I have noticed a considerable lag in almost every match. I’m not sure if it’s because I recently updated to Win 11, but there is no way that I should be having lagging issues with what I’m running. I’ve got an AMD Ryzen 7 5800X 8-Core Processor with an MSI Geforce RTX 2070 GPU with 32 GB of ram. I shouldn’t be experiencing the issues that I have. I’m guessing that there is a separate issue going on with my PC that’s causing the issue. Even with the lag, I can’t stop playing Exoprimal! The only other “issue” I had a problem with is the fact that this sixty-dollar game has a battle pass. There’s a reason why I wrote issue in quotation marks. I don't have an issue with a battle pass as long as it doesn’t contain anything that can give players that can afford the battle pass an advantage.
This strategy is generally used in free-to-play models and that’s why Exoprimal’s battle pass doesn’t sit right with me. People are paying a premium price for Exoprimal unless you’re a Microsoft Game Pass subscriber. Having people pay for the battle pass to potentially receive exclusive skins for the exosuits and weapons along with emotes and stickers comes off a little greedy to me. Of course, Capcom could be thinking about the future where we see Exoprimal become a free-to-play game.
I generally stay away from battle passes, I tend not to finish them because playing whatever game it is that I’m playing feels like a chore to finish the battle pass. You’ll probably flame me for this, but I currently only pay for Destiny 2, and Marvel Snap’s battle passes. I know. I know. I’d be a liar if I didn’t say that I’m leaning toward getting the battle pass. We’ve still got two months left in this season; based on how much I’ve played and enjoyed Exoprimal, I don’t mind the $8.99 price tag.
Conclusion
To wrap things up, Exoprimal has been the game I didn’t know I needed for 2023! The matches typically last no longer than fifteen minutes, which allows me to hop in for a couple of matches if I need a break without a huge time commitment! Surprisingly, Exoprimal checked off a lot of boxes for me that make a good video game. Exoprimal is a good game on the cusp of being a great game. The biggest mistake being that Capcom made a 5v5 co-op multiplayer game that doesn’t allow you to play with your friends outside of the platform Exoprimal is running on.
I feel like there are a lot of similarities to Overwatch, from some of the modes in the final mission to some of the characters. I’m looking at you, Nimbus, AKA Lucio, and a few others. If you enjoy Overwatch, you’ll find that this game feels almost familiar and that the learning curve isn’t crazy. Exoprimal has a solid sound design that ramps up when you get into intense fights and moments, fun gameplay and replayability will give you hours of fun! So much so, I’ve been slacking on my Final Fantasy 16 playthrough. Exoprimal has only been available for a few weeks, and they have already introduced a limited-time mode called Savage Gauntlet which is a time-based PvP mode.
I ended up in the top twenty percent based off of my fastest completion time. The mode opened back up a couple of weeks after the first one ended, which was way more difficult than the first one. I only managed to complete it once! According to their roadmap, it looks like each season lasts about three months, with beta and alpha variant exosuits lined up, new maps, a new final mission, new dinos and collaborations with Street Fighter 6 and Monster Hunter. I can’t deny the fun factor of Exoprimal, but for this to be a great game, they need to address the shortcomings of their cross-play.
So here’s the TLDR, would I pay sixty dollars for Exoprimal? No… It’s a forty-dollar game at best right now. If you don’t have Xbox Game Pass, Personally, I would wait for it to go on sale.
Reviewed on PC.
