Review

Lost Planet Extreme Condition: Colonies Edition

When it comes to titles that are released at the beginning of a console’s life, majority of them don’t stand the test of time. This is manly due to the fact that these early titles were developed on brand new hardware with little to go on in terms of the hardware’s limitations. They don’t benefit from the experience/knowledge developers gain through the years of working with a familiar system. That’s not to say that all early titles suffer from this problem. Mario titles, Call of Duty 2, Halo, and Resistance: Fall of Man are some of the few exceptions to the rule. Joining their ranks is Lost Planet Extreme Condition. This title, developed by Capcom, is still one of the coolest games to be released on the Xbox 360 (and later PS3). Adding to its coolness is the Colonies Edition that was released a few months back for the Xbox 360 and PC. While it’s a little more than a big expansion, it still is worth buying (even if you own the older version).

For all those who haven’t played Lost Planet (Shame on the both of you), it’s about a soldier helping colonize a frozen planet inhabited by monsters called Akrid. He is injured on a mission, which results in the lost of his memory. The rest of the story really doesn’t matter, as it never takes off. This is my main complaint with Lost Planet (I have four in total). We are given a great setting, cool characters, larger than life monsters, and transforming Mechs. You’d think the story would be epic. Not so. Looking on the bright side, I didn’t play through the campaign for the story. The gameplay alone is worth the price of admission.

As I said before, you’re going to be fighting Akrid on this frozen planet. Most of the Akrid you’ll run into easily tower over buildings. In order to stay alive, you have to keep warm (and complete you missions of course). In order to keep warm, you have to take down the native Akrid and collect the T-ENG (or Thermal Energy) they drop. This energy is also used when you are piloting the different Mechs (or VS suits) in Lost Planet. Doubling your firepower results in greater loss of T-ENG. Once all of the T-ENG is gone, you’re life gauge will start to deplete.  This helps push the missions along as you are trying to keep your Thermal Gauge up while battling large creatures. To help you along, other than the VS suits, is a rather large assortment of weapons. You can only have two at a time, which brings up hard decisions like “should I keep the rocket launcher with only three rockets left or take the machine gun”. If you run low on ammo don’t want to lose a lot of T-ENG by piloting a VS suit, you can always detach one of it’s guns and use that as your weapon. Adding to your arsenal is an anchor. The anchor can be fired into the environment, attaches or anchors onto something, and then pull you in that direction. This helps you to get over obstacles, get on top of buildings, pull you across a pit ect. On top of all this, you are given different types of grenades to use on enemies. Later on in the game, you will fight against snow pirates that will use the same weapons as you. Because of this, picking the right weapon/grenade can easily change the tide in battle. For instance, there is a Plasma grenade that sends out an electric shock-disabling any nearby VS suits. With all these factors to consider, the battles in Lost Planet can be pretty crazy-sometimes. This brings me to my second complaint. As action packed as Lost Planet can be, there are plenty of segments that are rather boring. In some levels, the enemy seems too easy to take down (or they are few in number). I once carried a rocket launcher all the way through one level because I didn’t feel that the enemy threat required an explosive answer. On some missions, the only highlight was the huge Akrid-boss battle at the end of the level. Even if you ramp up the difficulty, the real fun (on some levels) only starts when you encounter the end boss.

So far, everything I talked about was in the first version of Lost Planet. I think it’s time to move into the expanded features of Colonies Edition. With this addition you get all the downloadable content that was released for it’s big brother, as well as new characters and game modes. The most notable addition is an online mode called Akrid Hunt. The old Lost Planet had online modes, but none of them compare to this. In Akrid Hunt, players must battle human controlled Akrid. The number of Akrid players depends on the number of gamers that joined the server (if the server fills up with sixteen players, four will be Akrid and the rest hunters). In order for the Akrid to win, they must last the whole round without fully depleting their battle gauge or fill their battle gauge to max (by killing hunters). The hunters win by depleting the Akrids battle gauge (by killing them). When the Akird players die, because they can take a lot of damage before kicking the bucket, a large part of their battle gauge is depleted. The humans don’t have to worry as much as each of their deaths only adds a little to the Akird’s battle gauge. At the same time, the humans are much easier to kill than the Akrid. Using large claws, monstrous tail swipes, giant spikes, or just roll over enemies; the Akrid players can be fierce competition. The hunters roll in large numbers, can use VS suits, and attack from a distance. Honestly, the matches are pretty even with the victory being decided by which team is actually working as a unit. With that being said, I was a little disappointed with this mode at first. When I saw the trailer for Colonies, I saw a dozen hunters take down a single Akrid and thought “wow, a massive co-op mode!” That’s not really the case here. Over time, Akrid Hunt began to grow on me, as it’s still a fun addition to Lost Planet. It’s just not as cool as co-op!

As it stands, Lost Plant is an awesome game. With only a few hitches (my last complaint is the lack of gamers playing unranked matches), this title shines over a lot of games released recently. You are given around eleven online modes, epic boss battles, great graphics, good controls, and creative character designs. You get all this for under forty bucks (the retail price is $29.99). I defiantly recommend this title to anyone who is a fan of third person shooters.