Iron Galaxy is an interesting studio. They’re particularly known for the bonkers fighting game Divekick but have made most of their work porting other games to new platforms. With Extinction they have their first showcase of what they could deliver when given a sizable budget and for the most part they mildly succeed.
Extinction
Developer: Iron Galaxy
Price: $60
Platform: PC, PS4, and Xbox One
MonsterVine was supplied with a PC code for review
Extinction puts you in the middle of a one-sided battle between humans and this race of giant ogres called Ravenii. You play as Avil, a unique soldier and the last of his kind who are able to kill these monsters and it’s your job to be the hero and save the human race from… EXTINCTION. You like what I did there? Using the game title to describe the plot? If you thought that was a bit on the nose then expect some more of that in Extinction’s campaign. The story is told through quick dialog boxes that appear at the start of a mission where you and another character will basically spit some banal banter about saving the kingdom; eventually you’ll just start skipping through it because it never gets even remotely interesting. It’s a genuine shame too because you have this universe where giant ogres from another dimension who lived in a world of darkness are teleporting to another world to take it over which sounds super rad. It’s just a shame that they never really do anything with it and what little teases of a plot are given through super lame dialog boxes. The only other pieces of story you get are flashbacks to Avil’s time before the start of the game through animated cutscenes in-between chapters. These add a modicum of flavor to the game, but it’s really not enough.
Extinction definitely turned heads during its reveal, with its stylish show of climbing these massive beasts and killing them with a swift slice to the neck. The goal of the game is to defend an area from these enormous creatures that just want to ruin your day. Avil is able to immediately cut off the limb of a Ravenii by slowing down time and locking onto either an arm or leg. Lopping a leg off and seeing a Ravenii fall on its ass is something that never gets old. Severing every limb and seeing it just sit there pathetically trying to swat at you with its head is even funnier in a twisted sort of way. As you fight simple minions on the ground, save civilians, or chop limbs off a Ravenii Avil fills up his rune meter. Once it’s fully charged then you’re able to deal the killing blow to one of these hulking monsters through glorious decapitation. Since Avil is able to slice limbs off of these monsters with a single strike you’d think that would trivialize the gameplay but that’s where the puzzle element of the action comes in. Early on the Ravenii will either have no armor, or simple pieces that can be destroyed with a quick strike, but as the game progresses their armor gets more complicated. Some Ravenii will appear with armor that have locks on them that have to be destroyed before you can remove the armor, or you’ll see armor that has thorns which means you have to be careful attacking it. There’s even trickier armor like the bone pieces that feature a flaming skull and can only be destroyed when the Ravenii attacks with that limb which will briefly extinguish the flame for a moment allowing you to attack it. The armor on the Ravenii is randomized so you never know what you might get, especially when they start mix and matching their armor pieces. A wave of Ravenii could be incredibly easy or frustratingly difficult depending on the roll of the dice. The game itself is pretty repetitive in that all you’re doing is fighting these monsters in these same desert locations, but taking down one of these behemoths is just so immensely satisfying. The comical fountain of blood that pours out of a Ravenii and its reaction to losing a limb turns what was a somber affair in something like Shadow of the Colossus to a jovial ballet of carnage.
Avil himself is a pretty nimble dude who can jump high, bounce off trees, climb up buildings like it’s no big deal, and he’s got a whip that can pull him towards objects and launch him into the air. At first when you start out you’re not as mobile as you’d expect a seasoned soldier like Avil to be, but after purchasing a few skill upgrades you’ll soon be leaping over (small) buildings and crawling all over Ravenii. My only issue with the movement is that Avil is that he’s very sticky. When he clings onto something he doesn’t really like to get off which, combined with the incredibly wonky camera, can really screw you over. Trying to get on the inside of a Ravenii to attack inside parts of its armor can get incredibly difficult when Avil stubbornly refuses to jump off the Ravenii and when he does the camera is doing its own thing, causing you to miss your shot. Avil also isn’t the best at dodging incoming attacks, with a pretty flimsy roll maneuver. Ravenii are large and slow, but they swing their arms with surprising speed and can usually kill you in a single swipe. Getting into a good rhythm, bouncing from limb to limb only to get sucker punched because the camera decided to become unwieldy can really ruin your vibe.
In terms of how the campaign plays, there’s not really much to it. There are seven chapters with 4-6 missions each, and each one usually lasting only a few minutes. This turns it into a decent “pick-up and play” sort of game as you play two or three missions during some free time and come back to it later. You can expect to go through the same three mission types over the course of the game’s five-six-hour campaign: civilian rescue missions, Ravenii hunts, or defense missions.
Civilian rescue tasks you with simply rescuing a set amount of people scattered throughout the map. These missions are the least exciting of the bunch because you’re just running around to the civilians scattered around the map and holding a button to portal them away. You don’t even really need to fight any minion monsters that show up since they focus on civilians if you don’t attack them and you can teleport the civilians away faster than the monsters can kill them. I will admit though, due to the abundance of civilians on the map you obviously can’t be everywhere at once so hearing side-characters chastising you on a near constant basis for people dying begins to wear thin pretty quickly. While on the subject of civilians, the game also gives you a poor reason to care about them or the minion monsters when fighting a Ravenii. You build up rune energy faster by just hacking away at the Ravenii’s armor which leaves you to forsake the very people you’re there to protect.
Defense missions are fairly standard, you’re told to defend a location for a certain amount of time while fending off hordes of Ravenii. It’s a juggling act of clearing out the ogres as quickly as possible so that they don’t smash up too many buildings, but not so fast as to allow another to spawn in immediately. These missions are easily the most frustrating though because Ravenii simply need to just touch a building to demolish it and since the game is randomized there’s a good chance you might get a particularly difficult group of Ravenii; like say one that’s decked out in bone armor and another who mostly has unbreakable armor pieces. Losing these sort of missions because you got dealt a bad hand is just frustrating and makes you feel more like shutting the game off than restarting.
The Ravenii hunts are easily the highlights of the campaign. It’s here where you’ll face new Ravenii types and have to fight off increasingly more difficult waves of them. The game is at its best when your goal is to fight these behemoths, and anytime you’re not doing that (like saving civilians) you’re sitting there wondering why you can’t be killing Ravenii instead. Extinction’s campaign for the most part feels like it’s just an overly extended tutorial to get you ready for the other modes that actually focus on fighting Ravenii where you’ll compete on leaderboards.
When you’re done with the campaign there are various game-modes to play around in if you want to keep hacking away at Ravenii. The first up is the daily challenge which as you can expect delivers a new challenge to the community every day. As a leaderboard sucker it’s been nice being near the top and look forward to comparing scores with my friends. Extinction is your typical “survive as long as possible” mode where the game will just continue to toss increasingly more difficult waves of enemies at you until you bite it. Finally there’s Skirmish where the game will randomize a seed code that will generate a level for you to play through. I’m looking forward to see if anyone is able to find any particularly bonkers seeds, but considering the game already deals out randomized enemies at you in Extinction mode it makes me question why Skirmish exists.
The Final Word
Killing giant monsters in games is always fun, and Extinction has created a solid foundation for a great game. It’s just that what’s here isn’t much to justify its high price tag considering how much of an afterthought the campaign is and how all the other game-modes are practically identical.
– MonsterVine Review Score: 3 out of 5 – Average
