Price: £39.99

Players: 1

The survival horror genre really began on the Playstation with Resident Evil. It was one of the most amazing and atmospheric games I had played at that time. Turn the lights off. Put your headphones on and shit yourself stupid. The sequel was great to play through for one of the four scenarios, but the third lost its way and the Dreamcast exclusive, Code Veronica, was too samey. This game doesn't take the genre much further and so the atmosphere it attempts to create doesn't quite work because it doesn't grasp your attention. In Extermination, it's Christmas Eve, 2005 and to quote the billing: Somewhere over the Antarctic, a plane is flying a marines Special Forces Recon Unit to Fort Stewart, a top secret government facility. The facility has been conducting some kind of scientific research, but the subject of their investigations is not known. The Recon Unit is responding to a distress call sent out by the research team. Since this call was made, no further communication has been received from the facility. Repeated requests for more information have gone unanswered. Suddenly, one of the planes engines inexplicably bursts into flame. The plane crash lands, separating the members of the Recon Unit around Fort Stewart. Luckily they all survive. But Fort Stewart is host to a dark secret... Who knows how long they will manage to stay alive?

I have to be honest though and say that this kind of game does get a bit on the tedious side if it doesn't offer anything new and I only continued on with it after a kind soul pointed me in the direction of the walkthrough at GameFaqs.com Graphics and sound are reasonable, but far from outstanding and didn't seem like the great leap forward from PSX to PS2 that we deserve. Still, that could be said for quite a few PS2 games released in its first year and I expect that they will improve as time goes on like the PSX ones did after around 2-3 years. The game plays as you'd expect when compared to the Resident Evil series, but it's not quite as intuitive because you can run round in any direction and the camera doesn't always follow you, causing you to aim your gun at something just to make the camera look forward. Initial gripes with the movement are ironed out to a degree as you get more used to the controls though.

Another link with THAT game series is when it comes to saving your game. This time though, instead of ink ribbons you need a battery, but the good news is that it can be recharged from a well-positioned charger thus making it less of a chore than the RE games. As for whether Extermination is a must buy... Well, if you can't get enough of the survival horror genre then you should get it, but if you've completely had enough, give it a miss as it offers little that's new. As for me, I'd be quite prepared to play more of this genre if it was radically different and felt as fresh and challenging as the original RE did at the time, but on balance this doesn't quite cut the mustard. For those of you in my camp, I'd recommend a rental if you can get it for a couple of days and don't need to go out anywhere because it needs a fair bit of time invested.

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Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2001.