Review - Exoprimal

(originally posted Dec 30, 2023)

Game's old news by now, but yotsuben got it for me for Christmas (thanks to a price fuckup on Humble Bundle's part where it briefly cost something like a third of its intended sale price), and I did enjoy the betas, and there's a 2xEXP weekend running currently, so I've killed a lot of dinosaurs over the past week and wrapped up the story content.

It really sucks that Exoprimal was forced to be some kind of battle-pass live service game when all it really wants to be is a Left 4 Dead style cooperative horde-murderin' game with a loose story through-line. It's especially frustrating because the story is actually pretty good. The game is under no bones about being what it is: in this world people put on power armor and dive through time to shoot dinosaurs in the head. The raid boss is called a Neo T-Rex. They're in on the joke, and it means they can lean into it and not take themselves too seriously, and get some actual pathos out of it. The "Best Screwdriver" series of logs is some primo MGS-style codec call bullshit (complimentary).

As you might expect from a game with time travel, there's some goofy stuff involving time loops and such. It's pretty clear early on that Goddess Bikitoa was an exofighter sent further back than normal, but finding the log they left behind and the story details within was a solid "oh shit!" moment. I think the clear standout story stuff is with Alders, both his relationship with Sandy and his character arc after the confrontation with Durban. The scene where Maj can't come up with anything else to comfort him other than "you know what, fuck that asshole" feels more genuine to me than any number of inspirational speeches.

It's just that to get any to any of this good stuff, you have to hop into the multiplayer queue, and after each battle you get one or two lore logs with some audio of the characters talking about the situation. Collect enough about a specific subject and there's a longer codec call where all of those logs are compiled into some more concrete info. Certain battle thresholds have more produced story cutscenes and milestones accompanied by a special bespoke mission, often some kind of raid boss where all 10 players have to work together.

Any time I got the "special" missions (by far the most enjoyable experiences in the game), there were maybe one or two other humans playing and the rest were bots. I don't know how you're supposed to replay these unless the matchmaking decides to plop you in with a new player progressing through the story for the first time. You're definitely supposed to be able to because there are profile medals for, say, beating the final boss 5 and 10 times. Are they just... random in the queue? Who thought that was a good idea?

To see the entire plot, you have to play about 60-ish Dino Survival rounds, which are about 15-20 minutes apiece. Steam says I've played 26 hours, but a lot of that is waiting for matchmaking or fiddling with builds or leaving the game running while I made dinner or whatnot, I'd wager the actual gameplay time is closer to 20. Which, honestly, pretty reasonable... if, again, this wasn't a stupid live game.

Almost all your gameplay options are gated behind your level and your "Bikcoin" currency, which you get by... leveling up (to Capcom's credit, you cannot buy more Bikcoin). This includes the equippable chips that actually can alter your playstyle pretty drastically and the Alpha variants of every playable exo-suit, which each have different primary weapons and playstyles from their normal counterparts. You can't unlock an Alpha variant until you hit level 20 with a specific suit, and then it costs 15,000 Bikcoin just to unlock the Alpha. You might have spent 5000 just to unlock the regular Murasame suit. Then if you want the good chips, you're spending thousands more to unlock and upgrade those, only if you're a high enough player level.

It's not a problem for me now, because I'm 10 hours deep into the 2xEXP weekend and have like 70,000 Bikicoin laying around waiting to be spent on upgrades, but it's just tedious and frustrating in principle. I feel like I shouldn't play Roadblock Alpha, my favorite class, because that way I'm not earning up points to unlock the other stuff. Sucks! Please don't make progression this way especially in a competitive multiplayer environment where I am actively hindering my team by playing classes I'm bad at!!

And that's kind of the rub in general, right? I'm discouraged from getting invested in the story, from experimenting and enjoying the actually pretty cool and varied slate of classes because Exoprimal is a fucking competitive 5v5 live game and I feel like I'm under constant scrutiny to play well and not screw over my team. Yes Leviathan, I know that I'm completing objectives slower than the enemy team, how about you fuck right off? I hate what this does to me, because yes I do want to win, and more importantly I want to facilitate the other people on my team winning, and it means I become an asshole about playing properly and that the people on my team become assholes about playing properly, and this is why I no longer play Overwatch or Apex Legends or any "third place" game anymore.

At least when I get bodied in Street Fighter 6 I'm the only one who looks like an idiot.