Developer: Iron Galaxy
Publisher: Maximum Games
Platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC
Tested on: PlayStation 4
Extinction – Review
There’s flying under the radar, and surprising players by releasing press info mere days in advance to the release, and then there’s Extinction. A game that caught most gamers by surprise as it had little to no information about it dropped. A small alpha build trailer and then complete radio silence. This can either mean that the developers don’t want to build hype and just want to create something without prior expectations of the gamers or it could just mean that the developers didn’t have a budget for a massive advertisement campaign. Whichever it is, the game is out now, so word of mouth will have to do.
Story
You are the last of the Sentinels. A group of people that have extraordinary powers that are the key to taking down the Ravenii and protecting what’s left of humankind. You are Avil, which isn’t a prescription drug as his name is pronounced A-veal, not Ay-vil, and it’s up to you to run around dispatching the towering monstrosities with your sword by cutting off their heads.
The way the story is told is mostly through expositional dialogue. This is a rather lazy way of storytelling and it’s not like the developers didn’t know what they were doing; the story starts off with a hand drawn animated opening and it sets the tone quite nicely, and if they were to have stuck to this theme, the narrative could have been rather interesting even with the boring writing in place.
As it stands now, you could skip through every dialogue and you’d miss nothing noteworthy conversationally. The conversations are like oatmeal, bland but passable.
Graphics
The graphics of Extinction are cel-shaded. They haven’t changed from the first alpha trailer. This isn’t bad, as the graphics of that demo, were quite nice. There is however an annoyance, there’s quite a big clipping problem with your character warping into objects or in the armpits or folds of the enemies.
When the giant hulking beasts destroy a building you’ll see how it evaporates. This makes it so you won’t be blinded with falling debris and it fits the aesthetic quite well. Enemies are quite samey, apart from the Ravenii, who are different from one another by the colour of their skin and the different armour they are wearing. After a while you won’t be searching for the armours weak points because they are quite distinct.
Sound
When it comes to the sound the game won’t rock your world. The writing is on par with the voice acting. This isn’t the fault of the voice actors, but they sound quite aloof, as if they really don’t care either way. They don’t emote quite well and after a while it’ll sound tone deaf. The world is going to shit and most of the time it’s like they are discussing things like how to get a license plate or what they had for dinner.
The ambient sounds are nice, with the sounds of the buildings being torn down sound destructive. The fists of the Ravenii sound like cannonballs tearing down everything in their path.
Gameplay
Extinction is an action/adventure game in the vein of Attack on Titan. The gameplay is quite reminiscent of it. You run around killing smaller enemies to charge up your rune energy. You need this energy to finish off the Ravenii. You can also charge up your energy by teleporting civilians to safety, or damaging Ravenii armour. Once you’ve filled up the bar completely, you’ll be able to chop off the head of the Ravenii and move to the next objective. That’s usually how every chapter goes, you locate the big bad monster, charge up your sword, and then take down the massive offender. Some levels will just have you save civilians or destroy the a certain amount of enemies against a time limit then there are some levels where the side objectives are randomized, but apart from that the game doesn’t quite switch things up enough to keep from growing stale. As you save civilians and complete side objectives, you’ll gain points that are needed to upgrade skills that’ll help you take down Ravenii with greater ease.
The problem lies in the fact that the game is extremely repetitive and there’s little to nothing that will keep players entertained for long and keep them coming back, even the challenges won’t keep players fuelled with fun for long. The biggest kicker of it all is that the game is a full priced AAA title purchase, with an unspecified DLC still coming up that costs way too much for what you are probably getting.
Conclusion
Extinction won’t go the route of: Spec Ops: The Line with being a critical success but being commercially unsuccessful, it will probably just be forgotten. The game is repetitive as reading binary and it’s overpriced. If it were half the price DLC included then maybe this would get a pass, but as it stands it’s best to wait off for a sale and spend your money on the actual: Attack on Titan games.
Extinction - Review,
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