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Dom Robinson reviews
Sony
- Price: £39.99
- Players: 1
The survival horror genre really began on the Playstation with Resident Evil.It was one of the most amazing and atmospheric games I had played at that time.Turn the lights off. Put your headphones on and shit yourself stupid.
The sequelwas great to play through for one of the four scenarios, but thethirdlost its way and the Dreamcast exclusive,Code Veronica,was too samey. This game doesn’t take the genre much further and so theatmosphere it attempts to create doesn’t quite work because it doesn’t graspyour attention.
In Extermination, it’s Christmas Eve, 2005 and to quote the billing:
Somewhere over the Antarctic, a plane is flying a marinesSpecial Forces Recon Unit to Fort Stewart, a top secret governmentfacility. The facility has been conducting some kind of scientific research, butthe subject of their investigations is not known. The Recon Unit is respondingto a distress call sent out by the research team. Since this call was made,no further communication has been received from the facility. Repeatedrequests for more information have gone unanswered. Suddenly, one of theplanes engines inexplicably bursts into flame. The plane crash lands,separating the members of the Recon Unit around Fort Stewart. Luckily theyall survive. But Fort Stewart is host to a dark secret… Who knows howlong they will manage to stay alive?
I have to be honest though and say that this kind of game does get a bit onthe tedious side if it doesn’t offer anything new and I only continued on withit after a kind soul pointed me in the direction of the walkthrough atGameFaqs.com
Graphics and sound are reasonable, but far from outstanding and didn’t seemlike the great leap forward from PSX to PS2 that we deserve. Still, that couldbe said for quite a few PS2 games released in its first year and I expectthat they will improve as time goes on like the PSX ones did after around2-3 years.
The game plays as you’d expect when compared to the Resident Evilseries, but it’s not quite as intuitive because you can run round in anydirection and the camera doesn’t always follow you, causing you to aim yourgun at something just to make the camera look forward. Initial gripes withthe movement are ironed out to a degree as you get more used to the controlsthough.
Another link with THAT game series is when it comes to saving your game.This time though, instead of ink ribbons you need a battery, but the good newsis that it can be recharged from a well-positioned charger thus making it lessof a chore than the RE games.
As for whether Extermination is a must buy… Well, if you can’t getenough of the survival horror genre then you should get it, but if you’vecompletely had enough, give it a miss as it offers little that’s new. As for me,I’d be quite prepared to play more of this genre if it was radically differentand felt as fresh and challenging as the original RE did at the time,but on balance this doesn’t quite cut the mustard.
For those of you in my camp, I’d recommend a rental if you can get it for acouple of days and don’t need to go out anywhere because it needs a fair bitof time invested.
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Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.