2 minute read
EXTINCTION
FAR LEFT The combat is loose and difficult to control, the camera actively fights against you, the AI is usually pretty dumb… it’s bad news for Extinction.
ABOVE The fantasy realm the game is set in is largely barren and unimaginative.
LEFT Executing Ravenii is the main point of the game, but getting the animation to trigger in the first place is frustrating.
but, again, this ends up feeling more like the gentle bumps you got in Xboxera games that pushed you back into the world if you were trying to go ‘out of bounds’.
Combat itself follows this trend of being clunky and ill-handling. There are two main facets to how you’re supposed to fight in Extinction: one against the giants, the other against their minions. Fighting the minions and rescuing civilians (which you do simply by holding X near them) is required to be able to take on the ogres. These ‘street level’ battles are reminiscent of your standard hack ‘n’ slash games: mash X to win. You can throw some pauses in there if you like, but let’s be honest, it doesn’t really matter.
When you graduate to the grownup battles, you have to target bits of the giants, break their armour, slice off their limbs and make it up to their necks before they regenerate limbs. It’s all very My First Action Game, and as far as we played, the gameplay never really changes once you learn these core mechanics. Sure, the game will pile more tasks or conditions on you, but that’s the core gameplay loop. Make of that what you will.
CUSTOM DECLARATION
Outside of the game’s core story, you have the option to engage in custom battles where you set the parameters yourself. So you control the number of Ravenii, the number of civilians, the size of the map and more. Thing is, thanks to the suite of mechanics being repetitive and underwhelming, no matter what combination or setup you go for, you always get met with the same, drawn-out unsatisfying experience.
Meter made
All this happens while a meter in the top right of the screen counts you down from 100 to zero. As the Ravenii destroy the cities, the Extinction bar reduces. It’s an arbitrary bit of game design that, while acting as the main motivation for basically every level, is nothing more than a glorified timer. Considering the camera really doesn’t want to play ball with you most of the time, and triggering the execution animation on the ogres can be a pain… this timer usually causes more frustration than urgency.
Maybe if you’re a fan of retroinspired games or titles that focus more on action than anything else, Extinction will earn a place in your heart. But it requires a lot of patience and teeth-grinding to even tolerate in the early stages.
With poor production values (sorry voice actors, but this game quickly got its VO turned off), unsatisfying combat, an unimaginative story and a very basic suite of mechanics, Extinction is best avoided. If you do want your fill of budget action game, you should wait for a sale – how this title managed to be listed on the Microsoft Store at full price is simply baffling.
OXM VERDICT
A poorly polished, poorly realised and remarkably underwhelming action game.
