It's no secret why there haven't been many real-time strategy games on consoles--the control scheme is simply much easier to handle with a mouse and keyboard than with a controller's limited number of buttons and the imprecise cursor control of an analog thumbstick. Thankfully, Extinction's controls are pretty well adapted for use with a controller, and though they do take some getting used to, once you've gotten them down you'll be moving around the map and issuing orders to your units without putting too much thought into the process of doing so. The controls follow many of the same conventions you would find in an RTS on the PC--you can select multiple units and assign the grouping to a direction on the D pad, double-click a unit to select all of that type of unit onscreen, and so forth. There are a number of ways to automate your troops' actions, too, such as by selecting their offensive or defensive posture, having them patrol waypoints, and telling them to perform basic functions without being ordered to each time (such as predators collecting skulls or alien drones dragging comatose humans back to the hive). Though the control isn't without its annoyances, it's pretty safe to say that the game plays about as well with a console controller as can be expected.
Extinction's controls are pretty well adapted for use with a controller.
Extinction may be a pretty good game, but by most standards it's not such a good-looking game. The unit models aren't particularly detailed, though they don't really need to be since they're seen from far overhead, and they do animate pretty well. The backgrounds are usually rather bland, though, without a whole lot of detail in the terrain or other interesting features to look at. The game looks basically the same on the Xbox and PlayStation 2, with the nod going to the Xbox version for less aliasing and a higher frame rate. The sound design in Extinction is of mixed quality. Some of the sound effects are right there with their movie counterparts, such as the humans' pulse rifles and motion detectors and the scream of a predator when it has harvested a new skull. The unit voices are mostly muddy and uninteresting, though, and there's no memorable music to speak of. It's too bad there isn't better presentation wrapped around the core gameplay.
Unfortunately, there isn't a whole lot to AVP Extinction beyond the three single-player campaigns. That's a shame, because there was clearly enough thought put into the mechanics of the gameplay that the replay value would have been extended considerably by a skirmish mode or perhaps even multiplayer online support. As it is, though, you won't have much reason to play the game after you finish it unless you just want to try a harder difficulty. Overall, Extinction does a pretty good job of translating Aliens Versus Predator to an RTS, but it could have benefited from a few more months in development.
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