Extinction Rifts

I went into Extinction Rifts genuinely curious about its central promise: keep your combo alive, grow stronger, and eventually detonate the Adreno-Gauntlet in a single earth-shattering Extinction Punch that clears an entire level in one blow. That is a legitimately interesting design idea, and QUByte, a Brazilian studio with a long track record in retro ports, clearly has affection for the PS1-era boomer-shooter lineage that inspired this. The low-poly aesthetic, the colourful enemy designs, the heads-down arcade energy - the love letter is readable on every screen. The mechanical loop works like this: shoot enemies and destructible scenery, build your combo meter through a color tier system (yellow, then red), and match your combo level to the color of each Ancient Monolith when you reach it. Hit it under-powered and you fail the objective. Let a few seconds pass without landing a shot and your combo resets to zero. The Extinction Punch sits at the top of that chain, a gauntlet move so powerful it can obliterate a full stage instantly. On paper, that escalation from cautious gunplay to supernatural demolition is thrilling. In practice, the rhythm keeps getting interrupted. Levels open up in their later stretches, and those wider, less-populated spaces turn the combo loop from a tightrope act into a frustrating search for something to shoot before your meter drains. The shooting itself - accurate, swift, reliable - deserves better pacing to support it. The arsenal of eight weapons and five skills gives you real choices about how to approach each encounter. Some players will find a favourite loadout quickly; others will hit the weapon imbalance that critics have flagged, where a few options noticeably outshine the rest. The PS1-era visual filter is a nice optional touch, and the levels do contain hidden areas and rank challenges that reward multiple runs. A global cross-platform leaderboard and multiple endings give score-chasers a reason to return. The soundtrack provides a serviceable electronic pulse - thumping enough to carry the action, though it lacks the textural personality that elevates the great retro-FPS soundscapes. Where the game most honestly struggles is identity cohesion. The combo system wants you to be constantly, aggressively moving and firing, but the level design and enemy frequency do not always meet that demand. A handful of sections also mix in parkour and platforming, which changes the feel abruptly. The result is something that reads as a solid prototype - the bones of a distinctive arcade shooter - without the iterative polish that would make every part reinforce every other part. If you are a score-attack purist who enjoys replaying short stages to shave seconds and climb leaderboards, there is a niche here worth exploring. If you are after a sustained flow-state FPS session, the gaps may pull you out of it more often than the highs pull you back in.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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