EXOPRIMAL

A throwback to experimental Capcom action games

- Wes Fenlon

We all have weaknesses videogames exploit to make us love them in spite of any obvious faults. It turns out that one of mine is watching 100 raptors fall out of a portal in the sky, then shooting them with a machine gun. I guess that makes Exoprimal an educational videogame?

Exoprimal is a deeply strange game, and somehow the dinosaurs falling from the sky are the most normal thing about it. The story seems like it’s headed for a Jurassic Park setup, with your team of special forces operatives heading to an island where some sort of disaster has taken place. But instead of landing, finding a bunch of dinosaurs and then killing them, you first go through an interdimensional time portal controlled by a rogue AI, and then you compete in a Hunger Games-style contest against alternate universe versions of yourself for the AI’s amusement. That’s where the dinosaur killing comes in.