It's raining dinosaurs. It's literally raining dinosaurs. I've absorbed a lot of gaming elevator pitches in my time, and Exoprimal's preposterous conceit is about as strong as they get - at least on a primal level. You look at a purple miasma forming in the sky, you watch a tide of velociraptors pour forth from it, and you say to yourself: I am absolutely going to be shooting at that.
I got a bit more conflicted after scratching that itch. Capcom's five-person PvPvE hero shooter is enjoyable. It has some fantastic ideas. And almost all of them carry frustrating limitations around their neck. In short, Exoprimal's launch state feels more like an Early Access phase than a finished game.
Before any extinct hides can be perforated, there's a surprising amount of narrative setup: it's 2043, and space-time rifts are popping up all over, spilling dinosaurs into the civilised world and stranding a crack team of gun-toting types on Bikitoa Island where an AI named Leviathan runs combat experiments for an unknown purpose. Luckily for us all, the Aibius corporation has sunk huge amounts of cash into developing exosuits to help organisations like our Hammerheads fight back against the hordes.
I didn't need this much detail to incentivise the shooting of dino tides, but we have it anyway and it doesn't hurt. As you progress new text logs and cutscenes are added to the archive, a giant radial menu that slowly uncovers the mystery behind the dino-thunderstorms, the rifts, Aibius and the AI. It brings to mind Dead Rising's piece-by-piece exposition mechanic, rewarding your game time with the next piece of the jigsaw. Gamifying even the way the story is told works surprisingly well: I found my lizard brain stimulated by each new chunk of information even though I had little connection with the characters.
This story is from the October 2023 edition of PC Gamer.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the October 2023 edition of PC Gamer.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
VIVE LA RESISTANCE!
Be the deadly dagger in Nazi-occupied France in CLASSIFIED: FRANCE '44
CUTTER STAID
OUTCAST A NEW BEGINNING rekindles the original game's epic scope
OLD WORLD BLUES
The beautiful HORIZON: FORBIDDEN WEST COMPLETE EDITION struggles to move on
OFF PUTTING
Lee Carvallo's PUTTING CHALLENGE 2: another great Simpsons fan game
ALMA MATER
Horror is a family affair in FEAR
ELDEN RING REBORN
A Scholar of the First Sin-style total conversion mod for Elden Ring.
EIYUDEN CHRONICLE: HUNDRED HEROES
Spiritual successor to Suikoden promises an grand adventure
JEDI REMASTER
DARK FORCES REMASTER is the classic Star Wars FPS upgrade you've been looking for
PAWN COCKTAIL
DRAGON'S DOGMA 2 is an exceptional and sometimes infuriating RPG
CELEBRATING 10 YEARS OF THE ELDER SCROLLS ONLINE
Few online RPGs have transformed as much in the past decade as The Elder Scrolls Online. First debuting in April of 2014 as a confused, awkward thing, loved by few. Today, it proudly stands alongside its singleplayer peers. Here's how TESO escaped Oblivion's grasp and reconnected with Elder Scrolls fans.