REVIEW: ‘Exoprimal’ Reminds Us Fun Finds a Way (PS5)

Exoprimal is what you get when you desperately slap together the distinct concepts of ‘dinosaurs’ and ‘combat robots,’ but the combination works shockingly well. In this team-based action game from developer and publisher Capcom, players will work in teams of five in a competition to stay alive. While Exoprimal resembles other team-based games of recent years, the game’s story elements both set it apart and hold it back.

Players assume the role of Ace, a customizable and silent exofighter that pilots exosuits, robotic armors that fulfill various roles. After getting stranded with their crew on a now-abandoned island, players get pulled three years into the past to compete against other teams in wargames run by Leviathan, an AI run rampant. This story becomes the driving force of Exoprimal, rewarding players with information about the various characters in the crew, the various mysteries of the island and war games, and even granting access to the best missions in the game.

After each match, you’ll either be granted a few crumbs of information or a cutscene that pushes the story forward, and you’ll need to play dozens of matches to get through the entire plot. Additionally, all the information you’re presented with appears on a board that tracks all the story beats, allowing you to rewatch cutscenes or view information as it’s pieced together to provide exciting revelations. It’s satisfying to watch these seemingly random snippets recontextualized to drop a bombshell, but it’s done automatically, taking away the satisfaction of connecting the dots ourselves.

Regardless, I enjoyed this method of delivering the story. Receiving key information after every match, regardless of your performance, is a good way to keep players invested; I found myself playing ‘one more game’ multiple times, hoping for just one more plot thread or detail, and getting a major piece of intel softened the blow of a loss more than once.

This slow development isn’t exclusive to the larger story, either. At first, your crewmates almost resemble living tropes – the tough Russian woman, the nerdy British science-y type, and the rough and tumble leader – but as you learn more about each of them, they reveal more complicated personalities each with their own hopes and concerns about this futuristic world and your collective predicament. By contrast, the player character Ace sticks out like a sore thumb because they’re completely silent, gesturing awkwardly whenever they’re engaging with the other characters. This also means they don’t get any meaningful development as a character, which is strange in comparison to the rest of the cast.

The story, as mentioned, is a double-edged sword because, while the steady flow of story beats can push you to play a few more games, it’s completely understandable to walk away from the game before it evolves in a meaningful way. The first dozen or so matches will all feel very similar because they’re meant to give players time to familiarize themselves with the ten available exosuits, but when the maps and mission types don’t provide many exciting deviations, they quickly grow stale. When the story leaped forward, it always brought changes and left an impression, but it was typically after hours and hours of increasingly repetitive gameplay.

Most matches place you in a team of five, working together to kill as many dinosaurs as possible, as quickly as possible. These match types are very straightforward, as are the various roles players can fill. Assault exosuits excel at dealing damage, tanks can take a beating and often force dinosaurs to focus on them, and support exosuits can heal teammates and provide other buffs or debuffs to the allies and enemies. There are only ten different suits at launch, which is likely to grow, but for now, the small roster is welcome

. You can quickly discover which exosuits are your favorites, and when loading into a match the cast is small enough to quickly identify what roles your team is lacking in. Additionally, leveling them allows you to augment them or their abilities, making them feel like your own take on the character, in addition to cosmetics you can earn or purchase with in-game currency.

As you play through a mission, the AI running the games, Leviathan, will constantly update you on your performance relative to the other team, which is located on an identical but separate map. Each match culminates in a final mission, which may place the two teams in direct competition, where things really heat up. This was the most exciting part of a standard match because while dozens or hundreds of dinosaurs can be fun to battle, they don’t hold a candle to another team of exosuits with abilities and skills to match your own.

As the story progresses though, players will occasionally find themselves in a special test of skills that forces the two teams to cooperate in a massive gauntlet, and it’s these scenarios where the game truly shines. Working together with your former adversaries to heal, tank, and fight your way through hundreds of dinosaurs and raid boss-style threats is one of the most fun experiences in multiplayer gaming this year.

The biggest drawback here, and frankly in all of Exoprimal, is that you’re unable to matchmake for these specific mission types even after completing the story, so you don’t know if you’re going to play through a standard mission or the more exciting variety. Beating the story even presents players with a PvE mode announcement, Savage Gauntlet, but it’s not available yet, so all this does is further highlight the lack of variety. Additionally, while Exoprimal requires signing up for a Capcom ID, and matchmaking draws from players on various consoles, players cannot create parties across consoles or Steam. Playing alone is definitely still fun, but team-based games like this are always better with friends.

Exoprimal has a lot of heart and plenty of exciting moments, but you’ll need to go digging for them.

Exoprimal is available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox X|S, and PC.