Extermination (Playstation 2)

Extermination (PS2) :-

Another game I'm just getting to grips with next.....This is a 2001 survival horror title developed by some members of the original Resident Evil team, and you can see the influences a mile off, as its filled with bad voice acting, key cards, locked doors, etc..... but all ends up being rather groovy despite its shortcomings!

You take on the role of a Marine Special Forces Operative named Dennis Riley, as he and his buddies go on a rescue mission in Antarctica. Needless to say, before long you'll realise things are a lot worse than people imagined and some sort of viral outbreak is turning people into big gloopy purple mutants that want to infect everybody else! Naturally you also soon find yourself facing this threat alone...at least until you meet one of the shadowy, suspicious characters that populate such games...

It actually reminds me of John Carpenter's The Thing with its plot, despite there being no hint of any alien influence so far...but we'll see how it pans out! And as I said, it also owes a lot to Capcom's zombie horror series....but it does have a few interesting additions of its own to the survival horror genre!

For a start, your gun is really customisable...and instead of lugging loads of weapons about, it's just a case of finding the right additions to it to boost your firepower! I believe their are other weapons you can pick up later, but so far the one I started with is all I need! Well, that and my handy knife which comes in handy when there's a padlock needing smashed or one of the annoying little worm beasties is leaping at my face and I'm low on ammo.....

And unlike the early Resi games, if you get attacked in this game it's very easy to become infected by the virus, meaning that you essentially have to worry about two health bars..your general health and your infection level! You'll get progressively more infected as you battle the enemies, and eventually if it's left untreated, you'll need to rush to special machines to put a stop to the infection before you become the latest gloopy grunt...

This helps adds to the tension of the game, and can really get you panicking when you realise you're miles away from the nearest machine...and of course you'll need to have a special pack so you can use it on the machines too!

Other than that, it seems to be a rather enjoyable but pretty standard jaunt, with some of the usual faults.....an annoying save system that can mean you have to go back quite a bit when you die, lots of trailing backwards and forwards finding keys to unlock doors at the other side of the map....you know, the usual! 

But it is a rather under-rated title that deserves a lot more love than it seems to have received, and it can be found quite easily for a very low price....so you should probably give it a go if you're like me and need a good fix of hilariously bad dialogue and crate smashing every now and then! And who knows what delights I've yet to discover, lurking in the later parts of the game......