prior RE engine titles, the dinosaur animation is *not* reduced at distance.
- Low quality RE engine SSR strikes again
- Cut-scenes use better reflections but DF are not sure if it uses RT or just higher quality
- The game reaches its large hordes of dinos by making some cut-backs like the basic dinos not casting any shadows
- PS5|SX: 2160p, Series S: 1440p
- Checker board rendering likely
- Series S has some blurrier textures compared to PS5|SX
- Shadows exhibit some blur/grain on the edges on all versions which can look off-putting
- PS5|SX drop to mid 50s in combat with more pronounced drops in cut-scenes. DF thinks 30 FPS cut-scene cap would have been better
- Series S targets the same performance but has worse drops compared to either PS5|SX with bigger drops to high 30s in cut-scenes.
- VRR displays solve most of the issues but on non VRR displays, the lack of consistency is noticeable.
- DF thinks Capcom should make some cut-backs to reach performance consistency like drop resolution and remove the poor SSR entirely.
There's also plenty to appreciate in terms of the visuals. Exoprimal has effective indirect lighting throughout, with light bouncing and scattering through constrained indoor environments. As a cross-gen title, the game doesn't feature any tech that truly pushes current-gen hardware, but the lighting looks quite good in the heat of battle. There's a limited ability to resolve fine detail here but I do think it's effective enough all things considered. The environmental artwork also shines in some maps, with a good variety of aesthetically distinct locations which is critical for a multiplayer game. Key locations are distinguishable from a distance, and this is backed up by waypoint-style navigation.
Exoprimal's signature visual element is undoubtedly the gigantic swarms of dinosaurs that you face at every objective. Raptors spill out of portals like paint, flooding the battlefield with foes. These waist-high enemies go down quickly, but can quickly overwhelm players if you let them get too close. This is all handled without resorting to reduced-rate animation too, which has often been used in RE Engine titles to mitigate CPU demands.
Exoprimal is a fairly simple game from an image quality perspective, with each current-gen console having one mode targeting 60fps, with a 2160p image on the premium consoles and 1440p on Series S which appears a bit softer but not disastrously so. Outside of image clarity differences, Series S also exhibits lower texture resolution than PS5 or Series X, with certain assets exhibiting blurrier, slightly chunky 2D art on close inspection.
High frame-rates are of course critical for multiplayer shooters, but the 60fps target does have performance issues at times, which are more pronounced on some platforms than others. PS5 and Series X hit 60fps most of the time and feel responsive, but the game does drop frames with some regularity. In the most challenging sections, the game drops to the 50s for extended periods, while in cutscenes it's possible to reach the 40s - perhaps suggesting a 30fps cap would have made sense.
Exoprimal: a technically competent revival of the dinosaur action genre, tested on PS5 and Series X/S
Exoprimal revives the venerable dinosaur action genre - but is it any good on a technical level? And what of performance on PS5 and Series X/S? Oliver finds out
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