I spent most of this past weekend sinking hours into the recent Exoborne playtest, which gave eager players the chance to try out the upcoming extraction shooter ahead of its official console and PC release. It was a lot of fun, though, given the fact that developer Sharkmob’s previous live-service project, the extremely underrated battle royale Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodhunt was shelved after just a year of post-launch support, I’m feeling a little apprehensive about its chances of success.
Exoborne will not only be going head to head with genre giants Escape from Tarkov and Hunt: Showdown 1896, but also competing more broadly with the likes of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and Fortnite in the battle to consume all of our free time. We also know that Exoborne will be a paid release, meaning that it’ll have to make a compelling case as to why players should fork over their hard-earned cash rather than stick with the countless high-quality free-to-play multiplayer experiences out there today.
Does Exoborne have what it takes to survive in such a crowded market? Only time will tell, but I can say there was plenty during my hands-on time that left me looking forward to the full release.
Torn apart
Set across the fictionalized Colton County, Exoborne transports us to a post-apocalyptic America ravaged by the effects of climate change and corporate greed. You are one of the Reborn, a rogue survivor trapped in a seemingly endless conflict with Rebirth, an enigmatic high-tech company responsible for much of the world’s destruction. It’s all your standard sci-fi fare, but provided some much-needed narrative context in my first few hours that got me a lot more invested in the setting than I ever was with the comparatively barren lore of Tarkov.
After a brief tutorial that introduces the story and sees you capturing a small bunker to use as a safe house, the game transitions into a format that’s going to be immediately recognizable to anyone with knowledge of the genre. You drop into an area of Colton County, armed with a loadout that you create from a generous selection of starting supplies. From there, you need to explore, loot, and shoot your way to one of the many marked extraction points on a 20-minute time limit. Whatever you can get out is yours to keep, but if you die, you lose not only everything that you picked up but also whatever you went in with.
The stakes are inherently high, but Exoborne ups the ante further through its titular exo-rigs - powerful cybernetic suits equipped to your person at all times. By default, your exo-rig is fairly basic, blocking fall damage and granting you a handy grapple hook and glider in addition to a super-powered melee punch, but you can spend scavenged resources to acquire fancy new ones with much stronger abilities. These, however, are also lost on death - forcing you to constantly weigh up whether it’s worth bringing an expensive one into your next deployment.
Other players are a constant threat, but there are also roaming non-player character (NPC) foes to keep an eye on. You may be outfitted in a high-tech suit, but you are far from invincible and even the most poorly-equipped bandit can risk cutting your run short with a few well-placed shots. It’s nowhere near as unforgiving as Tarkov, which is going to be good news for those less experienced with extraction shooters, but choosing your weapons carefully and diving for the odd bit of cover is essential for success.
Super soldier
For the purposes of the playtest, I wasn’t that bothered about losing any of my gear given the inevitable progress reset - so I freely experimented with everything I was able to get my hands on. There was a good range of weapons up for grabs, including some surprisingly effective secondary sub-machine guns (SMGs, powerful close-range shotguns, and lots of longer range assault rifles and snipers that all require unique ammunition types.
I quickly found that getting up close and personal was by far the best strategy, especially against large groups of bandits. Engaging at a range seemed to always end with me being surrounded thanks to their impressively competent flanking abilities, so I soon learned to grapple hook in for a rapid assault before darting off to an out-of-reach vantage point in order to heal and reload. To support this playstyle, I invested in the pricey Viper STR1 exo-rig, which came equipped with a brutal melee sword and a massive buff to health regeneration with every kill.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to form much of an opinion on the overall PvP balance of all of this gear, as other Reborn never seemed to pose much of a threat. A few barely reacted to getting shot, apparently unable to locate me at all, while others simply opted to pepper bullets in my general direction, missing almost everyone. Either I’m on track to be a top Exoborne player, or most of my foes were still learning the ropes.
Still, there was at least one looming threat that kept me on my toes: the weather. This can be a blessing or a curse, with the sudden appearance of a giant tornado or howling thunderstorm potentially inflicting massive damage if you get too close, but also lets you put your glider to good use. Whipping it out in fast-moving winds shoots you up into the air in a massive burst of speed that makes traversing the large map a (excuse the pun) breeze. Paired with the grapple hook, this can be incredibly useful in combat - allowing you to get behind foes in an instant.
I even once managed to propel myself into the cabin of a chopper that someone else was using to extract, executing them at point-blank range mere seconds before the screen went blank - though I have to admit that I still feel pretty bad about that one.
Playing on a modest PC equipped with an RTX 3060 and i5-11400F, I was consistently wowed by the overall performance. Busy scenes with bombastic weather effects maintained a rock solid 75 frames per second (fps) on the medium preset with DLSS enabled, a level of smoothness that I simply haven’t experienced with any other Unreal Engine 5 game on this rig to date, so hats off to Sharkmob there. Bear in mind that this is still a playtest too, so further optimization is surely on the way.
Exoborne doesn’t have a release window down just yet. However, we know that it’s coming to PC, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PlayStation 5. I’ll keep my eyes peeled for further updates.
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