Exoprimal review: an ode to Team Fortress 2 whose twist comes too late

exoprimal Makes a terrible first impression.

The mixed-media opening melds breaking news with a corporate recruiting campaign, and somehow the game manages to border on its absurd (albeit refreshingly unserious) near-future premise inexplicably. But wait, let’s do it. A rift in the fabric of space-time has brought hordes of dinosaurs to Earth. This necessitated the production of exoskeleton suits to repel the invasion and the production of advanced artificial intelligence called Leviathan, whose main task was to train fighters and monitor operations.

You play as a mute rookie ace, but as soon as you join a patrol party you find yourself stranded in an alternate timeline. There, the rogue Leviathan forces the exosuits to participate in endless wargames disguised as combat tests. This wargame manifests itself as his 5v5 multiplayer match of player vs environment vs player, with translucent phantoms marking the position of human enemies and smashing through a series of cooperative dinosaur defense objectives while indicating whether they need to speed up or slow down.

However, once the task is completed, both teams are suddenly thrown into the same playing field as the final challenge looms. Magic happens here. You can now directly interfere with enemies by detonating their payloads or performing sneaky ganks. Oh, picking up his one of the randomly spawning “Dominator” power-ups, Triceratopsteleport into enemy territory and wreak scaly havoc.

Unfortunately, due to late opening hours, exoprimal It’s frighteningly easy to dismiss it as just another live-service hero shooter lurking in the shadows of Overwatch. Ten hot-swappable regiments of exosuits include shield-toting tanks, rollerblade supports, and katana-wielding carries. The biomechanical design and meaty plastic sofa interiors are aesthetically pleasing, but the doors are left wide open for vulgar comparisons and I’ve been wanting to make them until I too fell in love with my main sofa.

Barrage is a fiery hair blend. team fortress 2Demoman and Overwatch Junkrat. He pumps out bouncy explosives with satisfying sounds and has a secondary stun grenade to keep the raptors together. exoprimalThe mechanics of is tight and fully meets Capcom’s high standards. Pummeling those buttons is a satisfying exercise process that can get you into a flow state of chaos. For Barrage, this ends with his ultimate. There, he can transform into a giant missile to wipe out his entire five stacks of human players.

Embracing the more immediate turmoil as a barrage allowed me to quickly grasp the mission, despite being temporarily moonlighted far from my operations as a sniper. exoprimal It’s at its best when the team isn’t doubling their suits, for maximum synergy. Fire grenades into the hordes while Roadblock unleashes a tornado of doom, and seeing Skywave’s gravity pull the dinos to their feet is so satisfying, opening up the opportunity for melee characters like Zephyr to pounce and pummel raptors as they fly around like they’re trapped in a cosmic washing machine.

Image: Capcom, via Polygon

But given that each suit has its own progression system, there’s little motivation to switch once you find your favourite.This is first of all a big bummer given the effort put into creating a strong 10-man roster build, but it also poses team composition issues that are inevitable once the meta solidifies exoprimal. Giving up on Barrage Life is tough, but I’m glad I didn’t double suit him on the team to maximize potential tactical creativity.

Anyway, as I worked my way up the proficiency ranks, I gradually learned how to complement my team’s abilities, assigning and upgrading modules that changed my heroes’ skills in meaningful ways. Capcom’s latest is an entirely different kind of hero as his shooter, and it quickly became clear that he was more about efficiency and communication than about being “cracked.”

like the food critic of Ratatouilletook me back to a halcyon time when esports abilities were less coveted and having fun pushing payloads with friends was more important. gold Rush Or fight the mall mob dead center. This feeling is fleeting, exoprimal It can often be its own worst enemy. In between matches, you’ll struggle through mockumentary dialogue from the ship’s crew like a watered-down Guardians of the Galaxy, reluctantly clicking on mysterious branching “analysis maps” and watching jargon-laden cutscenes as your tracker moves toward your next reward. In the early stages of the game, with hours of apparent lack of mission variety and only a handful of maps, this loop can be frustrating…until something really unnerving happens.

[Ed. note: The following contains gameplay spoilers for Exoprimal.]

Image: Capcom, via Polygon

After about a dozen 30-minute matches of Dino Survival, we begin matchmaking in what appears to be a standard multiplayer game, only to discover that one of our fellow Australian NPCs has infiltrated the game and joined the team to gather data (and called Leviathan “crazy”). In this shared-world storytelling event, rogue AI rages and begins tearing the seams of the rules of wargaming while you race to take down the enemy team as usual. Mutated dinosaurs raise their heads, thousands of pterosaur swarms, and more engaging new mission objectives such as VTOL defenses and charging hammers to breach area barriers.

Changes in this paradigm shift exoprimal New maps, a healthy spike in difficulty, raid bosses, and finally, introducing some real narrative intrigue, are pretty much included. It’s such a confusing pacing decision that, hours later, you’re suddenly playing a completely different and arguably much better game, and it actually sets a compelling precedent for future multiplayer storytelling scams. In the gaming world, this is normalized as a “firmware update”. I wish it came sooner, or at least was better communicated in the game’s marketing, as this is understandable, but may not be accessible to many players. exoprimalbefore waking up from the tedious early morning hours.

The seasonal live service roadmap promises time-based endgame modes, a wide variety of Exosuits, and a collaboration with Monster Hunter in the near future, which is an exciting prospect for players caught in the claws of gaming. exoprimal Rough-edged, but hopefully, by the time these updates arrive, its compelling and experimental tale has found a well-deserved nostalgic audience rather than taking the path of a dinosaur.

exoprimal was released on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X on July 14th. The game was reviewed on his PS5 using a pre-release download code provided by Capcom. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not affect editorial content, but Vox Media may earn a commission on products purchased via affiliate links.discoverable Additional information on Polygon’s Ethics Policy can be found here.