Not every game will always shine the way you’d expect it to and that’s totally fine. It gives you a chance to see what was cool about the game and also what areas require some fixing. Extinction is a new title from Iron Galaxy and the folks at Modus Games. It’s an action title that takes place in a medieval world, where your goal is to take out the giant brutes from destroying towns and villages. We certainly get the Attack on Titan vibe here and that’s totally cool, but there are a lot of gaps unfortunately that just provide very little in terms of depth. We’ll go into more detail about that later but essentially, anyone who favors a nice action packed hack and slash title will find some excitement in Extinction.

Anyone who has watched or have played Attack on Titan will definitely get that vibe right off the bat, as you jump into battle and engage with giant brutes on the battlefield. It’s certainly an imitation of the popular franchise but there are some subtle differences that, if improved over time, would make Extinction a far more enjoyable experience. There are however a good assortment of modes to choose from such as the campaign, along with a survival mode where you’ll have to defeat an onslaught of enemies without dying. There’s the multiplayer option as well so you’ll be able to join up with a friend and take down the big brutes with enough hard work. The skill system in the game isn’t as in depth as other titles of its kind, but you can still take advantage of upgrades so that you’ll be able to fend off enemy hordes with relative ease. As we said before, of course, we admire the concept behind Extinction but what really hurts the game in a variety of ways lies in a poor control scheme among other issues which we’ll dive into very shortly. We’ll of course cover both the pros and cons moving forward to be sure to read into the gameplay section to know more!

Visually speaking, Extinction looks quite gorgeous and we tip our hats off to both Iron Galaxy and Modus Games for maintaining a clean look. The story about saving a world from peril isn’t necessarily new by any means but it serves its purpose well in the game. Extinction’s biggest crown jewel is in battling the giant brutes, climbing up each limb to behead them in cool fashion. However, despite the very appealing aspect of the game, it really starts to wane after awhile. To add more irritation to the gameplay is the camera functionality, which really creates a lot of problems when engaging in tough battles. Every time you get close to the enemy, the camera never really locks onto the target effectively which creates a lot of frustrating moments, especially when you’re trying to take out specific limbs in time. Speaking of time, in Extinction, most of your missions are time based meaning that you’ll need to save the townspeople, defeat enemy hordes and defeat incoming brutes before time runs out. Time in reference to the percentage of the village/towns and how much is left of it. What’s unfortunate about that is just what we mentioned, the camera functionality.

Controlling your character with poor camera functions is kind of disheartening and pair that with a lack of a tutorial to even teach players how to play the game, is another problem in itself. You’re pretty much thrown into the sharks pit without any introduction to the game mechanics, and so a lot of the opening portion of the game is just you dying a lot. Pair that with a lackluster battle system that doesn’t really allow you to create any flashy combos, along with a barren upgrade system that really provides no merit long term, and you’ve run into a wall. You can of course use the upgrade tree to take down enemies a little faster but at some point, these upgrades prove to be nothing more than a facade, as your abilities start to scale and have no real long term benefit. The story is cool and all but what’s a story when the game itself really doesn’t execute all of its great points well? The biggest feature of the game, killing the giant brutes, just feels underwhelming and having to climb up to behead them doesn’t really give us that sense of reward.Taking out the enemy armor can be a chore because once again, the lock-on system is quite poor and so battles that should usually take a few minutes end up lasting longer than they should.

Your whip attack rarely gets any spotlight which is another unfortunate thing because once again, it’s a feature that showed promise but failed to execute it effectively. So often when fighting against the brutes all you really need to do is chop off their legs and make your way to the top, relying very little on the whip function down the road. That’s simply because the auto-targeting system is poor as we stated earlier and really turns you away from even wanting to use the whip at all. Another irritation lies in just how easy it is to die in Extinction, simply because one hit from a brute is instant death.

Iron Galaxy is quite known for its fighting game expertise, especially in the realm of Killer Instinct. That game is still a jewel in our hearts but Extinction seems like an out of left field type of concept that just feel solid overall. Sadly, for a game that has potential to be something cool, it totally kills itself in the process ultimately living up to its own name. With a plethora of other issues and the multiplayer options growing stale after a while due to all the problems we mentioned, Extinction really needs a reworking if it wants to turn things around for a sequel (that is if they decide to do one).

We’re a little sad to be honest because going into Extinction, we had a lot of high hopes that it would turn out to be something truly awesome. However that dream came crashing down and that excitement turned into disappointment. Nevertheless it was a good attempt at trying something new and so hopefully the team can learn from this and come up with something a little more solid in the future. Be sure to follow us on Twitter to stay up to date on all the latest news and of course, follow us on Twitch to know when we go live!

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