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Capcom demonstrates their ability to create a multiplayer game but with a terrible presentation

273 View2023-07-16

Exoprimal

8.6

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Exoprimal (Reviewed)

Developer: Capcom

Publisher: Capcom

Released: July 14th, 2023

Price: $60 USD

Exoprimal is a PvPvE game in which an AI pits you against other teams while summoning dinosaurs to evaluate your fighting skills while compiling a report on you as a whole. It lacks a campaign and does not support offline gameplay. It's a game dedicated solely to random matches, meaning you can not choose what you want to play, only what final outcome will be shown in the final battles.

Capcom gives this game nor it's player base any favors. The PvP is good, but the PvE is dispersed and locked behind so much grinding that it can take up to 9 hours to get to the "good" stuff occasionally and even then, you won't be able to choose the game mode or instance because you'll be paired up with the same repetitive modes like Cull, Payload, and Capture before a PvP fight or swarm.

Story

Fragmented

Consider it this way. Exoprimal is a game about humanity on the verge of annihilation owing to a temporal fissure in spacetime caused by the great collapse. Dinosaurs are spawning all over earth as a result of an AI that appears to have been created by a scientist and wants to do nothing but collect data and force Exosuit users to engage in combat activities for it's test studies.

This information is provided to you over the course of many runs and many hours when you find logs using the Database feature. However, you do not locate anything; these logs are unlocked determined by your level growth.

These brief exchanges will help you understand why the dinosaurs arrived to Earth, why the AI is acting the way it is, and why other Exosuit users are attempting to prevent you from halting Leviathan an whatever its plans are.

It's exhausting to unlock all of these minor cutscenes and events that are separated from the actual main story. Nothing has changed. You'll still enter your next assignment the same way you did before, via Dino Survival, and you won't notice any new story progression for at least 2 hours.

Problems

You're completing objectives slower than the enemy team

You get used to it after a few games. But after 10, 15, 20 bouts with the AI yelling the same phrases again and over, "Enemy is faster!" You can't help but silence it and leave it to subtitles when you hear "Spawning this dinosaur!" every few seconds. It's overdone so much.

Game Modes

You currently have no control over which events and missions you participate in. Would you like to participate in a raid where you join up with your opponents to take on a massive dinosaur boss? You can't, and even if you do get to it eventually, you can't do it again. It's similar to a randomizer that only selects a fun and interesting mode after 5 matches. It's also locked behind level progression.

This gives you a reason to stick with the game for a time until these modes unlock and enter the randomizer. The game then becomes more diverse and enjoyable. But it takes a long time to get there. It's similar to an invisible wall in an open world adventure game as it does nothing but restrict your ability to do things you want.

Game Pass

This game is presently available for free on Game Pass, but Exoprimal crossplay does not support PC and Game Pass parties so if you're looking to play with your friends you both would have to be on the same platform if one of you has the Game Pass. In this aspect, crossplay is a deception.

Bots

If you find yourself on a team of four before the game starts, it will grant you a bot player. You will be at a slight disadvantage because they are not programmed to respond to commands or do anything other than hit enemies and ignore objectives if enemies are nearby, making Payload and Capture objectives a bit annoying as the more you have on the objective, the faster it will move / charge.

Winning/Losing

The game doesn't actually punish you for losing, instead giving you roughly the same amount of progression after the match ends, only increasing your gains if you're on a winning streak. So it's strange to lose and be treated as if you've won.

Presentation

Visually good but lacking

The game makes great use of cutscenes to demonstrate both how amazing and how bad the game might seem from a production standpoint. Most notably, the actors' facial expressions, which lack the emotion that you would expect from the circumstances. It's not quite as awful as something like Mass Effect Andromeda, but it's still far off from being done well.

The explosions, special skills sound effects, and images are all visually appealing, with some decent noises added to make it feel more satisfying when you go on a massive killing spree of a ton of dinosaurs. However, the game could do without the continual repetition of the AI and characters telling you what is going on. You grow used to it over time, but it will still irritate some people, and you do have the option to disable the AI voice completely, so it isn't much of an issue, but then the game gets a lot quieter, which feels strange.

The game simultaneously piques your attention and dissatisfies you. Personally, I think it would be nice if they cleaned up the game a little more for the voices and possibly added the opportunity to choose whatever game modes (Raids, Giga) you wanted to compete in. It would be far more enjoyable for the typical gamer.

Gameplay

This isn't a 2 hour game

This is a game in which you play for hours and gain new stuff. It starts out extremely boring, but as you progress through the stages, it becomes a lot more harder and a lot more entertaining. But here's the problem: not many people will want to "waste" their time getting to the excellent sections of a video game if the first 15 rounds are so laborious and uninteresting.

Not enough PvE and too much PvP

Each game will have a few objectives, such as killing dinosaurs, fighting bosses, summoning tamed dinosaurs to attack other teams, and being the first to reach the end. If it's PvE, both teams can win, but if one team finishes first, the other team is eliminated if they don't finish quickly enough since the time limit is reduced to 30 seconds, leaving you with no chance of winning if you're behind due to a bad team composition. If you choose a PvP ending, you have an equal chance of winning or losing, even if you are behind, because you can rush the enemy team up close or from a distance to impede their progress.

While the game advertises itself as a PvP and PvE experience. It's easier to describe it a straight-up competitive PvP game similar to Overwatch in terms of classes. There are relatively few times in which this game is either PvP or PvE because it is always both or one more than the other. You have objectives, while the enemy team in another dimension is doing the same thing while calling tamed dinosaurs to obstruct your progress regardless of game mode.

Classes

It's simpler to look at it through the lens of Overwatch. Each class in this game serves a distinct purpose. Witch Doctor is a healer, Roadblock is a tank, and Deadeye is a long range dps; however, each has several variations that are all capable of handling different responsibilities. As a result, if you lack diversity, you will be slower than your opponent and not capable of doing much effectively.

Exosuit Customization

Because we're dealing with characters like to those found in games like Overwatch, the degree of personalization is limited to decals, skins, and certain suit enhancers that grant bonuses dependent on how much you spend in them for power. In this scenario, I prefer to play Deadeye rather than support or tank, so I've updated a lot of this suit to deliver a ton of AoE damage to large swarms of raptors while also having some ramped up damage on big dinosaurs when they do spawn for my ultimate which is by then charged up for huge damage.

Raids

Future plans

Features

The developers appear to be planning to give the player base access to specific game modes, which would be a significant step in the right direction, beginning with raids and hopefully progressing to full PvE or PvP rather than the illusion of choice. Time will ultimately tell whether they are truly looking to improve the quality of this game, as it is genuinely fun to play, but not where it needs to be.

Conclusion

I still have mixed feelings

I really want to give this game high marks, but as it stands it currently gets a 3/5.

The gameplay is excellent. That's the only thing that's kept me playing for 10 hours while trying to experience everything the game has to offer, but it feels like the game is constantly leading the player on a leash or promising treats with a bread crumb trail, and the more you follow it, the more they continue to lead you on with the promise of amazing gameplay and combat, but it never comes until it finally does, and by then you just don't want to put up with this facade any longer.

While the gameplay was enjoyable, it was tedious because the developers didn't seem to know what they wanted out of this. It's like playing Call of Duty and never being able to choose which map you want to play on because everything is randomized so it's "new," but something is always more popular than the rest. In this case, you are more likely to receive a "Ruins" map during the first 25 player levels until you begin to unlock the game. The game for which you paid $60.

It's so unlikely that you'll get a hoard instance, where you have to fight off thousands of charging dinosaurs, instead of the normal dull 10 raptors to 30 raptors spawning in close grouped up spaces for your fragmentation grenade.

Finally, the game was enjoyable for the first three hours, as well as the occasional change of scenery that occurred as you travelled deeper into the one and only game mode accessible. But it got to the point where I couldn't stomach it any longer when no one was looking at the objectives and we were running out of time because no one was trying to kill the current target or standing on the payload, or stopping the enemy team's invasion right up to not putting together a good composition.

This concludes my views of this game; while my opinions may be met with criticism, that is what distinguishes gamers; you don't have to like the same things as others, nor do you have to agree with them.

If you want to catch me on one of my streams or locate me on social media, you may do so at the following locations, I'm always playing something new.

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- Pawkt

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Exoprimal

8.6

Get

Exoprimal (First Impressions)

Developer: Capcom Publisher: Capcom Released: July 14th, 2023 Price: $60 USD If you've been following what Capcom has made and created throughout the years in terms of Multiplayer or Co-op. You may have witnessed their fruitless attempts to force their way into the PvP aspect of games with a low success rate. The problem is that they have been attempting to make this work for a very long time, notably with their

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