When it was introduced in 2022 at Sony's State of Play, Exoprimal was set to be one of Capcom's stranger releases. The trailer's vibe, which included weather reports about dinosaur invasions, seemed goofy but endearing. We previewed of one of the PC closed beta tests a few months ago and came away with the impression that it had potential that would be dependent on how Capcom handles the final release. Now that the game is out, our initial verdict hasn't changed.

Exoprimal opens in 2043 with an ad for the Aibius Corporation and a news report about the ongoing interdimensional dinosaur invasions and the new suits that the Aibius Corporation is developing. Afterward, you're introduced to your custom character nicknamed Ace as they're assigned to the Hammerhead squad. The patrol squad observes the abandoned and shielded Bikitoa Island, but it's soon pulled into an anomaly and crash-lands on the abandoned island. To make things even stranger, Ace has been chosen by the AI Leviathan to participate in combat exercises against dinosaurs in 2040, the year that Bikitoa Island fell into chaos.

As far as stories go, this is perhaps one of the more ridiculous ones that Capcom has devised in a while. The fixation on dinosaurs puts this over the top, and the idea of you being transported to the same day over and over again, Groundhog Day style, to gather data while dinosaur attacks are occurring only makes sense if you look at the details. Progress further into the story, and the whole business with time travel and research gets even goofier. It's a silly premise that not too many people are going to care about, since fighting dinosaurs is just a cool concept.

What may be disappointing to most people is the lack of an actual single-player campaign mode. Taking a page from the original Titanfall, the story occurs in the multiplayer mode. Regardless of whether you win a match, the game injects cut scenes and important bits of info between matches to fill you in on what's going on. The approach is novel enough but not particularly exciting, as most of the scenes are static pictures of people talking while observing a picture of a piece of information. The cut scenes where people are talking are slightly better, but with most of them taking place inside the crashed transport plane, it doesn't make the story any more enjoyable.

Exoprimal has two modes at launch. The first is a Training mode, where you review gameplay mechanics in the initial tutorial mode. It takes place in the same Aibius Corporation facility, but the big difference is that you can switch to various suits in real time. Like many team-based shooters on the market, the game features a variety of suits split between three different classes: Assault, Support and Tank. The classes offer their own variety of attacks. For example, Deadeye is an Assault class focused on shooting, while Barrage focuses on fire-related damage over time. Support players can decide whether to use Witchdoctor's stun ability with health regenerating fields or Nimbus, who can switch between pistols that hurt or heal. For Tanks, Roadblock relies on generating a giant shield and punching, while Krieger is all about blasting away with a rotary cannon. There's a good variety that becomes more diverse once you level up to unlock perks to augment their stats.

Dinosaur Hunt is the lone multiplayer mode, where players are set up in two teams of five. The objective is to make your way through a level and complete the challenges before you reach the final round. Tasks are randomly chosen, so there's no guarantee that you'll play through the same scenario type upon repeat visits. Some tasks are as simple as meeting a quota of killed dinosaurs. Other tasks specifically have you taking down bigger dinosaur types, like a Triceratops or T-Rex. No matter what you're given, the whole thing is a race. Completing each objective gives you a verbal status report on how your opposition is doing, along with ghost images of their status, such as whether they're still in combat or sprinting to the next hotspot.

Don't expect your dinosaur opposition to display any cunning in combat. Hordes of raptors will swarm you, and while a few might break away and try to get you from behind, most are there as cannon fodder. Ankylosaurus, T-Rexes, and Triceratops stomp around and charge at you. There's nothing intriguing except for the novelty of shooting dinos instead of zombies or robots, but the fighting feels so good that it isn't a criticism. You'll notice but shrug it off because you're enjoying it too much.

Completing these rounds takes you to the finale, which differs depending on whether you or the game choose a PvE or PvP match. PvE matches give each team three more rounds to race through that mimic the previous rounds' objectives. For those who want to blast dinosaurs, this fits the bill. Choose PvP, and the variety opens up, as you'll be perform tasks like escorting an energy cube to their destination point, killing dinosaurs to fill up energy cartridges, or powering up a hammer by killing dinosaurs. PvP modes adds the element of meeting with the opposing team and killing them directly, but both modes let you control a dominator, a powerful user-controlled dinosaur that lets you swat at the enemy team and needs to be killed before any task or round can be completed. In that sense, PvE still has an element of PvP, which remains different enough that it feels like a decent compromise for those who requested a strictly PvE mode during the beta period.

There are a few issues that are still present from the beta period. The voice chat only kicks in once you reach the pre-match screen but quickly shuts off when you get to the final scoreboard. This also occurs when you have a party of friends, and that presents a quandary since you'll either use Discord or Steam Voice Chat to talk between rounds but will want to shut it off in a match since you'll want to talk with your team to get the most out of the match. Pro streamers might have already devised a system for handling this, but it remains an annoyance for everyone else. You'll wish that it wouldn't take so long to start up a match, as the load times feel quite lengthy. Confirming just about any option is a multi-button process. You'll need to select something and confirm it before the game recognizes your choice; it doesn't help that the buttons can be difficult to read because of the color scheme used in the HUD.

One other knock against the online play has to do with the current implementation of cross-play. Cross-play is present, so players on Xbox, PlayStation, and PC can play together by default unless you specifically turn off the option. The ability to form parties across platforms, however, is missing. There is word that this will be activated in the future, but for now, the only way to party up is if you invite friends from the same platform. The restriction would make sense if it weren't for the fact that the Capcom ID exists which, one would think, could've been used to mitigate this issue. The fact that this is coming post-launch puts a blemish on the launch, which hasn't seen any big network issues in the opening weekend.

There may only be one mode, but Exoprimal takes its time to keep the mode feeling somewhat new for the first 15 hours or so. The campaign-like structure of Dinosaur Hunt's pacing means that the initial foray into the game is going to just be one map, with you fighting off raptors and Pteranodons. Level up, and you'll see more maps and more dinosaurs like the Ankylosaurus and Triceratops before getting the Carnotaurus, Deinonychus, and T-Rex into the mix. Eventually, this begets Neo versions of those dinosaurs, which have powers like the ability to throw fire and ice, go semi-invisible, or explode when defeated. Longtime players will be rewarded with a good amount of variety in battle parameters, but you have to stick with it to reach that point.

This is as an online-only game, so players shouldn't be too shocked to see a few microtransaction sections. The game already launched with a Season Pass for $10 along with a number of packs focused on specific exosuits. All of these are cosmetic, which shouldn't be too surprising since that seems to be an accepted practice, even in a full-priced game. If there's any solace for those who abhor this sort of thing, it's that at least all of the colorways for the suits aren't locked behind microtransactions, as they can only be bought with in-game currency. The same goes for leveling up the unlocked perks, and there's no way to buy more of that, giving you some semblance of the old-school tradition of playing instead of paying to unlock stuff.

We have a roadmap from Capcom that shows some commitment to keeping this title fresh. There are already three seasons planned out that last about three months each, with their respective passes. The first season adds new exosuits and weapons as well as a mode called Savage Gauntlet, where your five-person team isn't aiming for the fastest completion time for the given mission for that time period. Season 2 has a new map along with a new mission, and Season 3 adds the Neo Triceratops as well as beta exosuit variants. The seasons look like they'll last a decent amount of time, so that's good news for those who want to grind out each pass to its fullest. Even if you count the different collaborations planned for Monster Hunter and Street Fighter 6, it doesn't seem like the release schedule for new content is going to be packed with tons of things. Except for the possibility of seasonal themed events, it's a measured release schedule that feels good and not overwhelming.

The overall presentation is quite good. The character and dinosaur designs are very well detailed, while the environments look fine enough. The textures are clean and don't have any detailed texture pop-in, but the fast nature of the game doesn't allow you much time to sit and thoroughly observe these features. While the number of characters on-screen at any one time doesn't rival the likes of a Dynasty Warriors title, it still remains impressive to see so many dinosaurs roam around at any one time without any frame rate drops. Overall frame rate is high, and based on reports from others playing so far, the game seems well suited to run well on various types of hardware, which means that it's well optimized. As for the sound, the soundtrack fits perfectly for the cut scenes and the dinosaur-blasting portions, while the voice acting is solid.

After testing out the first closed beta on the Steam Deck and finding that it takes some work to get it running, it's nice to see that the release version has the Playable label. No longer do you have to look for the correct version of Proton, since the latest one runs the game without a hitch. Beyond that, the overall performance mostly remains the same as it did with the beta. Matches can average around 35-40fps depending on the action on-screen, but it never drops to a level where the game becomes unplayable. The battery life from a full charge averages a little below two hours, which is on par with some of the bigger AAA releases on the device this year. The game sports a few flavors of FSR to help with performance and battery life. The only issue one may have with the game on the Deck, aside from small text in some spots, is the fact that the game takes a while to load the graphics in a few places. It doesn't matter as much in the main menu screen, but it is more noticeable toward the back part of the match if you take on the role of a dominator. It takes longer to load in as a dinosaur and just as long loading back into your exosuit, which isn't ideal when a standard desktop PC gets this process done faster.

As we said in our initial preview, there's potential in Exoprimal. The basic mechanic of blasting away dinosaurs is absolutely fun, and the presence of competent bots filling in for missing humans ensures that no one is going to get shortchanged in a bout. There are enough goals in a match that there's no guarantee about what you'll get to play, and that keeps things fresh enough if you can progress through levels at a good clip. At the same time, the lack of a campaign mode hurts when it feels like the story is better served by having one, even if it only mimics Dinosaur Hunt with bots. Since this is an online-only game, it has a definitive shelf life unless Capcom can patch in something to help prevent the game from being obsolete if the servers ever get pulled. The game is fun now, and its presence on Xbox Game Pass ensures that subscribers can give it a shot before committing to a purchase, but it'll be interesting to see if the population holds up by the time the second season rolls around.

Score: 7.5/10