Lost Planet: Extreme Condition (Collector's Edition) (Xbox 360, 2007)

The extreme conditions mentioned in the title are no joke. Lost Planet takes place on a planet that is so cold, freezing to death would happen quite rapidly if it weren't for a strange orange ooze that the local residents known as the Akrid produce and store. This thermal energy can be harvested and used to keep the main character from succumbing to the elements. Unfortunately, the Akrid are a collective of giant bug-like aliens who haven't bought into the human ideas of colonizing and terra forming the planet. Rather than looking for a more suitable planet to colonize, humanity took the next logical step; build giant mechs called vital suits and make bigger guns to fight back.



The indoor environments can be breathtaking.Lost Planet's campaign mode places you in the role of Wayne, a man whose last memory is of his father being killed by a large and dangerous Akrid named Green Eye before being knocked into a coma. This memory lays down the groundwork for his motivation to rid the planet of the nasty critters one hive at a time which is how you spend the early portions of the game. Other characters and human enemies are quickly introduced to round out the action and confuse the story, but it is the gameplay that makes this title fulfilling, so let's ignore the story issues for a while.

The action in Lost Planet takes place either on foot or from within one of the aforementioned vital suits. The gameplay gimmick that helps to keep Lost Planet fresh is the thermal energy bar. In this frozen planet, you're required to kill or be killed…or freeze to death. Each enemy you take down or piece of machinery you destroy leaves behind a small puddle of thermal energy that helps to restore your constantly draining supply. Rather than employing a standard life bar, Lost Planet opted to tie your life completely to the thermal energy. If you take a hit from an enemy, your thermal energy will drain into your life bar. The energy doesn't drain fast enough to ever become a serious issue in most stages, but it does provide a nice nudge to the player to keep them moving along towards the next big fight. In this way, the thermal energy mechanic is an excellent addition to an action game - if you don't keep moving and fighting and spend all of your time doing uneventful exploring, you'll find yourself in big trouble.

The weapons and vital suits also do a great job of keeping the action steady and rocking. The guns have a nice variety to them, but it's the grenades and vital suits that ensure that you have the firepower needed to take down anything and everything (which you can thanks to the largely destructible bits of cover). The vital suits range from simple walkers and transforming snowmobiles to chainsaw equipped death machines and spider-esque drilling mechs. And the guns these vital suits come with are no joke. You can equip up to two interchangeable weapons per machine, or you can rip them off and tote them around on foot. These huge guns do massive damage for very satisfactory results. It's a good thing too, because Lost Planet does a nice job of ramping up the intensity as the game progresses, from being faced with a few car sized bugs at the beginning stages to all out war.

When I first heard of Lost Planet I was excited. When I played the demo, I was amazed. When I finally played the retail version...well, not so much. It's not to say Lost Planet: Extreme Condition is a bad game, because it's not. There's a lot to like about it. Lot's of guns, Mech's (or as the game calls them, Vital Suits), creative monsters and a sweet grappling hook. I was very pleased with all the variety.

The game takes place on an ice cold planet run a muck with monsters called Akrid. Think Hoth and Starship Trooper bugs with glowing butts. These Akrid have a type of thermal energy within them that you and everyone else must use to keep warm and power all the equipment. Through out the game you have to collect this thermal energy to fill a meter that is constantly counting down and if it hits zero you die. And the only way to harvest said energy is, yep you guessed it, kill them. Killing off your only source of energy...humm, not very efficient if you look at it from an economical stand point.

One thing that completely bothered me was the thermal energy usage in certain environments. It seemed that no matter where you are, the loss of this energy remains at a constant. For some reason it drops even faster when you climb into a VS. Seriously, if you're inside one of these things, wouldn't you expect it to be warmer inside? Cripes! Even my 1995 Saturn has a heater in it! There was even one level and I kid you not, where you're inside of a volcano. Packed with lakes and rivers of hot lava and yet you can still "freeze" to death because you're meter is still dropping. Sure I can see if you're out in the tundra on foot but come on! A Volcano?!

What about the multiplayer? It's a bit janky, even incomplete in some areas. For starters you can't just leave a match once you've joined. When in a room and things aren't going well, too few people, don't like the map, a friend invites you or what ever it may be. You have to either exit to the 360 dashboard or completely shut the system down because the Start button does not work. It's a serious flaw by any standard. Another thing which really chaps my ass is that the multiplayer maps just weren't designed very well for this type of game play. In some cases you have a map that's way too small forcing everyone on top of each other (even with huge VS's bumping into things), while others are just too big leaving people to roam around searching for targets.

Reportedly Capcom is to release some updates to fix some of the technical issues, which is fine, but will they help in the big picture? The extras that come with the Limited Edition aren't all that great either. Unless you're a big fan of pretty concept pic's and/or want the extra map that comes with it, than you don't need to pay the extra $10 for it. Maybe my memory is failing me but not once do I recall it ever snowing in this game, very strange...

Lost planet stands with some of my personal favorite games. The storyline takes you through much angst, and plot twists. One of the reasons I kept going was just to see what happened to the main character
HD musts
-Explosion clouds
-Snow effects
-Particles
Having an HDTV will makes these effects looks much better, lost planet had particle effects more beautiful than any other game I have seen for the Xbox 360
The playability is decent, but may frustrate some players on the time it takes the character to roll or jump, when in truth it makes it more realistic since your character needs to bend his legs.
Multiplayer is what you can expect from this Capcom game, there is a decent community and you seem to "level up" the more matches you play. The community on Lost Planet can sometimes be rude in my opinion, but that's expected of any Xbox LIVE game.
Sound is astonishingly well thought-out and, and treat to listen to, there is a separate CD that includes the soundtrack.
The Game comes with a metal case, with exclusive cover art. there is also a booklet included concept art and short descriptions of characters and Akrid (the aliens) You will also have the players book, and though it is no longer exclusive to collector's edition, there is a multi player map.
If you like large robots with heavy weapons, 3rd person shooting, a true challenge, and gorgeous effects; Lost Plant is a game that will deliver
From friends and others, you either love lost planet or dislike it.

I really don’t understand why the media and some gamers have been so critical of this game it has it all to be a classic series.

The first thing to take note of is the story, which in my opinion is pretty solid and exiting (Hopefully not realistic right), in few words killing big bugs and driving really cool mechs, has always been a wining recipe in my book.

Then comes the gameplay which is fluid and pretty manageable, I don’t share the opinion of people that said that this is the second worst part of the game where with a little of practice you can overcome, this miniscule obstacle.

Lastly, the graphics are GOOD, I don’t know what gamers talk about when they say that the image it’s to blurry; First the game takes place in a frozen planet, so WHITE snowflakes more than likely will be everywhere, second if you are having problems with blurry image check your Xbox or buy a better TV.

I apologize if any part of my review sounds to straight forward or rude, but this game should get the recognition it deserves and I can clearly state that I can’t wait for the next part of it (Hopefully we will see a multiplayer option on it this time, I’ll Give You That Gamers!), like I said this game is a winner in my book.

Altamirano8236.

I think that this is a great action shooter game with Xbox 360 quality graphics. The snow effects are amazing and has above average graphics. I feel that the great thing about this game is the ability to keep picking up and exchanging a variety of weapons and I like the VS. The title could've used a bit more variety with the gameplay and background. Overall, I think that this game is one of the better Xbox 360 games to date, and gives it a better value.