Budget Review: Lost Planet: Extreme Condition (360 version)

I’ve just finished Lost Planet: Extreme Condition and you know what hit me straight away? Man was that ever a short game! I had just got in laughing distance of the five hour mark when I finished off the final boss in typical epic fashion. Not that I’m complaining because I spent just under £7 on the game for new (thank you Frugal Gaming), and seeing as all the cut scenes and repeat tries probably put an extra couple of hours on my basic core of 5, I’ve basically payed £1 an hour for the game. Not too bad, but not great. Anyway, despite my lack of a sense of accomplishment (I’m sorry, but I need to invest more time in a game to feel that) the game is genuinely good fun.

You play as Wayne, a colonist on planet E.D.N. III; a world that is inhabited by a corrupt military with sinister intentions, an alien race that are hell bent on wiping you out and a band of snow pirates that would sooner kill you than tell you the time. I know, it sounds like a pretty stock premise already, but wait, it gets worse. Wayne suffers from amnesia (the back bone of every Japanese video game and anime story since forever), as you advance through the game unlocking various key parts of Wayne’s history, the story unfolds and becomes increasingly intricate. I did enjoy the story, even though the obviously anime inspired cut scenes are rather cringe worthy at times (I blame the voice actors and poor characterisation), the story’s slow unraveling was akin to something like 24 or The X-Files, in the way that every answer provided by the games cut scenes just created more questions. I found myself really enjoying the story and had to see it through to the end, I just had to know what was going to happen next.

So onto the meat of the game, the game play. One of the most notably things about the game is the difficulty curve. In brief, the difficulty curve is like a stretched out slinky with occasional moments of agonising repeated attempts needed to defeat the bosses and the reasonably paced parts provided by the rest of the game, with its ‘if it moves, kill it’ ethos. The action is a bit primitive and the controls do a fell a little bit lumpy and outdated, but I think this is mostly in part due to the games age and the fact that we have been spoiled by super slick controls in games in recent months. One of the odd features of the game is the idea of thermal energy. Your health replenishing abilities require you to kill enemies, scenery and activate map posts in order to top up your thermal energy, but this energy also depletes slowly because of the extreme temperatures the games environments throw at you. This means that both your health and play time are limited. Spend too long in the game and you run out of thermal energy and your health bar begins to deplete. Play the game headstrong and take lots of hits, your health bar has to use more thermal energy and you end up with less time to finish the level. It’s an odd dynamic that takes some getting used to, but ultimately offers a unique and positive element to the game.

The only other real notable negative is the soundtrack. It really is a bit lacking and often all you have in some levels is the background noise of the wind whipping around your head as you progress and the gun fire and mech stomping sound effects. The only real positive that comes from this sparser soundtrack is that you do become very well immersed in this sense that you are traipsing across this baron uninhabitable snow dusted rock.

So if you want a decent anime inspired, mech centred action game that wants to be the source material it tries to emulate, you can’t go too far wrong with Lost Planet, especially as it seems to have become one of those games that is destined to forever live in the bargain bin. Raid the sofa, check the piggy bank, count the pennies and go and buy it.

7/10

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