EXTINCTION

There are great monster-killing games. Then there’s this

Fighting 150-foot ogres has never been so tedious. Iron Galaxy’s lumpen action game is a low-rent riff on Attack On Titan in which you must climb and chop up colossal bipedal enemies that are indiscriminately smashing up towns like tantruming toddlers. But this perfectly decent – if familiar – idea is horribly botched, thanks to an abominable camera, sticky controls, and relentless, grinding repetition. The premise shows promise at least. As innocuously bland hero Avil, you’re asked to save the kingdom of Dolorum from rampaging beasts. On the ground are small, orc-like critters (here called Jackals), which you can slice up a treat with simple r- button combos, giving you the room to activate glowing crystals, around which pockets of cowering survivors are clustered. After a few seconds the humans will be spirited to safety, and you can move on to the next fight. A dash and a grapple lets you get around quicker: the latter zips you forward with disorientating speed but once you get your bearings you’ll be flitting between trees and rooftops like a hummingbird after a Haribo binge.

RUCKING RUBBISH

Then the big chaps, the Ravenii, start showing up and it all falls apart. At first, you might think otherwise: you’ll dart around their feet, a telltale flash of red above Avil’s head letting you know when trouble (in other words, a giant fist, foot, or club) is headed your way. Then you’ll hold p to launch a slo-mo strike, the camera zooming in as you line up a shin guard in your sights and then release to cut it off. Aim again and a red target will circle their leg: release and you cut through it like a butcher’s cleaver through a tender joint, blood spraying from the stump as the giant falls onto its ample backside. Once you’ve accrued enough rune energy from rescues, kills, armour, and limb removal, you’ll be able to launch a onehit kill – simply scamper up to an ogre’s nape and you’ll leap upwards, time stopping as you descend, sword extended, and cut off its head with a gory flourish. Lovely.

At least that’s what happens when everything goes to plan. More frequently, you’ll be treated to a delightful view of an ogre’s crotch or armpit as you repeatedly fail to line up a slow-motion attack. That’s partly thanks to a camera that can be generously described as an utter shambles. But it’s also down to an aiming reticule that you don’t so much move as wrestle into position. And that’s when it works: sometimes you’ll press the button and nothing at all will happen, or it won’t trigger for a second or so. Combine the two and even with several

“YOU’LL BE TREATED TO A DELIGHTFUL VIEW OF AN OGRE’S CROTCH OR ARMPIT.”

seconds of time slowing to a crawl, you’ll miss your target as often as not.

To make matters worse, the targets get smaller: you’ll have to smash a lock before you can remove certain pieces of armour. Then all of a sudden it’s four locks, and that’s just for a single leg. And then you get armour that can’t be destroyed at all, which means amassing enough rune energy from elsewhere first before you can get your decapitation on.

OGRE AND OUT

That about sums up Extinction’s approach to escalation. The campaign drags its way through seven chapters of increasing tedium, simply piling more enemies at you in each sub-chapter, and setting you ever more exacting objectives: the first time it asks you to kill six of the buggers you’ll sigh, and that’s only the end of chapter two. At times it’s laughably easy – although the Ravenii regenerate limbs, once you’ve removed a single piece of leg armour you can sit an ogre back down as soon as the limb has regenerated, building up rune energy for the kill – and at others Dual Shockchewingly maddening, but more often it’s just intergalactically boring. Every level looks the same. The story is dreary piffle. Even Avil’s skill tree is nondescript, while daily and randomly-generated challenges merely prolong the pain. There’s no sense of drama, just a procession of big ugly dudes and progressively large groups of annoying little runts to cut up. Asking 50 quid for this isn’t so much optimistic as downright shameless.

VERDICT

By turns mildly irritating and laceratingly dull, Extinction is a hopeless mess with one of the worst third-person cameras you’ll ever encounter. Give it a miss, eh? Chris Schilling

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Right The animated narrative sequences are among the game’s few highlights. Below In some missions you need to focus on keeping townsfolk alive.

Above left Red-skinned enemies, and their armour, are tough to break.