Ever wanted to play Starship Troopers in the Antarctic? Well Lost Planet: Extreme Condition is for you!
The Good...
This game is graphically stunning, and it throws masses of enemies at you at any one time.
The Bad...
The single player campaign is very short, and it is too geared towards console play.
Welcome to E.D.N. III, Earths last great hope for inhabitance. But wait, this world is frozen and inhabited by the Akrid, massive bug like creatures reminiscent of Starship Troopers. You play as Wayne, who at the beginning of the game watches as his Father is killed by a massive Akrid, affectionately called Green Eye.
You play as Wayne, who at the beginning of the game watches as his Father is killed by a massive Akrid, affectionately called Green Eye.
You are knocked unconscious and rescued by a small group of Snow Pirates. You spend the rest of the game trying to remember your past and discover what NEVEK’s Frontier Project really is.
As E.D.N III is a frozen wasteland you won’t last long without Thermal Energy, however don’t despair, the stuff can be picked up everywhere. There are tanks full of it and every enemy drops pools of it at their feet when destroyed. However, if you run out of Thermal Energy, death will be swift. Whenever you have Thermal Energy it is extremely hard to die, as it fills your life bar back up as it gets depleted. Always remember though, that Thermal Energy runs out. It counts down rather slowly while on foot, but step inside a VS (Vital Suits) and watch as it plummets very fast. Beacons point out your path as you trudge along; these beacons are another source of Thermal Energy so it’s good idea to activate them as you go even if you do know where you are heading. Some of the maps are huge and really do require you to find these beacons to know where you are going or face the possibility of getting lost in this massive frozen world.
You will be fighting Akrid and Humans, both on foot and using Mech units called VS’s. There are many types of VS units in the game and they all have slightly different uses and special abilities, some fly, some slide across the ground and most can transform from the standing mech unit to a drivable form. The Akrid are incredibly varied, and range from small, to about ten times your size, and pack one hell of a punch. At times you will be forced to fight your way through massive swarms of them, each trying to attack and devour you. The Human AI isn’t anything special but gets the job done, while the Akrid AI is pretty much what you would expect of a Bug type creature. Always look for the yellow parts of the Akrid, these are the soft squishy bits that your weapon can penetrate and the only way, in most cases, of destroying these huge beasts. The game tends to play like most old school action shooters, with you fighting some huge creature at the end of each level, or a Boss as we know them.
The game tends to play like most old school action shooters, with you fighting some huge creature at the end of each level, or a Boss as we know them.
Some of these Bosses take a bit of trial and error before working out how to destroy them, as I mentioned earlier they tend to only have small parts of them that can be destroyed and these creatures tend to protect those parts very well. However the human bosses generally come in the form of VS’s units and are generally fairly easy to work out. Shoot, duck and weave, and repeat style gameplay.
While the storyline and cut scenes are nothing fantastic they do manage to keep the game rolling along quite nicely, and once again are very nice to behold. The game is played from a 3rd person view, but allows for zoom to the point where it effectively is a first person view… somewhat. It feels a little unnatural in FPS so I would recommend playing it as intended in the 3rd person view and only using the zoom to snipe etc.
Graphically the game is absolutely stunning
Graphically the game is absolutely stunning
, although I had to download nVidia’s beta drivers for it to work correctly as it kept crashing using the latest stable drivers. I should mention that this game comes in both DirectX9 and DirectX10 flavors, I ran it using DirectX9 on a Windows XP SP2 box. This is graphically, the most impressive DirectX9 game I have ever played.
Music and Sound Effects all fit together very well to give it the right atmosphere. Both volumes can be set seperately in the Options as you would expect.
Like many console ports, the game autosaves at the end of each mission, but does not allow for mid-mission saves. Once a mission is complete it can be replayed via the main menu. There are hidden "tokens" in each level, which may give you the desire to replay the level and find them all, but I don't think it is enough to add to the replayability of the game.
The game works via Keyboard and Mouse, although is very much a console based game and this shows through, with Capcom appearing to put minimal thought into this PC version, control wise
Capcom appearing to put minimal thought into this PC version, control wise
. Although I managed to play the game through using keyboard and mouse, the controls are usually shown on screen as an Xbox 360 controller, so you will be checking the Options to see what your controls really are. Perhaps if you have an Xbox 360 controller, it would be better to plug that into your PC and use that instead. If you are at all like me then you prefer KB and Mouse, and bitterly hate playing a shooting game with a gamepad. I always end up running along staring at the floor or ceiling when using a gamepad.
Another downside is that the game seems to be very short, playing on Normal mode (there are 3 settings with Normal being the average difficulty) it took me about 9 hours to complete the 11 stages on offer. I would hope that on the highest difficulty this would be much longer and throw more enemies at you and less Thermal Energy.
With all of its little problems, I still recommend the game although it is short and very console specific, it is a hell of a lot of fun
although it is short and very console specific, it is a hell of a lot of fun
. I found it was easy to forget the objective altogether at times and simply enjoy the massive shootfest in the Akrid Hives. Throw a nade and watch as Akrid body parts explode. I had some serious Multiplayer issues so prefer not to comment on that for now. However from what I have read in other reviews I am not alone in this and the game seriously needs patching for it to function correctly as a MP game. Let’s hope though that the MP mode is good, as the single player campaign, as stated before, is very short and lacks replayability.
I am giving Lost Planet a score of 3.5 out of 5. Although it's length and console feel detract from its enjoyment, it is simply stunning to look at, and is a hell of a lot of fun. Oh and one other thing, ignore the fact that Wayne is wearing shorts in the screenshots, I can assure you he was fully clothed throughout the whole game.
System Requirements: Minimum: Windows® XP, Intel® Pentium® 4 supporting HT technology or AMD Athlon™ 64 3500+ or greater, 512 MB RAM (Windows XP) / 1 GB RAM (Windows Vista), 8.0 GB free disk space, 640x480 minimum resolution, 256 MB VRAM, DirectX®9.0c / Shader3.0*, NVIDIA® GeForce® 6600 or greater, DirectSound compatible. DirectX®9.0c, Mouse, Keyboard, Broadband connection (Internet connection required to play.) Recommended: Windows Vista™, Intel® Core™2 Duo, 1 GB RAM (Windows XP) / 2 GB RAM (Windows Vista), 1280x720 or higher resolution, 256 MB VRAM, NVIDIA® GeForce® 8600 or greater, Gamepad, Xbox 360™ Controller for Windows®
You play as Wayne, who at the beginning of the game watches as his Father is killed by a massive Akrid, affectionately called Green Eye. 
