Exoprimal is a co-op PvEvP third person shooter coming from Capcom. In 2040, rifts in spacetime opened up across the world and unleashed a child’s fever dream. The world was flooded with dinosaur outbreaks. Three years on, the advanced AI Leviathan is running a series of wargames to develop the ultimate exosuit, in order to fight back against the Dinosaur onslaught. Not everything is as it seems though, as these Wargames involve the very rifts in spacetime. Leviathan is forcing people to partake in these deadly combat encounters, fighting not only dinosaurs but other exosuit pilots as well. And there is even more danger lurking. Things are about to get crazy.

Exoprimal is an absolutely bombastic action packed experience, that feels like a child’s fever dream. Dinosaurs, time travel, parallel universes and even an exosuit with a literal inferno for hair. If it wasn’t for the very Capcom feel to overall design and story beats, Exoprimal could very easily be mistaken as a SUDA51 title. Exoprimal feels like the dev team asked a bunch of children what they think would be cool to put in a game and put all of them in at the same time. The surprising thing however, is that despite the mishmash of ideas, and the wild nature of the combinations. Exoprimal does a fantastic job of making it seem logical in its presentation and is incredibly well constructed as a result.

The dinosaurs are the key part of the game, and there is a wide variety of them. Early battles will only have a few types, and as you progress further you’ve experience a wider variety of dinosaur types, which eventually expand into mutated variants with giant bulbous explosive backs. Raptors and Pteranodons, eventually expand into Pachycephalosaurus’ and Dilophosaurus’. No dinosaur game would be completely without the trifecta of big boys either, in the Triceratops, Stegosauruses and of course the T-Rex itself. Exoprimal does a good job of keeping the types of dinosaurs you encounter fresh and varied, whilst making it feel ever more overwhelming and terrifying as you progress. Early stages will require you to cull thirty or forty Raptors and a few Pteranodons. Later stages will see you mowing down hundreds of raptors, tens of special variant dinosaurs and even engaging with multiple larger type dinosaurs that spend their time absolutely launching you across the map. Each dinosaur behaves differently and requires a different strategy in approaching encounters. With the additional mission types that are added across the progress of the story, you’ll find yourself learning which exosuits are better suited for which encounters and particularly which combinations of dinosaur variety.

The exosuits are the second big part of the game that will really drag you in. There is a solid variety in DPS, Tanks and Support types, with each type playing very differently than the others. The ability to switch out to another exosuit mid-encounter, means that how you approach different encounters is always dynamic, and there is never one right way of doing it. Some types, such as the Grenadier, whilst looking incredibly cool (A literal inferno for hair), feel incredibly underwhelming in scenarios where they have to take down a larger enemy type. The Krieger tank, which uses a larger mini-gun, feels much weaker in comparison to the other tank class, that can produce a moving barrier, and fist slams all enemy varieties. There is definitely some buffs required for some types of exosuit, whilst others already feel like they are in an incredibly good place, if not a little over-tuned.

The mission variety goes a long way in making Exoprimal feel like an enjoyable experience to jump into for hours at a time without the seemingly repetitive gameplay style getting stale. The most common mission type is dinosaur culls, which just involve killing a certain amount of different types of dinosaurs for each phase of the mission. Simple, straightforward and fun. As you progress further you’ll also eventually have to defend particular areas for a period of time, that is extended if you don’t stop the dinosaurs from attacking a beacon. Dino Pursuits also come in, involving you chasing down and attempting to kill a big bad dinosaur whilst being swarmed with waves and waves of lesser dinosaurs. The interesting part of Exoprimal is how the two stage battles work.

In the second stage, you’ll go from competing with another group in the PvE scenarios, into a mixed PvEvP scenario. There is a wide variety of mission modes that will occur here. Data Key escort was the most common. Which involved standing near a moving vehicle, and stopping the dinosaurs, attempting to get it to the final location quicker than the enemy team. Losing sides will get special upgrades, like being able to spawn a controllable dinosaur to attack and destroy the data of the enemy team. The final location is the same for both teams, so the end of the missions tend to be filled with heavy amounts of PvP, whilst also still attempting to deal with waves of dinosaurs. It gets overwhelming pretty quickly, but never feels hopeless. There is modes like Energy Taker and Uplink control that encourage far more PvP. For those less inclined to competitiveness, Exoprimal does a good job of making the firefights explosive, quick and enjoyable. So even if you aren’t usually good at competitive shooters, the abilities and powers of the suit mean that people of all skill levels will be able to enjoy the encounters. For the most part, the split of mission types is enjoyable, without feeling too repetitive. For a game that involves the same cycle, the variety and mixing up is important as it stops the gameplay from feeling stagnant.

Exoprimal is in a strong place to be enjoyable, and long-living PvEvP action shooter. The gameplay is varied enough to keep it interesting, allowing you to sink three or four hours in at a time, and feel like you’ve made solid progress. The variety of dinosaurs is fantastic, and with a live-service aspect model to the game, new enemy variants could easily be added in to further expand the lifetime of the game. This extends to the Exosuits as well as the missions. Being able to fill empty places in the team with bots means you are never punished for not having friends to play with, or playing at obscure hours either. Exoprimal is in a very good place to really dig itself into the Action shooter market, and with the right care, could be a title that sees success for a long time to come.

Exoprimal is set to release on July 14th for PC, PlayStation and Xbox