EXTERMINATION（エクスターミネーション）

I wrote in an earlier post that I'm not getting any younger and that I should probably stop wasting time playing obscure and mediocre games with the time I have left before I kick the bucket. So what better way to listen to my own advice by playing EXTERMINATION for the PS2?

These little buggers are so annoying

To be fair, this is an early PS2 title and the first survival horror game on the console. If you consider that the PS2 was still fairly new at the time, the graphics are impressive compared to say the Biohazard series on the PS1. However, it's not 2001 anymore, and I'm assuming Biohazard 4 is way better. I dunno because for some reason I could never finish games in this genre. The only Biohazard game I was able to beat was 5 which is definitely NOT survival horror.

In that sense, I guess EXTERMINATION is a good starter game for people like me who can't handle a limited number of saves. In this game, as long as you can get to certain areas, you can recharge your battery and save as much as you want and even refill all your regular ammo. I also found the number of health packs were adequate to get through the game without too much difficulty. I did feel I was running a bit low for the last boss but was able to make it after a couple tries.

It's like a ribbon but rechargable! Technology!!

For a survival horror game, it's pretty low on the scare factor. You are exploring a base or lab or whatever near the South Pole that's being infected by some kind of bacteria. I dunno if it's just me but like Corpse Party: Blood Drive, I never found organic goop to be that scary.

Eww, did you try ingesting disinfectant or shining a flashlight on yourself?

The camera is pretty crappy typical of this era and you have to rely pretty heavily on the auto-aim to shoot. At the beginning, I was killing everything but then figured out that it was a waste of time. All the enemies just respawn so a couple hours in, I realized it was much faster and easier to just run around everything.

I beat this game in a little under 6 hours and was so glad when it was finally over. For such a short game, it felt pretty long. Basically, imagine about 4 hours of running around and dodging everything you see except for the occasional boss fight. Not only was the gameplay fundamentally pointless and flawed, the story was bad as well. Minor spoiler here but when you finally beat the game, you get friend zoned. WTF?!

Score: 2 I don't get the story. Why didn't he just wait for the bacteria to disappear one day like a miracle? That's totally a valid strategy! #MAGA (6 hours to beat)

Scale
0 - Awful
1 - Bad and not worth your time
2 - Has some flaws but still enjoyable
3 - An average enjoyable experience
4 - A great game
5 - Masterpiece of a caliber only found very rarely

P.T.

This is probably going to be the first and only post I do on a demo but P.T. is pretty special in a couple of unfortunate ways, the primary one being that we'll likely never see the full game. Yeah #FuckKonami and all that.

The assholes of course also completely wiped the demo from PSN. In fact, P.T. is the only reason I bought a first revision console. I normally wait a few models for the various improvements before buying a console. If it wasn't for P.T., I would probably own a PS4 Pro or maybe I'd be waiting for the PS5 since it's supposedly backwards compatible. But when I heard that the game was getting pulled, I went out and bought the damn console that day. It was actually already unavailable in the US region but fortunately, I managed to snag a copy on JP PSN.

Nice looking "free" demo, you just need a $399 console!

So, I had this thing sitting on my PS4 since then, and I played it here and there for brief periods of time over the years because yes, it's scary as fuck.

I guess it's not that bad playing in broad daylight but naw, I played with headphones alone in the dark of course. The sound effects are so good with headphones.

Silent Hill is an English series but I went with the Jhipster subtitles

Hideo Kojima is well known for fucking with you. My first experience was hours wasted trying to kill Psycho Mantis before resorting to looking up the 2nd player trick. My next WTF was the Metal Gear Rising PS3 theme. It had the typical cool wallpaper with Raiden when one day, my PS3 booted up to some moe shit. Ha ha funny Hideo, lucky my wife didn't see it. (That is if I had a wife.)

Anyway, I was playing one day, and paused the game as I was scared as fuck as usual and all of a sudden it started saying some satanic sounding shit from the pause menu! Holy fuck, that freaked me out.

I hate it when my lunch leaks. Nice idea to count how often on the wall!

Anyways, I've been playing P.T. for a while before I finally decided to finish it recently. I didn't get stuck until the part with all the paintings with rolling eyes and shit. Eventually, I had to look up the solution with the bathroom peeping hole. Also, the final bit with the three baby laughs...

I think I see something in the hole but I don't want to know what.

This demo is pretty short once you know what to do and it was definitely less scary on a 2nd playthrough but I took it nice and slow the first time. If anything, it's a great substitute for coffee if you want to stay awake.

Score: 3.5 fuck this game, how the hell am I going to go to sleep now?! out of 4

As a demo, I would rate this one as 5. I mean it was "free" (finger quotes), scary as hell, and really made everybody hyped for a new Silent Hill game. But I don't really have a rating system for demos. As a game, it would give this a solid 3.5 above average score for all the cool things it does even if you're really just roaming the same hallway repeatedly in a loop.

Hey, it's a million times better than roaming a whole house in Gone Home. Seriously, fuck that hipster game.

Scale
0 - Awful
1 - Bad and not worth your time
2 - Has some flaws but still enjoyable
3 - An average enjoyable experience
4 - A great game
5 - Masterpiece of a caliber only found very rarely