Exoprimal may spark a Dino Crisis for Capcom after an underwhelming release and negative reviews from players.
On July 14, Capcom’s new dinosaur horde shooter Exoprimal released on Steam, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X & S, Cloud Gaming, and more. But across every platform, the reception to Exoprimal has been tepid, reserved, and underwhelming. So what’s up with Exoprimal?
Well, according to the majority of the reviews, it’s just not got much going on. Among traditional games media, the game just isn’t that exciting or interesting. In fact, it’s pretty repetitive. Despite dropping a rain of literal dinosaurs on you, there’s not much that apparently keeps you coming back.
Among players, the reviews are far more scathing. Steam reviews are panning the game for having free-to-play style monetization in a $60 AAA release. Others state that the game is barely a PvE game, echo the publications statements about it being repetitive, and perhaps most damningly “It’s fun if you already had low expectations.”
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What went wrong with Exoprimal?
So what went wrong? One popular post on Twitter cuts right to the heart of the issue. Suzi Hunter points out that “I don’t think it’s good but it is well made. What annoys me is that no one asked for it, thousands of people worked on it, and it’s always online. This game will disappear in a few years and all the time and money that went into it will be forgotten.”
That’s really the crux of the issue with Exoprimal. Capcom, fresh off the huge success of Street Fighter 6, seems to have pushed out this weird AAA-looking game with barely any heart, soul, or artistic direction. SF6 is a beautiful, stylized game that, while you can dislike its decisions on art direction or gameplay, at least has a direction it's going in. Exoprimal feels very empty. You could mistake any screenshot for a Destiny 2 dinosaur event or something. Or maybe it's Warframe.
And perhaps most egregiously, Capcom already has a dinosaur shooting game franchise that fans have been clamoring for a sequel to for years: Dino Crisis. Perhaps smartly, executives didn’t want to risk a more established franchise’s name on this game. But, honestly, with the last Dino Crisis game releasing 20 years ago this month, it just feels like a missed opportunity.
All we can say is it’s lucky that Street Fighter 6’s first DLC character is coming out later this month to help put a line in the win column for Capcom.
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