Over the past 20 years, video game developers have brought us many cautionary tales of AI that we can use to read and understand today’s thriving ChatGPTapocalypse. Then there’s ECHO, with its baroque maze-like surveillance rooms that spawn clones based on player activity.There are observations where you It’s Artificial Intelligence — an eerie and thoughtful portrayal of a space station computer trying to figure itself out while rescuing its kidnapped human crew. Now there’s Exoprimal, where the AI is a giant, glowing guy named Leviathan, and he’ll flip over a horde of steaming dinosaurs across the map and yell at you, Lets you slaughter them so it can drain your combat stats to make better mech suits.
It’s the historical end of the algorithmic curse you’ve been waiting for: ancient and futuristic pop symbols biting and exploding at each other on an infinitely repeating day on a tropical Bond villain-style island base that exists between games outside. An “information pizza” that resembles an unlockable backstory document, with words like “vortex” and “much ado about nothing” about the rogue’s timeline. It’s also a pretty good shooter, offering some interesting mech classes and blending PvP with PvE in an engaging way, though probably not worth the £55 it currently sells for on Steam. Dear game fans, rejoice! Here’s another second-rate singer in your collection.
The secret to enjoying and mastering Exoprimal is realizing that it’s not a battle, it’s a race. In each match, teams of five players run from one waypoint to the next, completing small objectives that initially consist of wave defense battles against dinosaurs, which are summoned by floating spheres of purple energy. The game’s 10 mech suits (aka exoskeleton suits) are grouped into DPS, healer, and tank categories, the same ones familiar from countless other hero shooters, especially Overwatch. These include Roadblock, who can hold up his shield to make others cower behind; Vigilant, who has a hybrid sniper rifle that you can charge in scope view or shoot quickly from the hip; and Skywave ( Skywave), a doctor who wields a staff and can glide. Each exoskeleton suit has a few special abilities, a slowly maturing ultimate ability such as freezing time in an area or calling a cannon, a generic item like a health pack, and three slots for stat modifiers.
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Even if you rock out with an army of exciting glass cannons and a world-weary witch doctor, victory over the dinosaurs is guaranteed: after all, you can respawn infinitely in most modes. The problem is that there is another team working along its own target chain in a separate instance. In one of Exoprimal’s more revealing touches, you’ll catch glimpses of the red ghosts of these parallel universe Jurassic kickers as you move between mission areas. It’s a chance to quickly decipher their team composition and see how they deal with similar threats – heck, Roadblock hasn’t seen a triceratops rumbling down the alley behind it, and oh my god, the dart Zephyr is trying to take down Those cunning pachycephalosaurs.
Your real goal is to get to the end of the chain before the rest of the team, and Leviathan acts as both mission command and match commentator, letting you know when you’re ahead. Completing all objectives will initiate the second phase, during which you may have to engage in some tougher naval battles, escort crushable data cubes to upload points, or collect scattered power packs, just to name a few that gradually add to the Exoprimal core GAME TYPE War game mode as the story progresses. The difference in the second phase is that teams can see each other and fight each other, and certain classes, such as vigilantes, will be player killers. There’s also a special map power-up, “The Ruler,” that lets you own and rampage as one of the larger reptiles. If you’re behind, you’re more likely to get rulers: they’re an extremely blunt way to stall the other team and ensure a near-finish, Mario Kart blue shell with giant feet and fangs.
Once you realize that Exoprimals are fundamentally a race, it changes the way you think about the mundane act of slaughtering retro lizards. As a pure PVE game, Exoprimal will be a formulaic co-op shooter where at least 60% of its entertainment value will be Friday night voice chat banter. But the subconscious competitive element reinforces accessories and brings complexity to enemies that I’m not sure they fully deserve. You don’t just think about how to kill them, but how to kill them quickly, and terrain layouts and spawn modes can often make setting up kill zones tricky.
Velociraptor packs need to cluster together for effective disposal, whether by positioning themselves above the choke point between you and the spawn, or using crowd control abilities like Skywave Gravity Bomb. Larger predators such as the spiny and gilded Ankylosaurus or Carnotaurus (a kid menu T-Rex) need to be tanked so that DPS players can attack their weak spots from the flanks. If you let hordes of arrogant fossils scatter the arena, you’ll lose precious moments chasing down every reptilian. From this perspective, the most fearsome enemy in Exoprimal is not a T-rex, but a flying pterosaur, which is easy to ignore and quickly disperses when it appears. If you really want to earn your group’s undying love, I suggest you time your pterodactyl packs when they leave to spawn.
All of this gets more complicated in the second stage. There are more dinosaurs at awkward angles, and their advance is interrupted by wreckage–enemy players will then circle around your position, brazenly using your data cubes as cover while shooting you from behind. Based on 30 or so games, Exoprimal doesn’t have much depth like a PvP game: no class chemistry like in Overwatch, just basic strategies like camping and playing with tanks carrying pocket healers sky. But it’s an interesting challenge of spotting enemy players before they can do significant damage, while also deciding when it’s okay to split up and harass the opposing team.
Another tip for enjoying Exoprimal is to appreciate how it has evolved. Now it’s definitely a tricky stegosaurus, but the core wars game mode comes with a lot of surprises, Leviathan adds new target types and stronger, fancier dinosaurs as you unlock and upgrade stat models and items – Give your healers maybe a forceshield, or reconfigure your tank’s chaingun to spin a bit faster.
There are also story-specific fights in which characters hack or interfere with the artificial intelligence, forcing it to improvise and sometimes subvert Exoprimal’s entire premise. It’s the kind of late-game trap you rarely encounter in season pass games, which tend to have everything clearly marked for buyers. Speaking of which, there’s a predictably unglamorous tidal wave of microtradable character skins, liveries, and loot boxes, but aside from clogging up menus, it doesn’t really interfere with how the game works.
The plot is roughly the same, consisting mostly of cutscenes and audio diaries aboard your dropship, in which an active, multiracial crew discusses Leviathan’s goals while your silent, customizable protagonist cools off in the background. The acting is fun, but the writers clearly know they’re just passing the time in the halls—there’s a multi-episode joke about everyone wanting the same screwdriver—and the cutscenes have an annoying habit of Replay lore files to find clues.
Overall, Exoprimal benefits from what I call the Capcom effect – a close cousin of the legendary Nintendo effect, referring to a certain unique balance between engaging, plausible physics and stylized, whimsical animation that makes the entire Things feel quiet and convivial. You can see it in the characters in Monster Hunter, whenever they heal up, they do the Mister Universe pose, and Street Fighter looks like a painting, but hits like a wrecking ball . The proportions and panache of these exoskeleton suits are reminiscent of Transformers, and like Capcom’s old Lost Planet series, they have an endearing swagger that more than makes up for their familiarity as a combat class. Nimbus, on roller skates, dances when he fires a gun, and hulking Murasame takes a step when he swings a sword, letting you slide around rooms in combos.
It’s a sight for lizards, but not enough to make Exoprimal essential. The PvPvE balance and how Leviathan modifies this core mod as the game unfolds is really neat, but after 15 hours it still feels like an exercise in reshuffle. I didn’t think it could reach such an amazing price. As a subscription game, though, Exoprimal is a dino-mite game.
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