Lost Planet: Extreme Condition Xbox 360

Lost Planet - Good game but falls short of great

By a  Jan 5, 2007 | 2 out of 2 found this Lost Planet: Extreme Condition review helpful

Pros: Excellent graphics and sound. Sometimes scenery is drop-dead gorgeous

Cons: Some control issues. A bit confusing. "Hard" difficulty is insanely difficult. Weak story.

Since LOST PLANET: EXTREME CONDITION was published by a Japanese company (CAPCOM) I was able to obtain this game well before any one in the states was, and I have thoroughly played this game. I played the game in full English mode since the new XBOX ...supports many languages. LOST PLANET is sci-fi thriller/shooter. The story is, you're on a freezing planet and you have to stop something called the "Frontier Project" which is a plan to change the freezing planet into a warm paradise. However the "Frontier Project" actually will kill everything on the planet, so it's your job as Wayne, a Korean-looking super hero to stop this project. Some of the characters you will meet are really well done (especially the evil white guy with the witch-nose) but other characters look like generic Japanese-RPG characters (LUKA for example). Ultimately the story is a little long with too many cinematics (if I want to watch a movie I'll rent one) and most damningly the game BLATANTLY copies two sci fi movies, so if you've seen them, you know the plot already: Dune and Aliens. That's right. Except not a desert to paradise, but a freezing planet to a paradise. And you kill giant reptile-like creatures who spawn from eggs or little spewing gooey things on the walls. You even fight a big worm that comes out of the ground. You wear a special suit that's dependent on heat (not water like in Dune) etc etc etc. So the story's kind of lame and contrived. how's the game? Actually pretty darn good. The graphics, especially the snowy scenery are AWESOME, and I often took time just to stop and look some of the things (like the snowy ocean). The sound is fantastic. The aliens sound just like the movie "Aliens" (that's a good thing) the guns sound larger than life. Combat is fun for the most part. Although using the big machine suits ("V suits - like the one used in Aliens at the end") actually become a little boring since the fights are much more even. It's much more satisfying to fight a gigantic alien and somersault around and finally kill it than to blast a few times with a huge machine. The end bosses are the real meat of the game play. They are very well-rendered, and insanely difficult. You will die many times your first try through, even on the easy setting. This doesn't make it any less fun however. The bosses are huge, scary, and challenging. You will enjoy it. The final ending of the game is well done, although not great. I won't spoil it here for you. There are some issues which could be raised about the game play. 1. The controls are not simple, so video game novices shouldn't play this. My girlfriend can't get past the first stage (and you don't even have to kill anything). 2. The smoke, while beautiful, is over-done, often making the game impossible to see. This sucks for the player, because even though you can't see, the enemy can see you and is shooting missiles and scoring direct hits on you while you fire blindly. This makes it less enjoyable. 3. The game is sometimes quite DARK. You have a flash light (like in HALO) but the game might as well not have one since it illuminates barely anything at all. In fact I can't even tell when I have it on or off. Far into the future and we can't even have a decent flashlight? 4. Most of the bosses have cheese moves. A cheese move is a 100% "you're gonna get hit" move those you old enough might remember from video game arcades. One that really pissed me off was the robot from the 4th stage who should shoot some kind of laser that would take half of my life, but this was immediately after I put on the suit so I couldn't move or do anything about it. Read more Less