Second Extinction is a team-based co-op FPS. It’s entirely PVE with dinosaurs instead of zombies (like many similar games in the genre). Since most people are probably looking for a Left 4 Dead Clone I will compare SE to L4D in the following paragraph.
The only similarities between SE and L4D are that there are guns, hordes of enemies and that it’s team-based. While L4D’s missions are usually in small areas, SE’s missions are within an open-world map with many different side-missions you can do before, after, or during a mission.
You also don’t have voice or text chat within the game and your group can consist of three instead of four players. If you play SOLO, you don’t get AI Teammates like in L4D. You are on your own, which results in a higher difficulty since the missions are made for three people and the game will not scale its difficulty. If you die, you can respawn after twenty-five seconds at a nearby camp.
There are big camps where you can respawn all the time and small camps, which you have to find before respawning there. Characters also have two abilities. The first one you can use every few seconds (like a dash), the second one is your main ability and needs more time to recharge (i.e. a big beam that damages enemies). You can’t change your loadout throughout a mission which means, you can’t change weapons like in L4D.
Your health restores to a certain point. To get full health you need to use syringes. You can choose three of several things like ammo packs, grenades, replenishment, syringes, and more. Replenishment is infinite and gets airdropped. Using it will get you new syringes, grenades, etc.
I mentioned the open-world before, now let’s get to i.: There is one big map divided into five or six zones. Each zone has a color that represents how dangerous it is in there. While playing a mission, you can get to every zone. The higher the danger level is, the more the difficulty rises (more and stronger dinosaurs).
I don’t know exactly how they determine the level of danger but it has something to do with the multiplayer aspect of the game. It changes based on how many players do missions in which zone. It certainly is a nice addition to the game.
This game is early access which means, it is unfinished and many things are subject to change. How much content is in the game as of now? Four characters with different abilities, eight guns, and six main missions. Aside from that, there are a few cosmetics, side quests, and upgrades to guns.
You unlock new weapons, upgrades, and more by leveling up. You don’t need to level per character. After a mission, you get parts of dinosaurs (like bones, teeth, etc.) and currency. Both are used to unlock upgrades for guns.
What the store page on Steam doesn’t tell you is that there aren’t many different dinosaurs as of now. There is just ONE boss (Rex), three or four mini-bosses, and a handful of the usual dinosaurs.
And that’s it. After roughly six hours, you have seen everything in the game. You played all main and side missions at least one time. The missions are different enough to not be too repetitive but there is just not enough content to justify grinding to high levels.
It was fun while it lasted, and I’m sure you’ll be playing it some more, but it really needs MORE missions since you need to play dozens of hours to unlock everything (gain enough currency to unlock all upgrades, etc.).
What’s really good about the game is the gunplay. It just feels good to shoot at dinosaurs, the feedback is juicy and the weapons feel heavy. Reloading is a bit annoying sometimes since the only way to cancel it is by swapping to your other gun. This feels a bit off considering the otherwise pretty fast flow of the game. Speaking of which, most of the dinosaurs are very fast and you’ll be on your toes all the time. If not, you’ll be down very fast.
Playing in a group makes the game more lively. The difficulty starts out high which is a good thing. If you and your two teammates played a few hours, it’ll be easy enough to not be a challenge. That’s another reason why there is no reason to grind more. They need to add higher difficulties with better and more rewards. Aside from that the game needs a horde mode (but they already said it’s coming soon, so there’s that).
Many people say the optimization is bad. I can’t agree. I got 60 FPS, almost no drops, and it didn’t even crash once. I also did not encounter any obvious bugs or glitches yet even if I did, that would be okay since it’s early access. Once in a mission, I felt that something was off since no dinosaurs spawned but doing the next step in this mission let them spawn again. I’m sure people aren’t lying, but I just can’t say any negative about that personally.
Is the game good? Obviously yes. It really is. For an Early Access game. The basics are there and very good. They just need to add A LOT of content to make it worth it.
At the moment, I would advise everyone to wait for more content or a sale. €25 is a bit too much right now. This is one of these early access games where it depends heavily on the next few months, and if the developers can really put out more new and exciting content.
Links
Do you like scary games? Check out our Top 5 scariest Halloween games, you won’t be disappointed!