Exoprimal review – dino crisis of confidence

For those too young to remember, the original Dino Crisis came out in 1999 and was basically Resident Evil but with dinosaurs, with a similar survival horror tone and Shinji Mikami as the director. It wasn’t that big a hit though and so the sequel a year later was turned into more of a straight action game. Both were well received in fan circles, but 2003 Xbox exclusive Dino Crisis 3 most certainly was not – and there the series went extinct.

There have been vague hints at a remake, in the style of Resident Evil 2, since then but a few years ago Capcom seemed to change its mind and it wasn’t long after that, that we first began to hear about Exoprimal. However, if they’re using this to gauge how interested people are in dinosaur games, we fear Dino Crisis 4 is never going to happen.

Last year’s announcement trailer for Exoprimal made a memorable splash, as it introduced the idea of having weather forecasts for when giant portals would open in the sky and hundreds of dinosaurs would fall out of them. It seemed a purposeful attempt to recall the wackiness of late 90s era Capcom, and Japanese gaming in general, when plots never mattered as long as the game itself was fun.

We’re for all that, although for a multiplayer-only game there is actually a relatively complicated story, that involves an evil AI, time travel (not just from the dinosaurs’ perspective), and having to take part in war games to collect data from the various mech suits you’re trialling. This data, which also involves specially mutated dinosaurs, is apparently so valuable that there are even rival groups and mercenaries fighting for it.

None of that matters though, as Exoprimal is a third person online shooter in which you’re constantly dealing with swarms of dinosaurs, amidst both co-operative and competitive elements -depending on what is going on at any given time.

Capcom has clearly been playing a lot of online shooters lately but rather than focusing on one particular style they’ve instead filled Exoprimal with absolutely every permutation, all at once. Matches are round-based but they can have a wide range of objectives, from just killing a set number of dinosaurs to taking on bosses, capturing control points, and delivering high value packages.

At first the rival team are only visible as Dark Souls style red phantoms, playing in their own game, but in subsequent rounds the two games converge and you have to fight them as well. That seems like a bit of hodgepodge at first, especially when the game adds the prehistoric equivalent of a Mario Kart blue shell, where a team member – usually the lowest performing one – gets to control a giant dinosaur in an attempt to turn the tide.

It feels like the game is purposefully throwing every mechanic it can think of at the wall, in the hope that something sticks, but it’s actually more considered than it first seems. The early rounds, where you can’t interact with the rival team, are basically a race to complete the objectives first, so that you get a bonus to start the next round, and that’s an interestingly unique dynamic that emphasises team play and forward planning.

The exosuits you wear are divided up into three simple class types and while they have their own unique ultimate moves and specialties, it all feels very much like Overwatch Lite. Many of the suits are heavily inspired by specific Overwatch characters and yet Exoprimal lacks the complex interdependencies of Blizzard’s game, that make it so successful. Equally, the gunplay and action is solid but never extraordinary, which isn’t quite good enough for a multiplayer-online shooter.

Perhaps the most damning problem with Exoprimal is that because it’s a complicated team-based game everyone has to know what they’re doing to ensure it’s any fun, which is a tall order when you’ve got 10 people playing at once and such a wide range of possible objectives.

Not only does everyone have to understand the goals on a macro level, but you also want to make sure they understand their individual roles and are intimately familiar with the specific exosuit they’re using.

That’s a lot to ask for any game, especially a niche one like this, that has not exactly been bustling in its first week online. Although we assume things are busier on Xbox, where it’s a day one Game Pass title – which makes it much easier to recommend. Exoprimal is not a great game but despite borrowing so much from other titles it does have an idiosyncratic charm all of its own.

Much of that comes from its old school Capcom vibes. The robots and dinosaurs are all nicely designed and animated, with lots of cute details that give them a surprising amount of personality. The interludes with humans back at base are fairly obnoxious but to be honest that feels just as turn-of-the-century as everything else, with a goofy lack of pretension that is genuinely refreshing.

This is an odd game, that’s both cynically chasing industry trends and standing in clumsy opposition to them. We don’t particularly ever want to play it again, but we can’t say we didn’t have fun with it, when we got a good game going. That’s not exactly a ringing endorsement but unfortunately dinosaur fans, and those looking for some originality in their online action, can’t afford to be choosy.

Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, and PC
Price: £49.99*
Publisher: Capcom
Developer: Capcom
Release Date: 14th June 2023
Age Rating: 16

*available on Game Pass at launch