Lost Planet: Extreme Condition | SuperPod Game Club

For the month of April, the SuperPod Game Club was tasked with playing through Lost Planet: Extreme Condition.

Let's get to those reviews!

Adam

Whilst checking my Xbox library after this game won SuperPod Saga’s April game club I was surprised to find not only Lost planet 2 and 3 on my hard drive; but moreover the fact that the first entry was not present. Booting up Lost Planet: Extreme Condition on the Xbox Series X, I was struck by a wave of nostalgia mixed with a tinge of expectation. Originally released for the Xbox 360, this sci-fi shooter promised a frostbitten adventure on an alien world, and while it still delivers in some aspects, its age shows in others.

Story: The narrative follows Wayne, a rugged protagonist battling both the hostile environment of the planet E.D.N. III and the ruthless Akrid creatures inhabiting it. His quest for vengeance and discovery is compelling, but the storytelling feels dated compared to modern standards. What is sold as a game throwing the main character into isolation and the anticipated promise of fighting an ungodly amount of twisted and Lovecraftian creatures fell short in the second and third acts with the Mech battles and the human conflict taking the forefront of both story and gameplay – loosing what drew me to the game in the first place.

Gameplay: The core gameplay loop of battling Akrid while managing thermal energy reserves was an engaging mechanic, putting a time limit and a sense of urgency to each level however also being quite plentiful once you knew where to find the thermal energy points. The use of Vital Suits adds depth to combat, offering a variety of mech-based strategies. However, the controls feel clunky by today's standards, and the lack of modern conveniences like a waypoint system and the short range of Wayne’s grappling hook can lead to frustration, especially for newcomers.

Graphics: While the game received a visual boost on the Xbox Series X through improved resolution and frame rates, it's clear that the game struggles to keep up with contemporary titles. Character models and environments were of the time. Despite this, the frozen landscapes of E.D.N. III still possess a certain charm.

Sound : The audio design holds up surprisingly well, with atmospheric soundscapes enhancing the sense of isolation and danger. Weapon sounds pack a punch, and the soundtrack, while somewhat repetitive, sets the tone for the frozen frontier of the game's setting.

Overall Playability Today: Lost Planet: Extreme Condition offers a nostalgic trip back to the early days of the Xbox 360 era, but its age is unmistakable. While fans of the original may find enjoyment in revisiting this classic, newcomers might struggle to overlook its outdated mechanics and presentation. However, for those seeking a retro gaming experience or a dose of nostalgia, it still provides some solid entertainment.

Thrak

This feels like the real start to the Game Club (sorry Kirby). There was some steep competition this month, but my pick of Lost Planet: Extreme Condition ended up winning. After putting roughly 9 hours into it, I am going to try my best to review this. If you want the TLDR, you can check the Super Pod Saga discord for my Game Log, but I found this game to be kinda disappointing.

Released in early 2007 as an Xbox 360 exclusive with PC and PS3 versions coming within a year after its release, this game represents part of the Capcom strategy in this generation. Along with Dead Rising, Dark Void and even Bionic Commando Remake, Capcom was pushing very hard for the Western market. During this gen, Japanese developers were struggling with developing HD quality games for a more worldwide market. Times were changing and Japan was falling behind. If you want to see some cringe, look up some G4 clips from this time about them trashing devs like Capcom, Square Enix, and others in some rather xenophobic ways. I, however, was completely oblivious to this being only 12 years old and seeing this game at an early 360 demo kiosk it blew my mind.

I got my 360 for the holidays of 2006, an OG model with a copy of Smackdown vs. Raw 2007. This was during my full-time watching of Professional Wrestling, which is a story for a different time, but around this time, there was one of those displays that they used to have at Wal-Mart, where you had to crane your neck about 45 degrees up to look at the CRT they perched up there and it had games like Perfect Dark Zero, Madden 06, Kameo: Elements of Power and Lost Planet: Extreme Condition in it. I’ve always enjoyed the winter aesthetics in games so to see a game take place completely in a blizzard fighting weird ass bugs hooked me as a kid right away. I was never able to purchase this game as a kid, seeing my parents would only buy me a game on special occasions. I used to rent games from my local video store, and they made getting the new console a big deal (I wish I got that neon sign they had for the 360 logos before they shut down). I rented many a game from there and the off chance I thought about Lost Planet again, it was not there.

Cut to many years later and in our discords, people bring this game up and it reminded me of missing out on this one. I found it was on the Microsoft Store as part of the backwards compatibility program for the One and Series consoles and was on sale. I ended up buying it and it started to rot in the ever-expanding backlog. I ended up selecting this one for the Game Club for that exact reason, as well as to clear out my growing 360 backlog, for I was too immersed in the CODs and Rainbow Six Vegas games at that time to really expand my horizons to the great games I missed. Did this one end up becoming a great game I missed? While I am glad, I finally was able to scratch this one off the backlog, it ended up being a game that holds a lot of potential for future releases but left me cold.

The story for this game is rather wild but let me try my best to summarize it. Due to humans ruining Earth with their climate change and war, people start to search for new planets to colonize and live on. One of which, called E.D.N. III, becomes a prime candidate for Neo-Venus Construction or NEVEC, which is some giant shitty corporation. This planet, however, is in the middle of an Ice Age and is already inhabited by creatures called Akrids. Naturally, NEVEC launches a war to wipe out the species for humans and after fighting for over 150 years, they are defeated and many of the personnel still there have been abandoned. You play as a soldier named Wayne Holden, who is still determined to colonize the planet but at the same time, trying to destroy NEVEC with your small band of friends. There is more that happens but at the risk of spoilers, I won’t go too far into detail. I was surprised at how the story is decently presented and kept me engaged to the very end.

How does this game play? So, we have a linear action game where the goal is to get to the end of the level and sometimes you fight a boss, sometimes not. The game mixes up typical third person shooting with vehicle segments like a giant robot mech, a giant robot bike and other giant robots. The gameplay is very serviceable for its time, but nowhere near the greatness of say a Resident Evil 4 done by Capcom just a few years prior. You fight a combination of aliens on the planet and other humans employed by NEVEC. The game I thought was kind of easy, but the difficulty comes from constantly throwing shit at you and filling the screen with explosions, which would suck, but the game’s health system more than makes up for it. So, being on a cold planet, you must worry about your heat meter, so you constantly get these units to keep yourself warm against the bitter elements. It is a neat idea, but it never comes together, especially when you are doing this in areas later in the game that are volcanic, which did not make any sense to me.

The graphics are rather dated but I think they work well for the time. The emphasis on the cold and snow effects I rather liked, but the other areas that were say warmer or inside I found rather bland and kinda boring. The enemy designs reminded me of a lot of the bugs from Starship Troopers, which felt like an inspiration for this entire game to be honest. The game looks very much like a game from 2006 but I think it works fine. I’m pretty sure this is in the same engine as Dead Rising 1, because the movement and control reminds me of that game.

Speaking of control, this games controls are not the smoothest. The movement of your character is rather slow, with no sprint option to speak of. The aiming cursor sits in this kind of awkward little box before you can turn to the left or right which the game tries to make up for by using the bumpers to do a quick 90-degree turn, but I found that normally overshoots how far I need to turn. The jump reminds me of Halo, very moon-like, and there is also a grappling hook that is used to ascend and it’s perfectly fine. That is the on the ground shooting, how do the vehicle segments control? Far worse. They were the part of the game I dreaded the most because they were so sluggish and had too much weight to them as you controlled them that attempting to do any maneuvers during bosses you have to calculate well in advance, which sucks for a newcomer to this game.

The bosses were perfectly average, and they all took me maybe two tries to beat. The final boss was basically a Zone of the Enders fight, which is funny. Overall, this is a game that I think had a lot of potential to be something special and it was not a horrible experience, but a rough level design, frustrating style of difficulty and sloppy controls prevent this from being a true gem of the 360 era. I am glad I finally got to cross this off my eternal backlog and you can play this on Xbox One and Series consoles through backwards compatibility, as well as the original copies are rather cheap to find. It is easy to access and prepared to be whelmed by it.

My final rating was 6.5 out of 10. See you guys’ next time for the Game Club!

Tony

The main reason why I was excited to partake in the SuperPod Game Club was to have an excuse to revisit games I’ve played in the past and see if my opinion on them has changed over time. So when Lost Planet ended up winning the community poll I wasn’t the least bit upset, since it gave me a chance to finally go back and roll credits on a game I struggled to complete back in the day. Just keep in mind that this is very much a quick and dirty review, so I apologize in advance to any fans of the game reading this in the likely case that I completely failed to mention a few things.

Lost Planet takes place on E.D.N III, a planet completely covered in snow and ice. The story follows Wayne, a young man who seeks to avenge his father’s death by destroying the monster that killed him known as Green Eye. He is also at odds with the NVEC, a megacorporation that seeks to colonize the planet in a fight against the alien species that inhabits it. Quite frankly, the story is easily the worst thing about the game, I found it to be hard to follow and after a certain point I just stopped trying to figure out what the hell was going on. There is never any real time spent with any of the characters to understand their motives and relationships with each other. Before I knew it there would be a dramatic moment where a character got injured, or would die and I would just sit there wondering who they even were. There was also a complete tonal shift in the final mission that made it feel like I was suddenly playing a completely different game, which just added to how nonsensical the story had already gotten.

The gameplay revolves around the player traversing through different environments on the planet, either by foot or by using mecha called Vital Suits. While on foot you can carry up two weapons, as well as a set of grenades and you also have a grappling hook to climb ledges, or to climb down steep drops. The VS can usually equip up to two weapons (it can vary depending on the type), one on each arm, with some VS having the ability to briefly go airborne to help better traverse the environments and to dodge enemy attacks. The controls are fine for what they are, the third person combat is pretty much exactly what you’d expect and the VS can sometimes feel a bit clunky depending on the type you are using, but for the most part the controls are adequate if not a bit awkward.

As you progress through each mission you must collect the thermal energy from defeated enemies to fill up your T-ENG, which is vital for Wayne to survive the harsh weather conditions on the planet. The T-ENG also serves as health replenishment, as well as fuel for the various VS you can use to traverse the planet. The energy for T-ENG is plentiful and despite the T-ENG meter acting as a timer that continuously counts down at a rapid pace, it very rarely felt like I needed to worry about keeping it replenished. There’s always enough resources around to keep your T-ENG topped off and it made what could have easily been a frustrating game mechanic into something that felt easily manageable.

At the end of each mission is a boss, usually against a giant monster, but sometimes against another mech wielding enemy you have to fight for story reasons. While it is possible to get through some boss fights on foot, most of them primarily depend on using a VS suit to win and there are usually just enough VS scattered around for you to get through each encounter. Most of the bosses are usually easy enough to figure out how to take down, but there are some that can be a bit of a nightmare to get through due to poor game performance, at least in my experience playing on the Playstation 3.

I think the most notorious example is the fight against the aforementioned Green Eye, the game completely tanks during the fight, most notable during the final phase and can make an already difficult fight into a completely miserable experience. This time around I was able to grit my teeth and finally defeat Green Eye, avenging Wayne’s dead father and regaining my pride, but I definitely had some flashbacks that reminded me why I dropped the game at that point all those years ago. With that being said, it’s probably the most memorable boss encounter in the game, since there is a bit of build up leading up to the faceoff and the battle really forces you to push your VS skills to the limit.

Lost Planet came out during an interesting period of the seventh generation where developers were starting to get a handle of the still fresh hardware and attempting to experiment with new ideas, albeit with mixed results. Which I think describes Lost Planet perfectly, it is a game with some very neat ideas and gameplay mechanics, but it mostly misses the mark and fails to reach its full potential. Even though I would personally never want to play the game again, I’d still say that Lost Planet is worth checking out for those who want to see just where games were at that point in time.