Extinction Rifts – PS5 Review

It’s safe to say retro shooters aren’t quite done yet. Whilst these games are traditionally fast-paced, Extinction Rifts attempts to take it further. Coming from QuByte with a budget price tag, this short experience doesn’t quite live up to the promise. Despite a short list of levels, the pull of self-improvement does add some length to the tape. Unfortunately, the lack of competition and small arsenal really hamper my enjoyment.

Extinction Rifts keeps its story incredibly light. Monoliths have landed on Earth and it’s taken no time at all for a nihilistic group to grab them. They plan for total destruction of the human race. Armed with a cool gauntlet, you’ve been tasked with stopping the bad guys as the planet’s last chance for survival. An intro segment lays out the stakes with your support crew offering the occasional update. Beyond that, the narrative rarely moves beyond a premise before offering a conclusion after the final mission.

The campaign takes shape across five missions. These are short and can be made shorter with skilful play. The controls are familiar shooter fare. You start each mission selecting your loadout which contains two guns and a special ability. These won’t all be available to you and have to be earned as you gather secrets or reach specific rankings.  That should feel rewarding but, the default guns are more than capable.  By the time the newer stuff is unlocked, you’ll be more than capable with the basic options.  It makes the rest of the arsenal feel redundant.

Performance is judged on your ability to hold a combo. Typically that means minimising downtime between kills and keeping your overall time at premium. Shooting feels solid and accurate and levels typically have set encounters so memory can play a part in perfecting a run. Guns tend to arrive in standard forms. Pistols, sub-machine guns and shotguns are early in the pecking order and can be quite effective.

You have infinite ammo but reloads can cost precious time. I circumvent them by double-tapping weapon switches. That slight delay is more preferable than a full reload animation. Your gauntlet keeps track of combo status with a bar ticking down to let you know when things are cooling off. Your magic fist can be used for more mundane melee attacks which can break through shields. Special weapons can also do this but they operate on much longer cooldowns.

Movement can be slick. Naturally, speed is essential and the default run speed is quick enough. There’s also a dash that can be used to cross gaps or dodge incoming fire. For the most part, traversal is fine. First-person platforming can always feel a little bit tricky but, what they ask of a player is pretty forgiving. It’s the haste that makes things difficult.

After beating the game at a more pedestrian pace, the mechanical nature of the world around me became pretty apparent. Enemies have set starting positions so each encounter has a predictable beginning. The variety of foes is a little slim with humanoid goons backed up by flying drones and sentry turrets. There’s some self-destructing scarabs that liven some moments up but, you’ll see most of the roster by the end of the first two missions.

Killing enemies isn’t enough to maintain your combo so you have to shoot open chests, box lights and barriers to keep the fire alive. I don’t really see this as a positive.  I like a shooter of this type to retain a momentum and scanning a room for extra objects to shoot feels antithetical to it. A chain of fifty is enough to punch the monolith to bits but there is just enough quiet time to reset that counter often. That makes for a game that really, really requires efficiency to get the most out of it.

Health is pretty easy to come by but, when rushed, it can vanish in combat. You start with four pips of life which guarantees you can take three hits. Encounters never seem to get too hectic but carelessness does cost you. Death places you back at the start of the level but that punishment doesn’t prove frustrating.

I think Extinction Rifts lacks style. Visually, there’s a low-poly look to the enemy models and weaponry. The locations are blocky in construction and certainly evoke a turn of the century shooter. This is a lot more colourful and there is at least one clever moment with the level design. Two of the latter stages take a more open approach which, whilst expansive, does further highlight the issues with the combo mechanic.

I think that’s where things start to falter. For a game experimenting with fast-paced action and twitch gunplay, it’s too easy to lose the thread. Enemies aren’t frequent enough for things to truly excite and I find the movement, whilst swift, can’t really spring you from fight to fight. At least the ranking system and secrets encourage repeated playthroughs. For such a small product, it needs that carrot to bolster out the leaderboards. Gathering secrets can be done at a slow pace and they’re not too far off the beaten path.

To the game’s credit, these levels never overstay their welcome. They’re accompanied with some decent electronic score. It’s a little light on track numbers but it provides enough energy to fit the action. On the whole, I wish things were livelier. Extinction Rifts isn’t especially extravagant. It has ideas but they don’t seem to lock together in a pleasing way.

Honestly, you can see a decent prototype in Extinction Rifts but, as a full product, it lacks the finishing touches. The gaps between encounters mean you’re fishing for lights to pop to keep a combo alive. Even then, the latter levels play with non-linearity in a way that really widens that gap. It’s a surprisingly basic experience that doesn’t really appeal to me.