Lost Planet: Extreme Condition

"Multiplayer is sweet, single player is ok."

To give the reader a frame of reference just to help them understand my taste in games, I will go into my background with shooters a little bit. I've played more Halo 2 than I care to remember, got a X360 after playing Gears of War once and I've been playing LP:EC since the first day the MP demo was put on marketplace. That being said, without further ado, lets get down to the nitty-gritty as they say.

GAMEPLAY

The gameplay in Lost Planet is a love it or hate it situation. The learning curve for the controls is a little steep, relatively speaking; you can change the button layouts so that it plays a little more like Gears of War if you so desire, but I've not had enough of a problem with the control scheme to bother having to relearn it. Going forward, the single player missions are kind of lack luster. The human AI is abysmal at best and the Akrid are pretty much just a more of a pain than anything else. I will say that the single player level design is very well executed as they do a brilliant job of not making you feel hemmed in to some forced path you must take. You genuinely feel that the levels are expansive, much more so than Gears or either Halo. The story line takes all kinds of twists and turns and is kind of weak and full of holes (no moreso than Gears of War, but GOW has the luxury of believable and likeable characters, not so much in LP:EC). The boss fights in the game are epic in nature (and proportion, you're a shrimp next to these things. Also they feel like bosses unlike General RAAM, which just gets torque bowed in the face constantly.)

All of this can be overlooked for this reason right here: the Anchor (or grappling hook, if you will). Do you ever feel like you're being gypped in a game because you are limited to where you can explore by silly limitations, like the inability to jump to ridiculously super human heights? Well fret not my friend; the anchor will limit you by your imagination alone. Granted, it does have it's own fixed range as well, but there are very few areas I've found that I couldn't get to with the good ol' anchor.

The health system is fairly innovative. In single player, your health bar regenerates from the orange goop dropped by fallen enemies called T-ENG (I call it “tang” for short just because it sounds funnier and “thermal energy” takes way too long to say. As far as I know, I'm the first one to think of this, but you're welcome to borrow it if you like because I knew you were going to steal it anyway. When you're playing with your friends and tell em about the tang, just be sure to say “yeah this dude on GameFAQS was callin it that”). When your health is depleted, your health will refill by consuming tang. The only problem is you are constantly losing tang, but don't worry, it's plentiful in single player. When you are out of tang, your health slowly depletes. In multiplayer, your tang acts as fuel for the VS's and ammo for energy weapons. WHAT A CONCEPT!? Vehicles that run out of ammo and fuel! Makes spawn camping with vehicles a temporary problem.

Why walk when you can ride? Why take the bus when you have freaking huge robots with gigantic weapons for arms? Enter the Vital Suit (VS). There are several different models of VS and their abilities range. Some of them are very agile, can hover and use their boosters for dashing to avoid enemy fire. Some of them are big and lumbering and will put a hole in just about anything that needs a hole in it. And some of them can fold up their legs and scoot around like a snow mobile. The weapons that come on the VS are completely up to you, that's right, you can “pimp” your ride. Don't like the gatting gun? Replace it with an EM laser. Really want to make an impact? Replace it with a rocket launcher. Basically, suit it to your taste and/or playstyle.

Fighting enemy VS on the ground can be a pain. If the cockpit is exposed, you can snipe the rider in the head, causing the VS to topple and launching the pilot. You can anchor on to him and blast him at close range with your machine gun, slap a grenade on there then flip off. Or you can just use explosives, which leads me to…

GRENADES! There are several types of grenades and they have different applications. There are your regular frag grenades, you throw like a baseball. There are “gum” grenades which adhere to whatever surface you throw them on (like a VS). There are disc grenades which are thrown like a discus and stick to VSs and other players (really funny when you disc grenade somebody and they run around with this green glowing disc sticking off their helmet). There are plasma grenades, which do little damage but can stun people. And then there is my favorite grenade (in multiplayer only) the dummy grenade. The dummy grenade inflates a dummy with explosive gas and makes it appear on the radar as if there was another person where you threw the grenade. The dummy grenade is available in multiplayer only, which leads me into…

MULTIPLAYER! This game has by far the best multiplayer for a shooter I've played on a console. The weapons are all balanced and viable. There are very few “idiot” weapons and the power weapons all have their own draw backs. The homing laser is incredibly cheesy, but it takes about 3 seconds to charge up a lethal shot and there is a big arc directly in front of you where you cannot hit the enemy. Plus the laser eats up tang and it's fairly difficult to obtain in multiplayer. The rocket launcher has one shot in the barrel at a time and the reload takes a bit of time. The sniper rifle is slightly overpowered, but WAIT! There's no auto-aim! Sniping actually takes skill! ZOMG! VS's are available in strong supply and respawn just like any other weapon. Since scoring is points based, the game better rewards chain kills and seizing objectives (for instance, a kill is worth ~850 points and a death is worth ~-800, you get several kills before you die and you've put a big chunk of points in the bank, meanwhile if you go even {1 kill for 1 death} you're only netting 50 points a life. Your radar is dependent upon you seizing data points, so if you take that away from the enemies, they can't see you and you get 500 points per data point plus it gives you a big boost to your tang. Ranked play is very fun and so far some of the coolest people I've played with on Live! are in this game. There's very little trash talking and none of this America vs. the world arguments like in other games I've encountered (and you should know that a little flag appears next to your name for whatever country you set up your 360 for). I hope the community stays as positive as it is, because you can play for hours without getting mad at anything other than lag.

There's much more to say about gameplay, but I'm sure you're a bit tired of hearing about it. Moving right along.

GRAPHICS

The character models are fairly cartoonish in nature, but the explosions are something serious. The real time lighting and smoke effects from explosions really make you feel like your playing with some serious firepower. Remember how Need for Speed Underground was the firstYou really must witness them for yourself. If you thought the smoke after a grenade detonated in GOW or halo was convenient for cover… Lets just say that they ain't got nothin' on the smoke and explosions in LP:EC. The snowy world the game takes place on is very convincing, if it weren't for the toon in front of you it's almost like watching the discovery channel. The Akrid are very smoothly animated and make you feel as if they were based off of a real animal. This game isn't as realistic as Gears in terms of graphics, but it's ridiculously long draw distances certainly make up for the realism. You can see for miles in some points.

SOUND

There really isn't anything amazing about the sound. A gun sounds like a gun, the music they do choose is hard to notice. Really there's nothing too spectacular about the music in this game. Which is nice, because you can add your own soundtrack from music you've ripped to your hard drive.

REPLAY VALUE

I will be replaying the heck out of multiplayer. Eventually I'll finish up the last bit of single player. I made the mistake of playing multiplayer before finishing single player. Whoops. Well, I guess I know what I'm doing until Halo 3.

Problems I have with this game

The shadows are kind of dodgy. If you're on a lower level and someone is above you, you can see their shadow on the floor of the level you are on. It's a handy trick for sure, but unfortunately is very cheesy.

Characters are invulnerable when they spawn in multiplayer. This would be fine if it were for 5 seconds or so, but the 10 seconds or whatever while they're invulnerable feels like an eternity.

Characters are also invulnerable when they are knocked down and while they are getting up or getting in a VS. This is more annoying than anything, but it's not tough to deal with. This is a colossal pain because the shotgun knocks down your enemies (rarely is it a 1 hit kill) but it's fairly easy to seal the deal once they are knocked down (use one of your fancy grenades while they are prone or dive behind them so they can't target you upon getting up and light them up while they are getting up.

Single player is really boring in comparison to multiplayer.

Some levels have low and high spawn points. If you got the low spawn point, it's literally an uphill battle (and it's a great deal more difficult ).

Static spawn points make spawn camping a breeze, but your 10s of invulnerability can dislodge spawn campers with relative ease.

The Collectors Edition has a multiplayer map that's not available on marketplace. Lame.

FINAL WORD

If you don't have Live, I wouldn't recommend this game. Single player is neat, but it doesn't offer split screen or co-op. As is the case with the 360 in general, you're only getting about 1/3rd the game if you don't use Live. I sincerely recommend getting Xbox Live if you've got a 360. Buy this game for multiplayer, rent this game for single player.

Multiplayer gets an 11, single player gets an 8, we'll average the 2 for a 9.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 01/16/07