IKEA expands to a new section!

“Extraction Point” is an expansion pack to the great hit-shooter “First Encounter Assault Recon”. It picks up immediately after F.E.A.R. ended. Your chopper has crashed and you need to make your way to the hospital, which is the evacuation point for all the survivors of the incident. Unfortunately that is the extent of the story in this game, so let’s take a look at the other elements.

The expansion has a better variety of maps than the original. This time office-crawling is not the only thing you will do, as you will visit locations that include a subway, carpark, and a hospital. IKEA-fans will be especially delighted to hear that their ever-loving furniture is back, complete with new sections of furniture ranging from church benches to the new best-selling model of office chairs. However, many assets from the original game have been re-used in the expansion, so expect to see a lot of the models from the previous year.

Visually the game is starting to show some signs of aging, which is not surprising since it is still running on the same engine as the original and has not gotten any overhauls since. It still looks ok, but is clearly not among the top contenders anymore.

The music in this game is still simple but impressive, as it creates a very eerie mood as you move through the maps, but other than that there is nothing special about the sound. Weapon sounds are naturally the same as in the original, and there is very little meaningful dialogue to go about.

The expansion packs a few new monsters in addition to the new maps, as well as a couple of new weapons, especially the minigun is fun to play around with. Unfortunately there is zero other new things in the expansion, everything plays just like the original game. Despite the new locations, the gameplay is very monotonous and gets quite boring after playing for a while. If there only were some real story elements to grasp around at least it would be somewhat interesting to play through the expansion, but it just feels like it should have been slapped on the original game as three of four maps.