Preview | Second Extinction Early Access

LifeisXbox’s Second Extinction preview | Mutated velociraptors and bigger dinosaurs have taken over the planet and now it is up to you to stop them. Stopping the reptilian monsters is easier said than done, but humanity fights back! Developer Systemic Reaction created an intense three-player co-op shooter and released it on Xbox Preview, which is good news for Xbox Game Pass subscribers as they can choose to test it out!

Awesome for Dino fans!

I’m a walking dinopedia, I can easily name almost every single dinosaur and I have always found it fascinating that they lived on our planet. You can imagine my excitement when a game features a mutated acid-spitting Dilophosaurus (you know him from Jurassic Park), an electrified T-rex, and an armored triceratops that does ballet-like attacks, rolling and spinning all over the place. That’s the main selling point for me, the original use of dinosaurs as enemies. Finally something else than the typical zombies!

It reminded me a bit about Turok or Dino Crisis, although the gameplay is entirely different. There’s a bit of influence from Left 4 Dead, battle royale games, and resource farming games. An interesting mix, especially the progression with farming for resources to improve your weapons makes it addictive. You’ll be killing a lot of dinosaurs for this, and with a lot I mean thousands. Like exterminating pesky cockroaches. The actual shooting that you do for this isn’t as exciting as a raging T-rex… sadly enough. Here the recent Outriders stands out for me, the shooting is satisfying and packs a punch. In Second Extinction I really miss weight and feedback while shooting, another slight disappointment comes from constantly fighting the same raptors. The only real thrill from shooting comes from taking down the larger dinosaurs. Glowing weak points can be found on larger species, so a bit of skill is required to bring them down. I’m really hoping they can add a bit of extra realism in the shooting and make it a bit heavier.

Dino fans unite!

I name-dropped Outriders and playing it with friends works kinda similar, you can take two friends with you or total strangers. You select a mission and your squad is dropped on Earth. You also have the option to play alone but the campaign missions are entirely impossible to do by yourself, even on easy. So I currently do not recommend getting this game if you want to play it alone. So your squad will be completing main missions and secondary missions to make a difference in the global war against dinosaurs, this resets every week. You can compare it a bit with For Honor’s faction battles, in Second Extinction the spawn points become easier or harder depending on how well the entire player base is doing. A neat idea that makes it unique and increases the replay value.

Getting overwhelmed will happen regularly. When doing wave objectives or when a mission evacuation happens. You’ll see dinosaurs everywhere, from all around without any sort of remorse. They all attack you at the same time and here is when the game truly shines, good teamwork is the key to survive moments like this. Annoyingly at those moments the game still crashes often, we’re playing an early access title, remember? Sometimes you forget that, as the game feels and looks finished in many places. Visually it isn’t the strongest title but when hordes of raptors, combined with a few large dinosaurs fight against you it becomes impressive to see.

Wrapping up, the game has a nice selection of different hunters. All of them have different abilities and weapons. Hopefully, we get more customization options so characters can stand out more, as you want to have bragging rights while playing with friends! For early access, the game is polished enough. Besides the annoying game crashes. There is still stuff to improve and I’m curious to find out if the developer has some surprises in store.