Developed by Capcom, Exoprimal is an online, team-based action game that will challenge you in new ways. Pitted against waves of fearsome dinosaurs, it’s all up to you and your brave teammates to fend off this outbreak and fight for victory.

The year is 2040, and a new crisis engulfs the globe and is threatening humanity; dinosaur outbreaks occurring everywhere. thanks to Leviathan, a hyper-advanced A.I. that can predict the location of these outbreaks, all hope is not lost. Use this technology, along with revolutionary powered exosuits, and make your stand. Humanity depends on it.

With the power of your exosuits, nothing can stand in your way, and there’s an option to suit everyone’s play style, ranging from your standard assault, which is what I spent most of my time playing, all the way to your more team-oriented roles like ‘Tank’ and ‘Support’. Each role has unique suits that have amazing gameplay and skills to stand out. Roadblock is the community favourite tank class at the moment, as the suit allows you to deliver hard-hitting haymakers while also being able to use a shield to block damage and stop big dinos in their tracks.

The Witchdoctor, out of the three healer options, is my personal pick, as the healing radius it throws down covers a large area and makes it easy to keep the rest of the team alive. For damage roles, I tend to swap between the Deadeye suit, which is the default suit, and Zephyr. Both play the complete opposite of each other, as Deadeye has ranged attacks and Zephyr is all about getting in close, using martial art skills to deal massive damage.

‘Dino Survival’ is the main game mode you’ll play, with two squads of five pitted against each other in a race to complete objectives the fastest. For the most part, it will be just you versus the dinos, however, in some situations, you’ll have to fight off the other players as well. I found it to be a good balance and an enjoyable experience.

As you progress into the story, there will be segments where all the players will be in a team to fight a bigger threat. The story is easy to miss as it is something you collect as you play matches, and then you progress the storyline outside of gameplay in the menu, but as you advance the story, some game modes will change, inserting errors into the world and new events to test the players will.

The graphics and character designs are amazing, and like in other games, you can unlock other colours or styles for the suits, mixing things up and making them stand out, and the world design is done well, such as an empty city filled with buildings destroyed by the dino invasion, and let’s not get started on how great the dinos look, and especially the mutated ones you come across later into the game. I was not really surprised when I saw it was using the RE Engine. It’s another great visual installment from Capcom in my books.

The controls for both the PC version and console handle really well, with a constant display that shows what input is allocated to the command to perform the actions. There is also a constant audio presence with the AI keeping you and the team up to tabs on what is happening and which types of threats are coming.

After finishing the story, players will be told they have gained access to the next game mode that is due for release shortly, a horde mode, and this week, a road map for Exoprimal was showcased with upcoming content and new crossover events. As players were aware, a Street Fighter event was announced before release, and some fighters will be added to the game in an Exosuit style. The main showcase for this was an ExoRyu.

We also have a Monster Hunter crossover event coming soon, so this could be some monsters from the series, or again, new suit designs based on armour sets from the series. In the news of new suits, there will be what is called Alpha Variants for the core suits, coming with new move sets and changes to make things more balanced for the classes that felt like they were lacking in damage output.

Exoprimal was a game I was looking forward to, and it quickly wrapped its claws around me. It has been such a hard game to stop playing, and despite the game modes being repetitive with the same objectives, it always feels different thanks to how other players run their suits and what roles I swap into. It keeps things flowing for the team. I love the tanking classes, but I will always swap over to classes we are lacking to be a team player, and I have loved every second of gameplay.

Written by: Shane Walsh