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Review By: Brennan
Ieyoub |
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| Developer: |
Deep
Space |
| Publisher: |
Sony |
| # of
Players: |
1 |
| Genre: |
Survival
Horror |
| ESRB: |
Mature |
| Date
Posted: |
9-10-01 |
I have to
admit, there wasn't a whole lot of information I knew about Extermination
whenever I saw it enticing me from across the counter at
Electronics Boutique. Sure I had read a few
articles and seen a couple of screenshots, but I didn't
know what kind of gameplay it had to offer. The mystery
shrouding Extermination's arrival was what made taking it
home seem so irresistible to me. It was like
spotting an exotic beauty from across the dance floor, her coy
smile piquing your curiosity, her amber skin dipping in and
out of the spotlights, glistening with every sultry gyration
of her robust hips. She draws you toward her with her
passionate stare then embraces you. She rests her chin
upon your shoulder as your hands run across her sweat soaked
back and onto her supple buttocks. She leans in closer,
grazing her full, cherry colored lips upon your ear as she
whispers, "Take me home with you.!"
Well I've
already been down that road brother, and I'm here to tell you
that this beauty has a serious case of loins scorching HERPES!
Now I'm not by a long shot saying that buying Extermination is as terrible
as contracting herpes. I mean, you can return
Extermination, but you can only dream about returning
herpes until the day you die. I'm just saying you
probably won't know you've been bamboozled until you've sealed
the deal in both of these situations. The more you don't
know about this game, the better the package sounds.
This is just another forgettable title.
Upon booting
this puppy up, you'll be treated to a boring cinema scene with
bland dialog and animatronic like animation. The story
is so painfully trite you'll probably want to skip it, so I'll
sum it up in a nice, terse paragraph.
On the
Antarctic continent lies a top secret military base that goes
by the name of Fort Stewart. The base dispatches a
distress signal, then somehow loses contact with the rest of
civilization. So how does Uncle Sam remedy the
situation? He sends in the Marines of course!
Semper Fi!! As a member of Team Red Light, the most
elite branch of special forces recon known to man, you and
your squad are sent in to assess the situation, rescue
survivors, and restore the facility.
I was truly
excited when I first began traversing the icy exterior of Fort
Stewart. The game looked great, sounded great, and
it had some very promising gameplay. In addition to the
run and gun action that is prevalent in most
survival-horror titles, Extermination will have you
climbing crates, jumping crevasses, swinging from ladders, and
performing a myriad of acrobatic evasions. It all sounds
like candy right? Well, the problem with all of these
Lara-Croft-like moves is that none of them can be implemented effectively.
Their applications are extremely linear and unexciting,
like driving a race car on rails. The game developers
have failed at making these innovations gel together with the traditional
gameplay that makes classics like Resident Evil so
exciting to experience. There is also an evident lack of
passion behind the development of this title.
Extermination feels like an attempt at fattening some ones
bank account instead of a game idea conceived by an artist,
aimed at offering gamers a refreshing, new perspective of the
genre.
The graphics
are admittedly above average. The frame rate is locked
in at a brisk rate, and the characters are nicely detailed.
There's a wide variety of enemies to face, and they all
have a good range of animation available to
them. The textures are, unfortunately, very drab
and repetitious. The level design is also quite boring
and uninteresting, resulting in an overwhelming sense of deja
vu when accessing new areas. A noteworthy exception
to the otherwise somniferous locales would be
the external environments, which showcase a very well designed
snowstorm effect that makes for some genuine tension.
The control
is basic and requires little time to master. The X
button is your action button (Jumping, opening doors, grabbing
ledges, opening chests, etc), the square button executes a
powerful knife slash, and the circle button is a weak
knife attack that can be pressed repeatedly for a three hit
combo. The triangle button will pull up your inventory
and status screens, and the shoulder buttons are used for
aiming your rifle and controlling the camera. The analog
control is very responsive, and your character turns to face
whatever direction you push the stick in as opposed to
having to rotate him in place before walking forward
which is the genre standard. This gives you a nice
amount of precision that can be useful when evading enemies.
The tight control gives an exciting, action oriented type of feel
that is unfortunately stymied by the cumbersome targeting
system. You can't fire your weapons while
moving, and the auto-aim feature is really lame.
The camera is
just plain horrendous. You can swing it behind your
character by pressing L1, but you can't control the
distance from which the action is viewed. It
remains too close to your back, obstructing the
view of what lies directly in front of you. Be
prepared to be smacked around by lots of off screen
mutants the camera wont allow you to see. Switching to a first
person viewpoint is possible, but only for looking around or
firing your gun, movement isn't allowed.
There isn't a
lot of depth here either. You'll spend most of your time
finding a way to open a certain door, or access a certain
elevator. Of course there are plenty of enemies hanging
around just begging for a chance to poke one of their
tentacles through your pasty white chest. In addition to
avoiding tentacle floggings, you have to evade the
mutants' green, projectile barf that will infect you with the
same bacteria that makes them all look like inside-out
colons. Once your infection meter reaches the 100%
mark, you have a very limited time to find a vaccine,
otherwise it's game over marine.
I really
wanted to like this game, but I just can't seem to remain
interested in it for more than 5 minutes at a time.
After that, everything from opening doors to battling monsters
just becomes a very arduous task. Save your hard earned
money for a more worthy purchase. If you want to give
Extermination a go, do yourself a favor and make this one a
rental.
HIGHS:
- Some good graphics.
- Cool enemy design.
LOWS:
- Bad camera.
- Boring gameplay.
FINAL VERDICT:
Extermination
takes a step in a new direction and falls flat on its face.
At it's very best, it's a weekend rental. It came with a
whisper, and it will leave with a thud whenever I toss it onto
the counter at EB for trade-in credit.
Overall
Score:
4.5
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