[360] Lost Planet: Extreme Condition

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_planet

http://games.teamxbox.com/xbox-360/1369/Lost-Planet/

Didn't see a thread for this game yet (despite searching), and no one seemed to mention it yet, so here goes. I didn't know anything about this game until I saw a webpage saying that this game was #1 on gamefly.com rentals. When I went to my local Blockbuster later on, I saw they had this game, so I figured I'll try it out and see what it's like.

The plot is that humans have tried colonizing a planet, one set in permanent winter conditions (hence the subtitle for the game). There, they discover a hostile species of bugs called Akrids, and upon killing some, they discover that the bugs have a special source of power called Thermal Energy which can be used as a source of energy. As a result of this, they develop special weapons to combat the bugs, called Vital Suits (VS), which are essentially small mechs.

The game is third-person, and has a "Syphon-Filter" feel to it. It's also similar to Gears of War, but you can jump, but movement feels slower in this game.

As I mentioned earlier, you're on an icy planet, and your character, Wayne, has a suit which runs off the Thermal Energy. The suit constantly drains the energy bar (particularly if you jump), and if it reaches 0 energy, you die from the cold when the suit stops working. You can get more energy by killing the bugs throughout the game. If you get hurt, your life will decrease, but as long as you have thermal energy (and it's not a 1-hit kill), your life will refill (although healing will cause your energy to drain faster).

You can use a variety of weapons, ranging from a machine gun to a shotgun, grenades, a gatling gun (I haven't played too far in yet). You're limited to two weapons at a time though, so you should choose carefully. Ammo seems relatively plentiful, so running out shouldn't be a problem, unless you pick up special kinds (like a rocket launcher).

In addition to that, you can also pilot a VS. While in a VS, your movement is a little faster (although you can dash), some of them have a special chainsaw on it, and you can hover with them too (but doing this drains your energy like mad. I killed myself by accidentally doing this for too long the first time I rode one lol).

So far the game seems cool, although expect to die a lot while learning how to control your character, and learning the game mechanics (I died a couple of times in the first stage because I didn't know what to do lol).

So, is this another winner from Capcom, or will it just turn out to be an average game for the 360?

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Well, I just beat it recently (the last boss is a PITA to fight, mostly because you get a new mech to control, and although the game gives you instructions on how to control it, it's still going to take a little while to get used to it, meaning you're gonna get wtfpwnt the first few times lol).

My opinion of the game is that it's interesting, but the storyline is kind of weak. Sure, it's a cool concept, and the intro is great, but the story seems to only happen during the cutscenes in between levels later on. When you're actually playing the levels, then it feels like something entirely different than what the story was supposed to be doing. Honestly, a lot of times I felt like I was going through a lot of different areas just blowing up bugs, mechs, or bad guys. The timespan is also bad. Although several years goes by in the game, you never really get that feeling, other than the fact that they told you about it, and everything still feels more or less the same regardless of how much time passed in the game.

You have objectives, but you often forget what they are, and the game doesn't provide you many clues where to go next or anything either, so if you forget, you're going to have to explore for a bit or try to figure out what you had to do.

The gameplay itself, again, feels a little "weak" compared to Gears of War. I do like that you get a grappling hook and at times it feels like Bionic Commando (if anyone remembers that old NES game). Falling from great heights doesn't seem to hurt you (unless you fall off a cliff, or into lava without a mech later on), but oftentimes when you do have to descend, it's either in a mech, or your character will activate the hook so you can descend slowly to see what's down there, or climb back up if you want.

The strangest thing though, I found that fighting the bugs were far, far more interesting than fighting the humans. After playing many other games, you'd think that if that if there's two guys standing near each other, and you snipe one, the other guy's going to take cover so you don't blow his head off right away. Nope, he more or less stands there still (they may move if you don't kill them in one hit, but if you're far enough away, you can pick them off. There was one stage where I picked off just about every bad guy in the beginning area, without so much a bullet flying back at me lol). Even when you fight close up, they more or less stand there and shoot at you. The only times humans are challenging to fight is when you're fighting a boss in a mech (but they usually resort to using cheap moves or ultra powerful "I-win" buttons/weapons, like a laser that knocks off like 30% of your health per hit).

To be fair, I played it on easy (and still got my butt kicked at times, but mostly during a boss fight or cause I fell off a cliff lol), but I read a review in Game Informer where they said bugs and humans will still do stupid things on harder difficulties (like charge at you despite the fact that there's a wide, bottomless pit between you, meaning they fall to their deaths, and I saw it happen too), so it's probably something they overlooked during testing.

------------

Okay, enough bashing, now for the fun stuff. The boss fights in this game are fun. Although they're predictable, you often fight monsters that are many times larger than the mechs, and it certainly makes up for some of the lackluster enemies during the level. One boss strongly reminded me of Mothra, and I swear Godzilla was gonna show up after I beat it to wtfpwn me or something lol. And that damn worm, you're gonna hear people talking about it a lot, wow was he a pain to fight. Although not technically a boss, you do have to fight your way past him (supposedly you can run past too, but everytime I tried he destroyed my mech in snow-bike mode). And he's one of those monsters where, when the music stops, you've "beaten" him, and should haul ass. Because if you stick around too long, the music starts back up, and the worm's on you again (I thought I killed it, so I went back to get a new mech and some ammo, only to hear that music again a short while later, like a minute or so).

Like I mentioned earlier, the human boss fights are usually fun, particularly one near the end where you're fighting it out with one of the main bad guys (and after watching all the cutscenes, you're ready to kick his ass too). And oftentimes if you lose your mech, there's usually another one that you can hop into (but if you lose that one too, you're probably better off dying and restarting the boss fight, unless there are multiple suits around).

The mech portions are fun, and I like that you can take off just about any weapon that they mount (other than a fixed rocket launcher on some of them, but this is about it), and use it against the bugs or humans. There was one instance where my mech blew up, and I happened to find a powerful mech laser weapon. Since the nearest mech was being guarded by two enemy mechs, I did hit and run attacks, charging up a shot, shooting them, then running before they could counterattack me (or run me over). It gets more interesting towards the end of the game though, because you get access to the faster mechs, which will start to look more and more like Gundam or Macross than Mechwarrior. The biggest problem you'll often face is "which mech do I want to take?" because most levels have many abandoned mechs, and some are really cool (you can't knock people off mechs except I think the ones where there's no cover/top to it, where you have to snipe them, but I don't recall seeing any towards the end).

Ammo is rarely an issue as you're constantly running into new weapons. And when you do see a new weapon, you can often get an idea of what to expect in the next area, like a sniper rifle and the next area has many guards around it. There are also some weapons that are "infinite", meaning you can shoot them as much as you want, although it drains your current energy supply while you shoot it.

Regarding the energy, although it seems bad, there's often quite a bit of it available, and unless you're constantly flying around in a mech or getting hit repeatedly, it doesn't drain that fast. You can only have 9999 though (at least on Easy, I don't know about the other difficulties, as I had to return the game before it was due back). It drops from humans, bugs, and various other things too like explosive barrels or big metal tanks holding them (which you can shoot or run into with a mech). The only other drawback is that the energy disappears after about 10 seconds, so if you don't grab it, it disappears forever. Activating data posts will give you about 1000 energy as well as a section of the map of the level you're on.

Not sure how the multiplayer was, because my internet died on me, and I was focused on just beating the single player to see what it was like before having to return the game (I rented it). Again, the Game Informer review said that on some maps you have to run quite some distance before you even see anybody, but otherwise it can be pretty fun too.

Oh, and unlike Dead Rising (another Capcom game), you can actually read the text and what not in this game if you're playing on standard tv's (rather than HDTV). Glad that Capcom at least addressed the issue this time (I hated how small the text was in Dead Rising on my tv set, despite being 29 inches).

---------------

Definitely worth a rental, but I wouldn't recommend buying this game unless you like fighting giant bugs and some foot/mech action (this is essentially Starship Troopers with some small mechs thrown in, and you're a one-man army).

There's nowhere I can't reach.