Rating: NNNN
GRAPHICS: Blood-splatteringly sharp.
ADDICTIVENESS: Horrifying.
PROXIMITY TO THE REAL THING: Never having killed an eight-armed, fire-spitting monster, I’m not quite sure.
ANTI-SOCIAL FACTOR: Buy two copies and give one to a friend — you can trade tips.
by my standards, if a video gamekeeps you up until 3 am and forces you to abandon all other social contact beyond calling your friends in the middle of the night for tips, it’s a keeper.There’s nothing particularly original about Extermination, but it works. The premise is ridiculous and fairly immaterial. A lab in Antarctica has been taken over by a mutant virus that eats people alive and turns them into quivering pools of blood-red jelly.
As a Marine, you go into the lab, work your way through a maze of tunnels, corridors guarded by attack dogs and spooky, unlit hallways, find out the problem and solve it. Sounds easy enough, but it’s anything but.
Extermination is one of the few adventure/survival games that’s actually scary. Walking through pitch black tunnels with massive cockroaches hanging off your back is as terrifying as it sounds, particularly with PS2’s stunning graphics. It’s also an epic.
Just when you think you’ve figured something out, the plot twists around and the game gets even harder. It goes on and on and on, and the fact that you can only save your progress in certain select spots means that you spend a lot of time going over familiar ground trying to get it right.
I spent two days (not complete days, mind you) figuring out how to get from one level to another before stumbling across a little doorway I hadn’t noticed before.
When I figured it out, I felt like I’d won the jackpot. Instead, I walked through the door and was eaten alive by a rabid dog. Nice.
It’s immensely frustrating but also insanely addictive. Take a vacation, bolt the door and start shooting.
mattg@nowtoronto.com
EXTERMINATION for PlayStation 2, $70. Rating: NNNN
