Extermination Hands-On

Sony has done a good job of keeping its survival-horror knockoff out of the public eye since the game was announced shortly before E3 last year. Sony quietly confirmed that the game was due for a US release but hasn't officially started any campaigns or announced any firm details. The completed Japanese version recently hit store shelves in Japan, and we were able to pick up an import copy to see what's in store for the US version.

Extermination tells the story of Dennis Riley, a member of an elite US Special Forces commando team sent to investigate a disturbance at Fort Stewart, a secret US military base situated at the South Pole. The game starts with a prerendered CG sequence showing Riley's unit flying to Fort Stewart in a thick and menacing snowstorm. Inside the large cargo plane the troops talk about the situation, and a scene shows Riley speaking at length with team member Roger Grigman. Unfortunately, all the dialogue is in Japanese, so we were unable to decipher exactly what the two were discussing. The cargo plane carrying the Special Forces team never makes it to the base--an engine fire causes the plane to crash into the snowy ground of the South Pole.

The game actually starts as Riley awakens from the trauma of parachuting from the crippled plane. He's stranded outside of Fort Stewart and isn't sure exactly how to make his way in. Thankfully Grigman radios him and tells him that he's found a way--as long as Riley can make it to where Grigman is. It's in this small areawhere Riley landed that you learn the basic controls of the game. Extermination plays completely differently from other games in the survival-horror genre and breaks the classic Resident Evil control mold. In Extermination, instead of slowly lumbering forward and rotating in place, you will bolt in any direction you press on the analog stick. You will have a great deal of interaction with your environment; for instance, Riley will have to climb over crates and obstacles and even jump certain chasms. These action-based elements give the game a quicker pace and really make the game more comparable to games like Dino Crisis 2 or Onimusha.

Riley carries a customizable SPR4 machine gun. The gun has four customizable ports on it, and new parts can be found and added to the ports. These parts can give different functionality to the weapon, such as giving it a laser targeting scope or a grenade launcher. Extermination features a similar targeting scheme to the one used in most survival-horror games. If you hold down the R1 button, Riley will go into a standard attack stance. In this stance you can hit the triangle button to fire your weapon, and you can rotate left and right and slowly move forward and back using the analog stick. This weapon stance can also be used with a first-person view. Holding down the R2 button will enable the first-person attack stance. In this stance you use the same controls as you do in the standard stance, except that you look using the right analog stick. Additionally, in this stance you can activate some of your machine gun's add-on parts, such as a flashlight or a rifle scope, by hitting the square button. The game also lets you use a secondary attack at any time. At the beginning of the game Riley is armed with a wicked-looking knife. You can use this attack at any time by hitting the square button to strike low enemies and the circle button to strike enemies at mid-height. Additionally the knife can be used to cut locks off of certain doors. It's likely that Riley will find new secondary weapons as he progresses through the complex.