Extinction is basically a budget Attack on Titan game. It may have some nice graphics and run really well, but what you are left with after that is just a boring mess of a game.
Pros:
Nice graphics. The art style in particular is probably the game’s greatest strength. It is a sort of cartoon style and looks really good in motion. Perhaps that is why the trailers and such make the game look better than it is. The buildings, player models, and even the enemies all fit very nicely into this aesthetic. The artists really did a nice job here building up the world of Extinction.
Good polish. The game also runs very well and I did not run into any bugs or crashes like many other users have reported. I never experienced any sort of wall-clipping issue and never managed to get myself stuck. Maybe I just got lucky, but I found the game to be rather nicely polished in that regard.
Cons:
Very boring gameplay. The game’s most glaring issue is just how boring the gameplay is. The developers took the Attack on Titan formula and watered it down to its very core, leaving just the basics. There is only one button for attacking, so the player ends up just spamming it whenever taking down the smaller goblin creatures. Rescuing is just as bad too, as that is done by just holding down a single button. In fact, I found it to be more efficient to just ignore the smaller enemies and hold down the rescue button even when they were attacking the civilians, as killing them is just that much of a pain. When taking down the big enemies (called ravenii), the player is tasked with doing a sort of slow-motion targeted attack on their armor and limbs. This feature is as in-depth as the combat goes and is where the player will most likely be spending the majority of his/her time. Targeting the armor until it breaks, then slicing off the limb, then aiming for the nape (hmm, sounds familiar). It gets boring far too quickly.
Repetitive level design. It also certainly does not help that the level design is repetitive. The objectives across the different levels have very little difference and just boil down to “kill the ravenii”. Whether that be killing a specific amount of them, killing them until a time limit runs out, or killing a specific target among them, they all involve some sort of ravenii killing. Sometimes there is a level that has the player rescuing a certain amount of people, but that aspect of the game is far more boring than the ravenii slaying and really just feels like a waste of time.
Frustrating controls and movement. That slow motion targeting I mentioned previously is a bit difficult to use. It is like it has a mind of its own, aiming where it wants, rather than where I want it to. Getting the angle on the ravenii armor is frustrating on its own, so having this finicky aiming on top of that just multiplies this frustration. Additionally, running up the ravenii is also questionable. Sometimes I would fall of prematurely on what felt like no fault of my own and sometimes I would not even stick to the ravenii. Most of the time, it took a couple tries to finally get climbing up a ravenii and reach its nape. The controls and movement are just annoying all around.
Extinction may be blanketed with a great art style and some slick animation, but what lies underneath is an incredibly boring and repetitive game. The frustrating controls and movement also do not help. If you are looking for a game that actually does well what Extinction tries to do, I would recommend Attack on Titan 2, which came out just a month ago. As it stands, Extinction is just a poor ripoff of the Attack on Titan games.
You can buy Extinction on Steam here.
I was provided a free review copy of the game in order to write this review. Read more about how I do my game reviews here.
cublikefoot 