Lost Planet: Extreme Condition Review

Every now and then, you come across a game that's just OK. It's not good, but it's not bad, and it's certainly nothing new. And then, sometimes you come across a game that is slightly beneath that level of quality...that game is Lost Planet: Extreme Condition for the PC.

The story of Lost Planet is so hopelessly lame that I won't even bother trying to summarize its finer points, but the basic idea is that you play as Wayne Holden, a 'snow pirate' on the planet of E.D.N.III. A group called NEVEC is trying to colonize the planet because Earth's conditions have become unsuitable for human life, but unfortunately, E.D.N.III is full of an alien species known as the Akrid. For whatever reason, Wayne wants to stop NEVEC but still wants to colonize the planet (yes, I know this makes little to no sense), so your adventures have you traversing through E.D.N.III mowing down both human and Akrid opponents.

The game's laughable story line isn't helped by the equally poor voice acting in both cutscenes and gameplay. In the cutscenes, the voice actors for Wayne and other characters deliver their lines in a fashion akin to a soap opera, and during the game, enemies continually cry out ridiculous phrases like 'NEVEC FOREVER!!' as you mow them down. The game can't be taken seriously and if you plan on playing it, it should be strictly for its gameplay elements (though they are pretty bland, but we'll get to that), not the story.

The graphics in Lost Planet are pretty impressive, however, with very nicely rendered environments and character models. the Akrid look especially nice and, as huge and detailed as they are, they cause little to no slowdown during gameplay. Cutscenes look fantastic too, with fluid animations and superb facial expressions and body language coming from all of the characters. It's a shame the acting sucks so much, because the cutscenes could have made for some real quality cinematic experiences.

The actual gameplay, unfortunately, is a pretty vanilla experience. In addition to your health bar, Lost Planet tries to integrate a system known as 'T-Eng' (short for Thermal Energy), a separate bar that slowly depletes as you play due to the extreme temperature of the planet that you're on. While in theory keeping up your T-Eng would provide an additional challenge, the reality of the situation is that it happens naturally without any concentrated effort on your part. Due to the fact that every enemy you kill (and many objects you can shoot) drop T-Eng for you to pick up, this is a system that turns out to be kind of gimmicky and adds nothing new to the gameplay experience.

So what it comes down to is that you basically just point and shoot your way through levels and sometimes hop in a robotic transport called a Vital Suit, which basically just allows you to use more powerful versions of the same weapons you carry when on foot. Speaking of which, the weapon selection is pretty ordinary as well, what with your typical selection of assault rifle, shotgun, sniper rifle, etc. There are the occasional energy weapons that use T-Eng for ammunition, and this probably would have been a good place for the creators to get a little more creative...but unfortunately they are, for the most part, 'plasma' or 'energy' versions of the same weapons that use bullets (e.g. the plasma rifle is the same thing as the sniper rifle, it just shoots bolts of energy instead of bullets).

Lost Planet's multiplayer is fun, but only a few aspects of it are out of the ordinary. The 'Colonies Edition' of the game, in addition to introducing a few new single player modes and multiplayer maps, also allows for cross-platform play, but only for players with 'Colonies.' That means if one player has 'Colonies' and the other has the regular version, they can't play together, which effectively creates two online communities for one game, which seems somewhat counterintuitive. Nevertheless, the idea of cross-platform capability is excellent, allowing PC gamers to play with Xbox 360 gamers, and vice versa. Not only does this give you an option to play with a friend who may have a different gaming platform than you, it's also a great way to keep a sizeable online community. Also somewhat refreshing is the tug-of-war type set up the game uses in each of its battles; when you kill an opponent, you not only gain a certain number of points, they lose some as well. You can also play matches in the form of 'split battles' in which the person with the better point total over the course of two matches is the winner.

Beyond this, however, the multiplayer isn't anything new. As is the case with the single player, Lost Planet is your standard third person shooter with no particularly unique or defining elements. The multiplayer is satisfying in that it has everything that is expected in terms of maps (there are quite a few to choose from) and gametypes including deathmatch, oddball, and point captures (and team variations on all of these), but it doesn't bring anything new to the table. You'll grow tired of it quickly.

Lost Planet: Extreme Condition is a far cry from a revolutionary game. There is absolutely nothing new to be found here, and even if you're okay with a generic, third-person shooter game, there are still better ones to be found. If you find this one in a bargain bin somewhere and you're just looking for a few cheap hours of gameplay, then that's okay. Other than that, I wouldn't recommend spending any more than $15 on this game.

Score: 6.3/10