Announced last year, Exoprimal is Capcom’s new bet in the world of games as a service. Bearing in mind that the developer is also known for the Dino Crisis franchise, many had hoped that the game could somehow revive the heyday of survival horror with dinosaurs, but if you’re one of those people, it’s best to download your expectations.
TechSmart had the chance to try the game beforehand and we will share some of our initial impressions here.
In Exoprimal, we take on the role of a pilot for Aibius, an agency responsible for controlling temporal surges that bring dinosaurs to the future through warriors in exoskeletons. Add that to time travel, an evil AI that forces pilots to relive the same day over and over with insane combat, dinosaurs being used as biological weapons, and the salad is complete.
To better define the game, we can say that it is a mixture of Overwatch, Jurassic World and Circle of Fire.
It is in this strange premise that our adventure begins, but don’t worry too much about the narrative, because the focus here is on the game and Capcom makes a point of making that very clear.
Strictly following the mold of Overwatch and many of its derivatives, such as Paladins, Exoprimal tries to create a familiar and at the same time innovative model, being yet another bet by the big developers to try to surf the lucrative wave of games as a service.
Forming a team of five allies, the player must choose from one of the five exoskeleton classes available (each with a range of unique abilities) to form his team. Although it is possible for more than one player to choose the same class on the team, in addition to being able to switch classes during the game, this ends up being a problem, at least when playing with strangers.
The fact that you can’t choose your armor class before the match starts ends up creating some confusion during matches, as you can end up without a healer or a tank on the team, which causes a colossal imbalance.
Once the team is formed, the game puts you to compete with a rival team, where both must accomplish the objectives as quickly as possible and advance to the “finish line” before the rival team.
Basically, you’ll face hordes of enemies and do everything to eliminate them in the shortest possible time. The game has three modes available, and even that is very similar to overwatch, including the mode where you have to transport a box from point A to point B.
The big difference here is that you don’t face the rival team directly, but the dinosaurs that come your way. At a certain point, you even face your rivals, but the fight against them ends up being background.
Although the game offers ways to try to balance the match and increase the challenge of the rival who is in front, I could not feel that the resource is fair in fact. The team that starts out winning usually ends up winning.
Exoprimal, despite trying to innovate, plays it safe, but the mix of dinosaurs ends up not being very effective, in fact, it just makes the game more confusing and bizarre.
The fact of trying to drown players in endless hordes of raptors and other species ends up creating an immense visual mess, being just a pile of poorly modeled digital dinosaurs amidst explosions, gunshots and healing circles.
Although the moments when the “bosses” enter the scene, such as Tyrannosaurus or Triceratops, are cool, the game ends up being extremely repetitive and limited, especially when you don’t play alongside friends to create a strategy or something like that.
Everything gets even worse when the AI ​​decides to release a gigantic horde of raptors that fall from the sky, resulting in a rain (literally) of enemies. Apart from the “mass came” factor, all I could do was feel an immense embarrassment from others at what I was witnessing and ask myself “is this really happening?”
One of the most positive points is when you have the chance to control a boss dinosaur to try to disrupt the enemy team’s plans, but still, the controls are very precarious and you really feel like an irrational beast, just trying to destroy what appears in your path.
Although it is still early to nail Exoprimal’s extinction, the initial experience was not positive at all, leaving the bitter feeling of being a game that is based too much on what already exists to try desperately to make a title in the game market as a service.
Even using the RE Engine, which has already delivered impressive graphics in recent Resident Evil franchise titles, Exoprimal cannot save itself, being extremely generic in everything it proposes.
Those who want to try their luck, Capcom will promote open tests of the games on March 16th, Thursday, at 10:00 pm, until March 19th, Sunday, at 9:59 pm (BrasÃlia time).
The full game launches on July 14 for PS4/PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X, and PC, as well as Game Pass.