Extinction Review

Extinction Review

Extinction

Iron Galaxy isn’t a stranger for Xbox gamers, the developer behind Killer Instinct did fantastic work with the franchise that Amazon owned studio Double Helix rebooted for Xbox One. Extinction is something else though, this Attack on Titan inspired game was something I had high hopes for, and now when it released to the public it disappointed me even more than Rare’s Sea of Thieves. Read why in this review! 

THE GOOD

  • The one and only nice thing about Extinction is the navigation, the fast jumping on trees or hooking yourself against enemies looks pretty cool and is fun to control.

MIXED FEELINGS

  • I guess you could say that the visuals can be decent enough, although the blurriness is immediately noticeable. Seeing the ogre’s remains an impressive things, even though they are heavily recycled. Levels are also randomly generated, a bonus but most of the times things pretty much look the same.

THE BAD

  • The ogre’s are massive but my disappointment about the quality of the game is even higher. Right from the start you notice how repetitive and frankly boring the game is. Killing cannon folder and saving people through magical portals and cut down a leg from a Titan to jump on and decapitate his head. It might sound fun on paper but oh boy… not even Dynasty Warriors is that repetitive.
  • Useless combo mechanic, the basic enemies don’t require any sort of strategy and the simplistic combo-meter is a total waste. There is absolutely no need to learn the three combo attacks because you don’t need them against the big ogre’s and the other enemies are more idiotic than a headless chicken.
  • Killing the big ogre’s is just a borefest of unbelievable proportions, it is always the same with recycled enemies. The great idea from Iron Galaxy was to add armour, to get rid of it you need to destroy padlocks to cut of a leg and then break yet another keypad on the helmet. This process is repeated over and over again, I’m having freaking nightmares from padlocks! Honestly! Rarely did I play a game with so little gameplay variation, I’m honestly still in disbelieve how a great studio like Iron Galaxy made such an experience.
  • Large creatures and monsters attacking cities (Raveni), making sure people can teleport to a save location… this concept must have an interesting story right? Guess again, Extinction features one of the most dull and uninteresting stories in quite some time. The lack of any production value hurts the game the most, from a €60 priced game you would expect more than still-cutscenes and poorly designed characters. Dialogue doesn’t go anywhere either, even while drinking 5 Monsters cans you still yawn about the ridicules conversations.
  • One thing that was really frustrating was the buggy camera control, I understand that featuring screen-filling enemies makes it hard to set a good camera but this shit was beyond bad. Getting stuck behind buildings or Ogre’s, I have seen more than enough empty insides from ogre’s for a lifetime.
  • I could go on listing bad stuff but let me end this review with another reason why Extinction has a historical low score on LifeisXbox, glitches and bugs. I kid you not, almost in every level something went wrong. Enemies getting stuck, falling through the level or jumping right through a building, resulting in getting stuck. Attacks that don’t register, game crashes, climbing mechanics that fail to work, respawn issues, people who fail to teleport. Honestly it is a questionable mess.

Extinction 20% | Extinction is without a doubt the most disappointing game from 2018, I simply can’t manage to understand how a studio like Iron Galaxy with a CEO like Adam Boyes released this kind of significant bad experience. Extinction is a massive failure and an even bigger waste of time.