Extermination is a Survival Horror game developed by Sony Computer Entertainment/Deep Space for the PlayStation 2 and released in 2001. Several members of the development team, including Hidetaka "Swery" Suehiro, went on to develop Spy Fiction (2003) at Access Games.
The game focuses on U.S. Marines Special Forces Recon Sgt. Dennis Riley, part of "Team Red Light". Riley's squad receives a distress call from Fort Stewart, a top-secret American research facility in Antarctica. The distress call is a request for a prompt airstrike on the base. In response, Team Red Light is sent in via C-17 to investigate the facility.
Extermination contains examples of:
- A Father to His Men: Madigan, he even shoots Felil when he finds out that he was actually a CIA agent, and that the CIA was responsible for the sabotage of their plane, as well as the deaths of several of his men. Stating that the unit means as much to him as his own family.
- Attack Its Weak Point: Some monsters have a purple eyeball in their chests. Popping it kills them.
- Alien Blood: The monsters bleed purple.
- An Ass-Kicking Christmas: One day short, set on Christmas Eve 2005.
- Bittersweet Ending: Three people survive and stop the monsters, but everyone in Dennis' squad except for one person and Cindy, the love interest of one of his friends who died in Cambodia are dead. On another plus side, Cindy forgives Dennis for Andrew's death and apologizes for blaming him.
- Body Horror: Think Willaim Birkin had it bad? Your character's best friend goes through an utterly painful full-body mutation in seconds. And he's not the only one.
- Boring, but Practical: In a first for this kind of game, the basic knife is actually a reliably handy tool from beginning to end. The worms can be killed in one strong slash, which is handy given they're among the most plentiful enemies. Bomb traps and security turrets can be easily deactivated with the knife, and occasionally, if you're good at it, it can help you save ammo on some enemies.
- Black Dude Dies First: Averted. By the end the black dude is the only other survivor, besides the hero and the love interest.
- Call a Smeerp a "Rabbit": The "bugs" look more like a slug crossed with a horseshoe crab.
- Collection Sidequest: The dogtag collection which allows the player to start a New Game with extra items and increased difficulty.
- Critical Existence Failure: Averted. Dennis begins limping and holding his arm at 30% HP.
- Darkand Troubled Past: Dennis is haunted by the death of his friend Andrew in Cambodia years prior, to make matters worse, Andrew's girlfriend Cindy blames Dennis and refuses to speak to him since his death.
- Emergency Weapon: The knife. It's very specifically useful: it does very little damage, but against enemies that can move, it will knock them down and away from you if you can land all three hits of the combo. It is very much not to be used as a main attack, though: that's why you get all that free rifle ammo.
- Everything Trying to Kill You: Even some of the water attacks the player. And if you have 100% infection, touching water will make your creepy tentacle growth hurt you in retaliation.
- The bacteria can also "infect" inorganic matter. In a mundane example, this means it can "infect" security turrets. In a more extreme example, it infects an explosives-laden train.
- Gun Accessories: Trigger groups (to modify firing rate), sights, and an underslung tactical rail for miscellanious goodies.
- Grimy Water: The bacteria hates getting wet. Some puddles hurt no matter what, but at 100% Infection, Dennis' herniated colon spasms whenever he gets wet.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Madigan blows himself up in the reactor core in order to cool the base down to stop the monsters, after being fatally wounded by a mutated Roger.
- Humanoid Abomination: The bacteria, after being defeated twice in it's Eldritch Abomination forms, reforms itself for one last try as a humanesque blob with Dennis' face.
- The Immune: A rare aversion of this trope in video games. You have to manage your infection level as well as your health, which means those damn squirting things that shoot goo at you are really your worst enemy, not the rampaging mutants.
- Improvised Zipline
- Infinite Flashlight
- Infinity +1 Sword: The Ultimate (Rocket) Launcher.
- Also counts as an Infinity -1 Sword: equipping the Rocket Launcher requires you to remove all accessories from the SPR-4, which reduces the gun to basic bullets and rockets only. While the rockets are very powerful, the lack of aiming assist from scopes and the loss of versatility from the underbarrel attachment make the rocket launcher situational.
- Intrepid Reporter: Travis Miller, whom the player meets a few times in various locations.
- Informed Equipment: Averted, your loadout appears on the SPR-4.
- Lost Lenore: Gender-flipped version of this, but Andrew is this to Cindy having died prior to the story's beginning. She blames Dennis for it and that's the reason why she gives him so much crap.
- Meat Moss: The darkened corridor in the Command Center is clogged with purple biomass. It's got veins...
- New Game Plus
- Night-Vision Goggles: One of the attachments that can be put on the player's weapon.
- Nothing Is Scarier
- The beginning of the game certainly counts. Once you enter Fort Stewart proper, you find the place deserted and empty, but something terribly clearly happened as there is damage everywhere, some fires burning from who knows what, but no clear indication of what caused it. Even the "bugs", the very first enemy you face and encounter throughout the game, get no build-up; you simply encounter it and have to deal with it.
- It might take a few times going through them for the player to realize that nothing is going to get them in the vents, which are extremely cramped and switch to first person when crawling through them.
- Pocket Rocket Launcher: The assault rifle has an underslung rocket launcher, which takes up all your gun accessory slots with its various components, making it a bit Awesome, but Impractical.
- Save-Game Limits: Save Terminals cost 2 battery power.
- The Mole: Felil, the new marine, was actually a CIA agent, tasked with bringing a sample of the bacteria back to the states with him. And he was the only one who was supposed to make it back alive. Upon finding this out, Madigan shot him.
- Non-Standard Game Over: Reach 100% infection without curing it fast and you're treated to your character going through a very horrific transformation.
- Oh, Crap!: The player is likely to go through this emotion if their infection hits 100% while they're quite some distance from an MTS bed. The tense music doesn't help at all.
- Say My Name: Just before the boss fight with the mutated Roger, Roger manages to say Dennis' name.
- Shoot Out the Lock: Though this can be done only against padlocks.
- Shout-Out: The game's concept takes a lot of inspiration from The Thing (1982). To hammer it home, the theme you most often hear in the snowy areas outside of the fort sounds a lot like
the main theme of The Thing. - The Stoic: The acting in this game....isn't great, to say the least, and the Nightmare Retardant entry in YMMV points this out. The one spot it actually does work, however, is the protagonist, Dennis Riley. Despite how wooden and seemingly unfazed by everything he is, it works when you remember that Dennis is suffering enormous guilt over losing his companion and best friend, Andrew, prior to the game and is now putting up with Andrew's girlfriend, Cindy, who he cares for as well, hating him with a passion and blaming him for Andrew dying. To say he's basically emotionally suppressed as a result of his guilt and desire to keep Cindy alive at all costs, despite her hatred, his seemingly bland and unaffected attitude towards the horrors he's facing actually makes logical sense as he blasts through everything and presses on without seemingly a second glance.
- Survival Horror, with a twist: you're playing a Force Recon Marine, who's naturally pretty good at combat. You have an assault rifle, you can reload your ammo easily, and healing is free if you're in a safe area. But your basic bullets are pretty weak, the secondary weapons - which are much more powerful - have limited ammo, items to reduce your infection level are rare, and even your primary ammo is limited by the fact that you have very few clips: by the end of the game, you can hold about 300 rounds if and only if you find all the spare clips. The survival horror element is still there, but you never feel like you're unarmed.
- Swiss-Army Weapon: The player's main weapon. It starts as, basically, an M4 assault rifle. You can swap out parts to make it a sniper rifle, flamethrower, shotgun, electricity gun and rocket launcher.
- Too Awesome to Use: The secondary weapons, as there is only a finite amount of ammo.
- Oddly enough, it's NOT the MTS meds, as those are handed out like candy throughout the game. The kicker is that they can only be used at an MTS bed, which can often enough be far away from the player's current position. The rarity of the infection medication that can be used on the fly makes THEM the Too Awesome to Use. They're not very plentiful, usually never fully cure infection, and they don't require the player to backtrack to a save room and respawn all the enemies they had just cleared out.
- Trauma Inn: MTS Bed, which removes all infection and restores health to max.
- 20 Minutes into the Future: The game was released in 2001, and takes place on December 24, 2005.
- The Virus: The Bacterium is One of the main "antagonists" in the game.
