Lost Planet: Extreme Condition

"Decent shooter with some unique, but annoying qualities."

I bought Lost Planet for $5 when Steam had it on sale a few weeks ago. It was one of those games that had always peaked my interest, but I just never had the chance to play it until now.

The game at best is mediocre. The gameplay was fun, but a few things like thermal energy really killed it in my opinion. Thermal energy is your so called "life energy". Without it your life energy wittles away like being drowned. Thankfully(or coincidentally) thermal energy is abundant in the game. Every Akrid in the game is "made" of thermal energy so to speak. It drops when you kill them. The bigger they are the more they drop. Thermal energy depletes at a fairly quick rate. And whenever you engage in actions such as jumping or controlling a VS it depletes even faster. So to sum it up, thermal energy creates a sense of urgency while playing. It doesn't give you the freedom like most shooter games do, letting you do whatever you please. Which is rather annoying, but it does serve one valuable purpose and that is thermal energy acts as a sort of life/death barrier. Heavy damaging attacks that would normally kill you are absorbed by your thermal energy. And after a few seconds your life bar will regenerate. I had a hell of a time figuring out how thermal energy worked when I started playing. The truth is my game was heavily glitched and caused the game to skip rapidly and seem fast paced, which pretty much drained my thermal energy at an insane rate. So after a new graphics driver install and a restart I solved the problem and had smooth gameplay.

You're essentially a super soldier thanks to the Harmonizer built into your arm. Early in the game it is a secret to those you are working with, but they become aware of it pretty quickly and realize how powerful of an ally you are because of the thermal energy absorbing device.

The real fun of the game is taking control of mech units called VS. I don't remember what it stands for, but they are made of win and awesome. They drain thermal energy fairly quickly, but after the first couple missions or so thermal energy drops so frequently you'll find yourself maxing it out and remain in a VS the majority of the game... or at least I did. :D

The weapons are pretty standard early on. Machineguns, shotguns, grenades, rocket launchers, etc. VS get overpowered versions to obliterate Akrid with... chainguns, huge rocket launchers, grenade launchers. Later on plasma and laser technology becomes pretty standard. However, I usually found myself resorting to the good ol' solid propelled weaponry because they just had more effect on tearing **** up. None the less it is fun to test them out. Some weapon add-ons you'll come to find are permanently attached and are well worth using before ditching the VS for another more powerful.

But onto the story, Lost Planet takes you into the mind of a young guy named Wayne who was part of the military group responsible for securing the planet for colonization. When the Akrid(bug race) were discovered and easily identified as hostile it soon became apparent that it was not safe. Your mission throughout the majority of the game is to eliminate any and all Akrid you can, securing area by area. Early on you will realize that eliminating Akrid isn't the real goal at hand and a bigger plot is in the brewing.

Cutscenes are pretty common throughout the game. Usually before or after key parts. Interesting to follow and it unfolds the purpose for the course of actions you take as you play the game. Though I didn't get much of a chance to follow it thanks to TERRIBLE lag that caused the audio to be slower than the video feedback. I could never figure out the reason for this and eventually started skipping cutscenes out of irritation.

The graphics add a nice touch to the game and provide for a better sense of realism. The gameplay was pretty smooth for my PC and it had no problems handling everything but anti-aliasing on the highest setting. Even in the larger open areas it played flawlessly. The performance test averaged 35+ in snow and 40+ in the cave area.

Overall the game was fun to play through. I probably won't play through it again as it really doesn't provide much if anything as far as replay value goes. I have the option of playing on harder difficulties sure, but really what does that consist of in any game outside of making the enemies more powerful and making the character you control easier to kill? Lame.

It was worth the $5, but I personally would not spend $20 or whatever the suggested price is for it these days. I would recommend renting it for the weekend. The game isn't very long and is easily beaten in under 15 hours.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 03/27/09

Game Release: Lost Planet: Extreme Condition (US, 06/26/07)