Come for the dinosaur gimmick, stay for the bonkers story and really fun gameplay! As much as others are slamming this game for microtransactions, or for it being soulless, or saying it’s a guilty pleasure, the game offers enough variety in its multiplayer gameplay that it had me glued to it for a few weeks and I had a great time!
So, I have a bit of history with this game. My first experience with Exoprimal was the first announcement. When they showed all the dinosaurs pouring out of that portal, coming for the team, I was in! However, when the beta finally rolled around, I really didn’t have a great time with it. I wrote it off and said, eh, not for me.
But then the full release came to Game Pass and figured I would check it out. It took a few matches for this to really gel for me. I could tell during those matches, that there was something to this and I had to find out what it was. Then about 30 hours later, having completed the main story… I love this game!
While you may argue that a great game will hook you immediately, and most of the time I do agree with that sentiment, there are those games, usually multiplayer, that take a little time to win you over; if you give them the chance. Exoprimal is one of those games. It’s like Overwatch with a learning curve!
Everything in this game takes a little time to appreciate but it’s worth it! There is a surface to scratch through. Sort of like unwrapping a lot of paper, plastic and twist ties to finally get your toy out of the box.
What makes Exoprimal different is that it combines PVE and PVP into one game. You’ll play half a round killing dinosaurs with your group of 5 and then you’ll spend the other half fighting against another 5 person team AND more dinosaurs to try and win the match. How quickly you finish waves of enemies dictates how quickly you get to the PVP round and you could potentially get a huge head start if the other team isn’t doing well. And you can jump in with something called a Dominator, which turns you into a huge dinosaur like a T-REX to go after the enemy team and delay their process even more WHICH IS ALWAYS FUN.
The game is basically a weird action movie playing out in a video game. And on top of that, I really found myself loving the story, as nonsensical and weird as it is. I’m not even sure if I fully understand what happened? Strike that. I definitely don’t! And while I didn’t care about the characters at all when the game started, by the end, I did. In fact, there was a cutscene towards the end of the game that legitimately had me laughing out loud and games RARELY do that for me.
It’s also interesting how you can ONLY unlock more story beats in the game by finishing matches. You get a little progress bar and it’ll tell you, once you reach this point, you’ll get the next cutscene. And this is also how you get to unlock riads and boss battles with your teams. The story beats dictate whether you’re running into a character on the battle field or fighting a big bad. I thought this approach was pretty unique and really keeps you involved!
Quite honestly, what the game should be is a 5 or 10 person coop game. The PVP with the cube and hammer stuff feels very tacked on to me, while the PVE stuff feels very natural. Running around the city with friends, destroying dinosaurs is so much fun. Randomly joining a 10 man raid with both teams and taking down a huge boss is the best part of the game! Fighting another enemy team in this is…fine.
Though I will say that one of my top experience was in PVP. We were about to win the match by pushing our cube to the end and the sniper (I forget the class name) was shooting it from far away and about to disable it. So, I through up some of the buildable platforms that you can jump on in front of it at different heights and then we were able to secure the cube while the sniper kept just shooting the platform from their vantage point. This was a great feeling to win that way!
One thing is for sure is that each match will keep you on your toes. Sometimes you’re just killing dinosaurs, sometimes you’re protecting nodes, sometimes you’re escorting someone, and sometimes the game just takes you to a huge raid will all 10 players!
Another great feeling is unleashing your ultimate on a huge dinosaur or team to take them out. Have a T REX after you? Direct ultimate to take out the last quarter of their health!
I know I’ve been gushing about this game and you’re thinking, why did you give this a 3.5 if you like it so much? Well, there are definitely some things I’m not a fan of.
First off, the overall art style is bland and in some ways, the game is kind of generic. As pointed out above, I don’t remember the sniper class name… off the top of my head, I can’t remember any of the class names. I guess maybe because I didn’t grow up as a huge mech fan, but it was really hard for me to discern the difference between the classes in the game at first or even remember the names of the classes because that just doesn’t gel for me. Every exo suit, as their called, is different and offers different strengths but it takes a while to learn these things. The suits for me basically become things like “Oh the shooty guy” or the “grenade guy” or the “healing goblin guy.”
The environment and the cyber-ish, dystopia look of the cities you fight in aren’t very unique looking to me. They look like they could’ve been a Unity demo or something. There are areas that are beautiful to look at but there is a lack of landmarks and central design in the maps to help make these places memorable. The characters are in the same boat, as I mentioned above. The characters get more exciting when they start adding in some of the crazy skins you can unlock, but then that some times takes you out of the experience. Playing as a football player while a crazy AI is trying to destroy you, it doesn’t work in this game. I think the game taking itself too seriously is where it needs to stay, not being silly.
Unlocks take a LONG time to unlock. You get war chests to unlock stuff every now and then but it took me a lot time to get anything of value. The free tier of the battle pass is also represented terribly here where with the Battle Pass you get something new every level up, on the free tier, you’ll get something like every 6 levels and it’s nothing exciting (maybe a not very fun emote or something).
Speaking of the Battle Pass, the microtransactions are also kind of gross right out of the gate. $5 for a set of clothes and emojis for a character? Get out of here.
And as much as I like the nonsensical story, I think it’s a double edged sword. There are parts of it that are like “What?!” or “Wait how does this even work?” which I thinki could be a turn off for some. But that’s what you get with time traveling, parallel dimensions, Evil AI and Mechs from Japan.
I’m still picking at the last few online achievements here and there (Wow, kill 100,000 dinosaurs? Gonna be here a while…) and I’m going to keep playing off and on for a bit. I don’t plan on buying any microtransactions or the battle pass and I think that if you ignore that part of the game and push through some of the learning curve here, you’ll have a good time! I know that’s a big ask for some, but for me, it was worth it.
So, I have a bit of history with this game. My first experience with Exoprimal was the first announcement. When they showed all the dinosaurs pouring out of that portal, coming for the team, I was in! However, when the beta finally rolled around, I really didn’t have a great time with it. I wrote it off and said, eh, not for me.
But then the full release came to Game Pass and figured I would check it out. It took a few matches for this to really gel for me. I could tell during those matches, that there was something to this and I had to find out what it was. Then about 30 hours later, having completed the main story… I love this game!
While you may argue that a great game will hook you immediately, and most of the time I do agree with that sentiment, there are those games, usually multiplayer, that take a little time to win you over; if you give them the chance. Exoprimal is one of those games. It’s like Overwatch with a learning curve!
Everything in this game takes a little time to appreciate but it’s worth it! There is a surface to scratch through. Sort of like unwrapping a lot of paper, plastic and twist ties to finally get your toy out of the box.
What makes Exoprimal different is that it combines PVE and PVP into one game. You’ll play half a round killing dinosaurs with your group of 5 and then you’ll spend the other half fighting against another 5 person team AND more dinosaurs to try and win the match. How quickly you finish waves of enemies dictates how quickly you get to the PVP round and you could potentially get a huge head start if the other team isn’t doing well. And you can jump in with something called a Dominator, which turns you into a huge dinosaur like a T-REX to go after the enemy team and delay their process even more WHICH IS ALWAYS FUN.
The game is basically a weird action movie playing out in a video game. And on top of that, I really found myself loving the story, as nonsensical and weird as it is. I’m not even sure if I fully understand what happened? Strike that. I definitely don’t! And while I didn’t care about the characters at all when the game started, by the end, I did. In fact, there was a cutscene towards the end of the game that legitimately had me laughing out loud and games RARELY do that for me.
It’s also interesting how you can ONLY unlock more story beats in the game by finishing matches. You get a little progress bar and it’ll tell you, once you reach this point, you’ll get the next cutscene. And this is also how you get to unlock riads and boss battles with your teams. The story beats dictate whether you’re running into a character on the battle field or fighting a big bad. I thought this approach was pretty unique and really keeps you involved!
Quite honestly, what the game should be is a 5 or 10 person coop game. The PVP with the cube and hammer stuff feels very tacked on to me, while the PVE stuff feels very natural. Running around the city with friends, destroying dinosaurs is so much fun. Randomly joining a 10 man raid with both teams and taking down a huge boss is the best part of the game! Fighting another enemy team in this is…fine.
Though I will say that one of my top experience was in PVP. We were about to win the match by pushing our cube to the end and the sniper (I forget the class name) was shooting it from far away and about to disable it. So, I through up some of the buildable platforms that you can jump on in front of it at different heights and then we were able to secure the cube while the sniper kept just shooting the platform from their vantage point. This was a great feeling to win that way!
One thing is for sure is that each match will keep you on your toes. Sometimes you’re just killing dinosaurs, sometimes you’re protecting nodes, sometimes you’re escorting someone, and sometimes the game just takes you to a huge raid will all 10 players!
Another great feeling is unleashing your ultimate on a huge dinosaur or team to take them out. Have a T REX after you? Direct ultimate to take out the last quarter of their health!
I know I’ve been gushing about this game and you’re thinking, why did you give this a 3.5 if you like it so much? Well, there are definitely some things I’m not a fan of.
First off, the overall art style is bland and in some ways, the game is kind of generic. As pointed out above, I don’t remember the sniper class name… off the top of my head, I can’t remember any of the class names. I guess maybe because I didn’t grow up as a huge mech fan, but it was really hard for me to discern the difference between the classes in the game at first or even remember the names of the classes because that just doesn’t gel for me. Every exo suit, as their called, is different and offers different strengths but it takes a while to learn these things. The suits for me basically become things like “Oh the shooty guy” or the “grenade guy” or the “healing goblin guy.”
The environment and the cyber-ish, dystopia look of the cities you fight in aren’t very unique looking to me. They look like they could’ve been a Unity demo or something. There are areas that are beautiful to look at but there is a lack of landmarks and central design in the maps to help make these places memorable. The characters are in the same boat, as I mentioned above. The characters get more exciting when they start adding in some of the crazy skins you can unlock, but then that some times takes you out of the experience. Playing as a football player while a crazy AI is trying to destroy you, it doesn’t work in this game. I think the game taking itself too seriously is where it needs to stay, not being silly.
Unlocks take a LONG time to unlock. You get war chests to unlock stuff every now and then but it took me a lot time to get anything of value. The free tier of the battle pass is also represented terribly here where with the Battle Pass you get something new every level up, on the free tier, you’ll get something like every 6 levels and it’s nothing exciting (maybe a not very fun emote or something).
Speaking of the Battle Pass, the microtransactions are also kind of gross right out of the gate. $5 for a set of clothes and emojis for a character? Get out of here.
And as much as I like the nonsensical story, I think it’s a double edged sword. There are parts of it that are like “What?!” or “Wait how does this even work?” which I thinki could be a turn off for some. But that’s what you get with time traveling, parallel dimensions, Evil AI and Mechs from Japan.
I’m still picking at the last few online achievements here and there (Wow, kill 100,000 dinosaurs? Gonna be here a while…) and I’m going to keep playing off and on for a bit. I don’t plan on buying any microtransactions or the battle pass and I think that if you ignore that part of the game and push through some of the learning curve here, you’ll have a good time! I know that’s a big ask for some, but for me, it was worth it.