It is raining dinosaurs. It is literally raining dinosaurs.

I've absorbed the elevator pitch of many games, but Exoprimal's outrageous concept is as powerful as any of them, at least on a primal level. You see a purple miasma in the sky, from which a swarm of velociraptors rushes in, and you say: I'll definitely shoot that thing.

When the itch is scratched, you are a little more conflicted. Capcom's 5-player PvPvE hero shooter is irrepressibly fun. It has some great ideas. And almost all of them carry frustrating limitations. In short, Exoprimal's launch state feels more like an Early Access stage than a finished game.

Before we poke holes in the skin of extinction, there is a surprisingly large number of stories to tell: the year is 2043, rifts in space-time occur everywhere, dinosaurs spill out into the civilized world, crack teams of feral accents with guns in hand, and an AI named Leviathan continues endless combat experiments of unknown purpose They are stranded on the island of Bikitoa. Fortunately, the Ibius Corporation has invested vast sums of money to develop exosuits to help organizations like ours, the titular Hammerheads, stand up to the hordes.

We didn't need this much detail to fuel the Dinotide shooting, but we got it anyway. As we progress, new text logs and cutscenes are added to the archive, and a huge radial menu gradually unravels the mystery behind the dinosaur Thunderstorm, Rift, Ibius, and AI. This is reminiscent of Dead Rising's piece-by-piece explanation mechanic, rewarding game time with the next piece of the jigsaw puzzle. Even the way the story is told is gamified is surprisingly effective: even though I had little emotional connection to the characters, I found that each new chunk of information stimulated my lizard brain.

Beyond the cutscenes and down to earth, what we find is a hybrid of the cooperative horde survival and payload maps of "Overwatch" and "TF2." Squads of five heroes in mech suits work together to clear each wave of dinosaurs as quickly as possible. This is because the opposing human team is performing the exact same task in live, parallel instances. They can only be seen during the horde stage of the match, which is indicated by a red silhouette. If the opponent finishes the stage first, you can watch them drive off to the next stage first. This is a really effective way to dangle the carrot.

Conversely, if you defeat the Triceratops mini-boss before the opposing human team, you will see the silhouette of the opposing team still fighting their Triceratops as they move on to the next area. I have never been so smug as when I first saw that. Good luck, you son of a bitch. I come to cool down a bit in the next section. Peace.

There is a great payoff to racing this early in the game. The first team to complete all the objectives and make it to the final mode actually gets a head start.

If this sounds a bit like Destiny 2's Gambit mode, that's only because it is. After a few plays, however, the arcane rhythms of Exoprimal make their presence known, and I began to understand what Leviathan's endless combat trials actually are.

Combat is not only survival, but also time management. How you combine heroes and abilities is what really matters. This is Exoprimal's chance to assert its own identity beyond being a Gambit clone, and to play 4D chess with a roster of Exosuits that can be interchanged during combat.

And it will come to fruition as a magnificent thing, if put in a good mood and in the right light on the vernal equinox. There are a number of ways to do this: escalating danger, room for experimentation, and a roster made up of assault, tank, and support characters. For example, the Witch Doctor's AoE healing ability covers the same radius as Krieger's shield dome, so the two can form an OP circle if they work together. Murasame's right-click attack throws the enemy into the air, making him vulnerable to Vigilan's ranged attacks. It is not yet released, at least not yet.

There is joy in controlling this super-powerful exosuit. When you play Krieger, the tanky machine gunner, and deploy a shield dome large enough for your entire squad to hide inside, you feel like a pretty good pro gamer. Blowing up hordes of Raptors, spreading hit points all over the place, even doing a little teamwork with the shield, and winning the match MVP for the amount of damage you inflict: ...... I can't lie. I can't lie. It's like getting a Bastion POTG in Overwatch. You know your piss is boiling from low skill, high reward play. And I don't care.

Not that there is a shortage of fun, as in big stupidity. But it remains to be seen in a week how players' tactics and use of abilities will evolve over time; Exoprimal is primarily about shooting and whacking hordes of Jurassic Park background painters, like TF2's Medic/Heavy combo that radically changes the action. I have yet to play or even see a super effective Exoprimal combo that changes the action. Individual character abilities give good feedback, but they don't give the gratifying feeling of aliouping with someone else's abilities and playing a tightly defined role. Despite the classifications, everyone is a damage dealer. The next exofighter needs to be a true specialist who can completely change the playstyle.

While not as perfectly designed as its hero-shooter rivals TF2 or Overwatch, Exoprimal manages to keep the action fairly readable. Voices sound each time a character uses an ability, and abilities have unique visual effects and animations. This allows the player to keep track of what his teammates around him are doing, who has dropped an ability, and what he should do next as a result.

However, there are a few blunders here as well. The silhouettes of the exofighters, especially Murasame and Zephyr, are too similar at a quick glance. As for the voice line, there is something about saying "Don't break it" every time you deploy the Witch Doctor's E-ability that makes you think your teammates would rather not be healed.

The maps are lacking in both number and design; they feel like a blur of leftovers from the Xbox 360-era "Lost Planet" games, with the familiar "near-future sci-fi dystopia" assets doing little to capture the imagination or induce tactical virtuosity. Shipping containers, overturned trucks, nature reclaiming paved roads. You know the drill.

The first week of Exoprimal was played in Dino Survival, the only launch mode, with the first unlocked exofighter. I upgraded my player, exosuit, and Survivor Pass levels, upgraded both cosmetics and meaningful gameplay perks (called rigs and modules), and began to feel at least a little invested in the experience. While not quite in the same league as "Overwatch," there is something strangely engrossing about the plot. As you level up, new dinos are introduced. The dino survival mode changes subtly over time, incorporating an actual storyline, culminating in an epic "behemoth" raid boss-style encounter.

The battle path model is unobtrusive. No obvious P2W mechanics lurk in the store, and no insidious RNG slot machines keep you away from the cosmetics you want. For example, all exosuits can be purchased with the in-game currency Biccoin. It seems that deceiving the user is not the primary goal of this game.

At least not after they have already purchased the game at full price. This is because while the exosuit looks promising and the modes are tense, the game as a whole feels lacking right now. During the review period, a friend who was playing with me asked, "Is this the end of it?

Yes and no. Capcom has released a post-launch content roadmap, which includes the addition of a new mode exactly one week from the time of writing this review: the Savage Gauntlet, which will be available on July 28, and will allow late-game players to test their characters' designed to test their specs. In addition, the August title update will add 10 "alpha exosuits," a new map for Season 2, two planned collaborations with Street Fighter 6 and Monster Hunter, several beta exosuits, and a Neo Triceratops.

I have yet to play any of them. However, given the time I've spent with "Exoprimal" so far, even if all of these were included at launch, 50 pounds might still seem a bit light. It feels like a game that they want to release in Early Access, get all the player feedback and then make improvements, but don't want to sacrifice launch week revenue in the process.

So I am in the position of an embittered Exoprimal evangelist. I hope this game has a future. Because, like many people, I am intrinsically attracted to lizard genocide and ridiculous exosuits. Because, like many people, I am intrinsically attracted to lizard genocide and ridiculous exosuits. But I'm also attracted to the way Capcom drip-feeds the story, lures players into the grind, and then, without warning, shakes up the Dino Warfare formula. When the tight constraints of the "Dino Warfare" mode are tampered with, it really makes an impact.

But I've been tasked with a PR job to get my people to sign up and join the squad with me. So yes, this is now. This is the game.