Get in, get the loot, and get out. Those are the fundamentals of any extraction shooter, and the upcoming Exoborne is no different. But Exoborne takes this proven formula and cranks up the action even further thanks to super powered Exo-Rigs that enhance both your strength and mobility, wild weather effects, and everyone’s favorite video game gadget: grappling hooks. I got to play about 4-5 hours of it at a recent preview event, and while I didn’t exactly walk away hungry for “one more drop,” I do think Exoborne has the potential to make a big splash in the extraction shooter scene.
Let’s start off by talking about the Exo-Rigs themselves, because they are a large part of what gives Exoborne its distinct identity. There are currently three types of Exo-Rig: Kodiak, which gives you a shield while sprinting to cover your head and also gives you the ability to crash down from above for massive splash damage; Viper, which rewards you for getting in the action by giving you health regeneration when you kill or down an enemy and also gives you a powerful and far reaching melee attack; and Kerstrel, which trades in the offensive power of the other two suits for mobility, giving you the ability to jump higher and temporarily hover. Those archetypes can further be modified with modules, with each type of suit having several unique modules that only they can equip to enhance their own unique abilities.
Personally, I enjoyed the satisfaction of being able to swing in like Spider-Man with my grappling hook and crash down with the Kodiak’s ground power slam and completely devastate everything in the surrounding area, but the other suits were fun to play around with as well. That Exoborne only offers three suits definitely feels limiting, and there’s certainly room for other types of suits with different powers, but developer Shark Mob was unable to comment about plans for future Exo-Rigs at this time.
As far as the actual shooting goes, Exoborne feels great. Guns have a weighty and satisfying kick to them, melee attacks quite literally pack a hell of a punch and feel great to land, and using your grappling hook to launch into a glide as a means of getting around the map certainly beats having to hoof it all the time. Random weather events will either help or hinder your ability to get around, with tornados giving you a huge boost to your aerial mobility as you ride the winds in whatever direction they take you; while rainfall will make your parachute practically useless, forcing you back down to the ground whenever you try to deploy it in a downpour. To really sell the post-apocalyptic setting, there are even fire tornadoes that will also be a huge boon to your ability to get around, but if you get too close, you risk getting pulled into the fiery twister and killed.
Risk vs. Reward
Risk vs. reward is the driving force behind virtually every aspect of Exoborne’s design. When you drop in, a 20-minute clock will start counting down, and when it reaches zero, it will broadcast your location to all other players. You’ll then have 10 minutes to extract, or you’ll be killswitched on the spot. At any point before that, you’re free to head to an extraction point and call for an extraction (If you have the cash to call the transport), but the longer you stay the more loot you stand to earn. Loot can be found all over the place, on the ground, in containers, on the dead bodies of the AI enemies, but the biggest prize will be other human players, as you’ll be able to take whatever they brought in and whatever they’ve picked up.
In addition to standard loot, the big prizes in the field are artifacts. These are essentially loot boxes with several pieces of valuable loot inside, but you only get to claim their contents if you successfully extract with them. You’ll need more than just the artifact as well – you’ll also need to collect artifact keys in order to open them. Artifact locations are marked on the maps for all players to see, meaning that you’re probably going to have to go through some human players if you want to walk away with the prize.
Similarly, there are also high value loot areas on the map that are heavily defended by much stronger AI mobs. So if you’re looking to get out with the best loot, you’ve gotta be willing to put your neck on the line.
This results in a fairly tense kind of atmosphere and really encourages proper communication with your squad. One of the nice gameplay choices is that even if you go down, you’re still not out of the fight. There are self-revives that you can use to pick yourself up as long as you haven’t bled out, and even if you do bleed out, as long as you still have a teammate alive, they can still resurrect you as long as they’re able to reach your body. It of course takes a while to revive someone this way, and if an enemy squad hangs around and waits for you, it’s certain death, but still, it’s nice to have a last resort that can still keep you in the game.
I came out of my demo with two major concerns regarding Exoborne. The big one is that this really seems like a game that demands to be played with a close group of friends. You can play solo, sure, and you can fill your squad with a squad of strangers if you’d prefer to go that route, but both of those options are obviously not ideal. This is a flaw that’s inherent with a squad-based tactical extraction shooter, and exasperated by the fact that it isn’t free-to-play, but it’s nonetheless a bummer for a more casual fan of the genre like myself who doesn’t really have that built-in squad of people that are super into the genre.
The other issue is that as of right now, I don’t know what the late game of Exoborne looks like. Game Director Petter Mannefelt told me that they weren’t prepared to talk about late-game at the moment, but that generally it will be about PVP and how you compare yourself to other players. Hopefully Shark Mob has something specific planned for that, because while PVP was fun whenever I encountered it, there was too much downtime between those skirmishes to make me look forward to going back in purely for the PVP experience.
We’ll see how Exoborne continues to shape up as it launches its playtest from February 12 to the 17th on PC.
Mitchell Saltzman is an editorial producer at IGN. You can find him on twitter @JurassicRabbit
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