Newsvine Decided Review: Lost Planet: Extreme Condition (x360)

After one play through of Lost Planet: Extreme Condition one great life lesson will be self evident, even through it's brightest snow induced light bloom, humans are dicks.

The opening cutscene introduces us to an Earth where it's inhabitants have seemingly become bored with there futuristic surroundings. What does a science fiction-based society do in situation of planetary boredom? Well, then hop on spaceships and find a new world to live on. And that new planet in question happens to be aptly title E.D.N. III, an isolated rock with snow covered desert plains as far as the digital-optic rifle scope can see.

Why humanity would choose to colonize a planet the is so cold that merely being outside in its harsh conditions will freeze you instantly without the proper life-support is beyond me. But then, to choose to stay after your confronted with the natural inhabitants of E.D.N. III - known as the Akrid - that appear to be some sort of nightmarish amalgamation of the enemies seen in Starship Troopers and Dune is simply idiotic.

Why would people want to stay here? For one simple reason, the Akrid's bodies house Thermal Energy that the humans want to harvest and every time one is destroyed it drops an orange blob of it. T-ENG, as it is know, is more powerful than plutonium and more sticky-sweet to the touch than oil. A slick business could do a lot with that.

An occupier that descends to a desolate region to pillage the native inhabitants of their profitable, but limited, resource. Those crazy developers over at Capcom, where do they come up with this stuff?

Your role in this farcical sci-fi driven action-shooter is as Wayne, modeled after/played by Korean actor Lee Byung-Hun, the amnesia-ridden pretty-boy who needs to discover what happened to him and why his body must be pumped with T-ENG to stay alive. To help drive the story along you're accompanied by three staples in modern Japanese story-telling; Luka , the attractive love interest who feels fit to where an open jacket and bikini top in the middle of an Arctic wasteland; Yuri, the duplicitous leader who can't be trusted (or should he?); and Rick, the spiky-haired electronics wiz -kid who constantly wears goggles - even indoors. One thing that you can't criticize Japanese game developers for is there lack of consistency, because this cast and plot just dredges up memories of every other cast and plot from every other game or anime like it. Consistent, granted yes. Original, no.

Mere handheld weapons alone won't help Wayne and the gang as they fight off the evil (or defensive, since you invaded their home) Akrid scourge. Humans have been able to survive as long as they have by engineering what they call Vital Suits (VS) or what the rest of the universe has called mechs. The VS' add a needed balance in the fight against the, often times multi-story tall, Akrid that you encounter through out Lost Planet as they provide larger, more effective weapons and a much needed armor boost.

Conveniently enough the VS are highly customizable with many weapons for it that are scattered through out the stages. Another nice feature about the VS weapons laying around in abundance are that you don't need to be enclosed in amech casing to use them. Our adventurer can pick one up and start blasting away, mind you with limited mobility due to their hulking size, but this offers more to the gameplay especially after the mech - err excuse me, VS - you were driving gets blown up and you appear defenseless against your enemy.

Wayne's mobility options aren't limited to lumbering mechanical suits or even manually trudging through the knee-deep snow pack through out the game, as he comes equipped with every geeks favorite device - a grappling hook. To bad that the grappling hook isn't used to its fullest potential as it can only be fired while standing stationary on the ground. This is the future, why can't I launch it while in mid-flight in Spidey -like fashion to roam the level? The grappling hooks entire existence in the game is purely utilitarian as it is used sparingly on levels that require you to reach a particular height or for spelunking downward into the depths of an Akrid hole.

I guess the single shot nature of the hook is for the best as the controls themselves are awkward and sometimes annoying. Like most third-person action games you get a target reticule in the middle of the screen. Unlike most action games, when you move the reticule your field of vision doesn't instantly move with it. Instead it must break a predetermined boundary before you can start looking around the level. This might be okay in most games, but when you're playing a highly twitch-action-shooter like Lost Planet you want to be in complete control of your surroundings. When you can't immediately turn and see something that is attacking you it becomes a pain. I guess, this is why the right and left bumpers are mapped to a 90 degree instant turn. On paper it would be the best solution for the reticule boundary inclusion, but in practice it is just plain disorienting.

I mentioned before that the enemies in the game where big and that may have been and understatement. Some of the in-level Akrid enemies, like the Shai Hu'lud-like worm and the giant moth, take up multiple screens and require tons of ammunition to down. Then waiting at the end of each mission is the ubiquitous boss, ready to battle our tiny protagonist. The end mission bosses, like all the Akrid in the game, are marked with one or many glowing weak points that must be fired upon. This highlights the games arcade feel and helps keep you focused on what needs to be done to take them out. Some may find this a cop out, but once you've unload all 999 shells of your clip into an armored insect without affecting him, then it becomes clear why this is a necessary feature.

The Akrid enemies in the game seem to offer a challenging level of AI that you would expect from insectoids. I wish that the same could be said for the human enemies in the game. (Oh yeah, you blast away humans too. What? You thought no one was going to stop you from collecting all that precious T-ENG for yourself?) Rival snow pirate AI is clumsy at best and American-Idol-contestant-idiotic at worst. They will be constantly leaving themselves open, or can be found just running into walls. The entire flow of the game seems to be hampered when you have fight against them and destroy what ever mech or base that you seemed compelled to walk though instead of going around.

When you do blow up an opposing VS or gun turret let me just say that the explosions are phenomenal. Those incredible visuals don't just stop there as they are carried over into every other aspect of the game from Akrid modeling to the real time weather-effect snow storms. Screenshots for the in-game action look great, but not until you can see Lost Planet in motion do you truly appreciate the level of detail put into everything.

I wish the same care was put into the cutscene animations though, as the characters come off looking like stiff plastic dolls. Maybe it's the uncanny valley effect or maybe it's the fact that all the character models look surprising similar to those found in Dead Rising, another Capcom game, but they weren't as impressive as the rest of the game and just looked creepy. And since they were sub-par compared to the gameplay visuals it stands out in stark contrast.

When you boil it down the gameplay is fairly linear for a next-gen title. You start at one point in any particular level and you need to get to another. Nothing groundbreaking and there is not much allowed in the areas of deviation from the main path as well. Yes, every once and a while you can fire your grappling hook at a ledge and run through the level on higher ground, but you're still following the same path.

Games like Lost Planet will always have good sales numbers and even loyal followings for being a solid game, but after one play through you won't find yourself wanting to come back. Later on the achievement point bug might bite you and you may throw the disc back in and replay some levels, but other than that there is not much to do on E.D.N. III and I don't really understand why our species would invade it in the first place.