In my eyes, this game was doomed to fail from the beginning because it was an overambitious idea considering the resources and talent that the developer had available. After having completed the entire campaign and explored some of the DLC content, I felt that this "finished" product is closer to what I would expect from an alpha demo build shown during an internal business meeting. As other reviews have already stated many times, the game can be described as essentially repeating the same mission over and over, only with slightly different objectives, constraints, and map layout. That is not inherently a problem, as long as the gameplay is interesting enough to draw the player into this loop, such as with games like Left 4 Dead 2 and Risk of Rain 2.

Unfortunately, that is where Extinction really failed for me: the gameplay is so limiting that it becomes boring within an hour. Your character technically has two ways to attack, but only one of them is actually useful. Killing the smaller enemies, the Jackals, essentially involves spamming that one attack 1 to 4 times, and even though dodging is possible, it is not necessary most of the time. Killing the giant enemies, the Ravenii, requires targeting their exposed necks with a fully charged attack. The Ravenii can wear any combination of armor items, but they all function almost identically and can only be destroyed with one specific approach. You do not even necessarily need to bother dismantling all their armor or dismembering their limbs - as long as you rescue civilians or kill Jackals to charge your attack and expose a Ravenii's neck, you can execute it. As you keep playing, you will eventually realize that every encounter is so formulaic that every mission will feel identical. The progression is nothing noteworthy either: upgrading just slightly improves the character's abilities instead of introducing new ones. There is no tactical planning involved, no combination of abilities, no adapting to unfamiliar scenarios... Keep in mind that killing these giants is supposed to be the focus of the entire game, and it's as simple as targeting the same weak points repeatedly.

The other components of the game are not terrible, but nothing is impressive enough to justify slogging through the mind-numbing gameplay loop. The traversal mechanics are limited and frustrating, especially considering how easily you can get stuck trying to climb buildings or giants and how awkward the targeting system can be. The story is passable, but if you were to combine the fragments of conversations and cut scenes sparsely scattered across the campaign, you would realize that it would all fit into a 10-page comic book. The voice acting was good, but there is not much of it featured. The visual style is distinct, but the graphics are much lower quality than one might expect based on the 2018 release date and its impressive cinematic trailer. Additionally, the lack of design variance between the levels makes everything look monotonous after a while. The 2D art of the cut scenes and user interface looks a bit amateur in my opinion, but that could be chalked up to personal preferences.

Honestly, I think that if the developers had narrowed down their scope to only making a short campaign with more curated level designs and more complex fighting mechanics, then this game could have been an acceptable AA game at a $30 price point. I suspect that a lot of time and resources were wasted on making the lackluster procedural level generation system and rewrapping campaign content into the uninspired DLC game modes. I am shocked that Extinction was initially released as a full-price $60 single-player game featuring an approximately 7-hour campaign stuffed with randomized filler content and mediocre graphics in the same year as God of War and Red Dead Redemption 2. Even worse, Extinction came out two months after the 2018 remake of the famous giant-slaying game that inspired it, Shadow of the Colossus, which was released at a $40 price and received critical acclaim. Overall, I consider Extinction a cautionary tale of how detached management decisions can be from the reality of the gaming industry. Even if you find the giant-slaying concept intriguing, I recommend that you skip this game and consider alternative options.

My personal rating: 3.5/10