Exoprimal is a game for a very specific kind of person, and that person is me.
The game has such a unique mixture of multiplayer shooter mechanics, team play, and revolutionary narrative delivery that is truly special and being overlooked by many.
In short, Exoprimal is a PvEvP (Player vs Environment vs Player) online competitive multiplayer shooter. There is no single player element. You and a team of four friends or random players race another team of five in a set of randomly assigned missions through a city which generally centers around shooting and killing hundreds and hundreds of dinosaurs. Sometimes at the end of a match, your team and the opposing team end up in the same physical space and are able to shoot and eliminate each other.
The first thing that Exoprimal excels at is making each mech suit (called Exosuits in game) feel unique. My most played Exosuit is Witch Doctor. This suit can drop healing fields and electrocute dozens of small dinosaurs at a time, holding them in place for allies to shoot and kill. I also enjoy playing as Barrage, a grenade launcher and mine placing specialist, and Krieger, a mountain of a suit that wields a minigun and can drop a damage mitigating dome shield.
The variety of play styles in the game's 10 Exosuits is impressive! There's suits that feature sniper rifles, samurai swords, roller blades, and more. It truly feels Overwatch-like in its variety of playstyles. There's a suit for everyone.
What makes these suits unique from the heroes in Overwatch is the ability to customize each suit with specific mods to further tailor each suit to a player's playstyle. There are 10 or so generic mods that can be slotted into every suit, but the most powerful ones are unique to each suit. For example, I want my Witch Doctor suit to heal as much as possible, so I slotted a mod that doubles my healing fields output and another mod that instantly charges my capacity of healing fields when I use my dodge ability. I'm healing so much damage you guys wouldn't even believe.
The next thing that Exoprimal excels at is its unique brand of competitive shooter match. As I mentioned earlier, the matches are randomly generated missions that take you to random areas of a map. Most of the time, these missions consist of killing a certain number of a specific dinosaur species, but every once in a while the game gives you some surprises. A single large dinosaur target will run away, forcing you to chase after it through hordes of smaller dinosaurs. Sometimes you'll have an area to defend as waves of dinosaurs swarm your team from all sides. On the rarest of occasions, you'll actually be teamed up with the opposing team to face a super-boss dinosaur.
Each team also receives the ability to become a dinosaur and wreak havoc on the opposing team as a dinosaur. The timing of when to use this ability and how to defend against it is different every match. The final mission of a match is sometimes PvP focused, sometimes PvE focused, and other times something special. If a player wants exclusively PvP or PvE final missions, they can select that option before queueing for a match.
No two matches ever feel the same because they aren't! Sure, the goal of each mission most of the time is "kill a lot of dinosaurs," but having the locations and species of dinosaurs mixed up somehow keeps each match feeling fresh.
The final thing that Exoprimal does expertly is the way it reveals its story over time. Believe it or not, despite being a strictly online multiplayer shooter, Exoprimal has a deep and lengthy story. I've played about 35 matches and have experienced about 75% of the game's story. Let me try to explain how the game goes about revealing its story as you play.
The opening cut scene shows you and your team crash landing your plane on Bikitoa island. Your main goal is, unsurprisingly, to Escape The Island. On the game's Database tab, smack dab in the middle of the screen is that Escape the Island goal. Branching out from that central point are hubs titled A Mysteries. These are the main overarching mysteries in the game's plot. Branching out from those hubs are various B Mysteries hubs. These are smaller mysteries related to the A Mysteries. Branching out yet further from those B Mysteries, around the outside of the Database Mysteries web in a circle, are C Lost Data.
While you, the player, are competing in the War Games, your npc allies are exploring the island in search of Lost Data, clues to solve the island's mysteries or help escape from the island. After each match, you're provided 1-2 of these Lost Data points. These are things such as audio recordings, emails from important characters, travel brochures, and on and on that provide backstory to the world, relevant information for what happened on the island, or clues on how to escape.
Once you collect all of the C Lost Data for a B Mystery hub, a cut scene plays where the NPCs connect the dots with the Lost Data recovered to reveal the explanation for the B mystery. Once you collect enough B Mystery explanations for an A Mystery hub, you get yet another cut scene where those puzzle pieces are put together, explaining the answer to a major mystery. And presumably, once you answer all of the A Mysteries, you will fulfill the Escape the Island central hub and be able to escape the island!
Does that make sense?
It may sound complex, but it's done in such a fascinating way. Being spoon fed one or two pieces of lore at the end of each match is such a clever way to keep me interested in continuing to play. Even though I'm unlocking mods, skins, and medals as I'm playing, what I'm most interested in is collecting Lost Data and solving Mysteries!
Exoprimal is a game that does so, so much and it does all of it so, so well. Not everyone will be into slaughtering waves of dinosaurs, not everyone will be into playing as a single player with random teammates, not everyone will be into the story and mysteries the game reveals over time. But me, I'm hooked on every single thing Exoprimal is doing.
