As survival/horror games go, Extermination has just been resoundedly trounced by Konami's recently-released Silent Hill 2 and, regardless, isn't quite as spiffy as Capcom's Resident Evil Code Veronica X. But as Extermination was, in fact, developed by some of the creators the original Resident Evil, the genre's watershed, the Godfather of Survival/Horror games, it's not at all bad either.

The Extermination storyline (reminiscent of John Carpenter's The Thing) brings us isolated military types infected with a virus and mutating into various things hideous and malicious, often with tentacles, often which double as obnoxious organic weaponry. It plays fairly smoothly, mostly in chase camera mode but with an option to shift into the first-person perspective for targeting-at-a-distance -- pretty handy considering many enemies have a graciously shootable weak-spot. But it's more intelligent than merely roaming and shooting, some foresight and lateral thinking is required, making this particular game of survival/horror, like all the greats, nicely puzzling, morbidly engrossing and thought-intensive. The various tickle-trunk gadgets and aids are often novel and innovative – and the environments are apposite, often good; moody and brooding as one would hope, expect. All said, perfectly apt.