I didn’t know what to expect when I first booted up developer Iron Galaxy’s newest game, Extinction. Even with a few preview videos and trailers, I did not expect it to play and feel so much like Attack on Titan. And I’m not one to usually compare games, but when the entire experience centers around a group of people battling giants who are attacking a kingdom, and you defeat them by slicing off their limbs and ultimately their heads, but only from the back of the neck, that gray area isn’t that gray.
Extinction tasks the player with a 10-to-12-hour campaign where you run around saving townspeople by warping them to safety at crystals scattered over the map, and then defeating smaller enemies to build up your special move meters so you can then take the fight to the big boys, called Ravenii, who are destroying the town/castles/other structures. Speed is of the essence, and your character can jump, swing and grapple, running on building and rooftops, to traverse the map as quickly as possible.
Combat is based on one or two buttons, and the use of the triggers to aim the special attacks to dismember the behemoths. Cutting off their legs hobbles them momentarily so your character can scale their back for the neck shot that will end them. As the chapters go on, the Ravenii show up wearing pieces are armor on their arms, legs, and head, so it becomes a Shadow of the Colossus-like mini-game of trying to destroy the locks holding the armor on, and then proceeding to make some epic cole slaw of them.
This all sounds fun — and it is, it really is — but it’s also grossly repetitive. Extinction’s story is somewhat generic, never truly realizing its true potential, so it tried to hide that by throwing more and more Ravenii and other types of enemies at you to keep you busy. A few hours in, and you realize that the story is barely there, and that you’ve killed a ton of the big guys, and it’s just rinse and repeat, over and over.
The art direction has a cartoonish feel, like Fortnite, and the cut scenes are not animated, but are art pieces that move across the screen while the voice actors tell the story in words alone. This isn’t that big a deal, as how the game plays is always more important than its presentation, but I feel it must be mentioned, as the gameplay, while fun, is also a bit glitchy. I’ve yelled in frustration more than a few times for shoddy hit detection and jump/grapple moves that only work part of the time.
I enjoyed my time with Extinction, and Iron Galaxy has done a good job by trying to stretch out the experience with Daily missions that reward major XP for upgrading your character. But when it all boils down to it, I feel like I’ve played this game before in Attack on Titan, and if given the choice between the two, I will always go with the Koei Tecmo game over this.
Extinction is available now for the PS4, Xbox One, and PC. This review is based off the PS4 version and a code provided by the publisher.
