Lost Planet: Extreme Condition (2006)

This title is a third-person shooter set on the frozen planet E.D.N. III, where humanity battles both the harsh climate and giant insect-like creatures known as the Akrid. The game’s icy setting gives it a distinctive atmosphere, with blizzards, crumbling bases, and vast snowy plains rendered impressively for its time. The use of thermal energy as both a survival mechanic and gameplay resource adds tension, forcing you to stay aggressive in order to stay alive. Combat feels dynamic, especially when piloting the massive “Vital Suits,” which let you wield heavy weapons and battle towering bosses.

The enemy designs and scale of encounters often feel cinematic, giving a sense of constant danger and spectacle. However, despite the strong presentation, the game suffers from repetitive mission structures and uneven pacing, with levels that can feel linear and overly similar. The story, centered on revenge and corporate conspiracies, serves more as a backdrop than a driving force. Despite its flaws, this game remains a memorable action experience thanks to its unique setting and ambitious visuals, even if its gameplay loop doesn’t quite live up to its striking premise.

It was one of the last games that I played on my very first computer, and it ran very poorly, but I struggled through the low-FPS count from start to finish because I was thrilled with the gameplay, especially when it comes to the mecha feature. This is one of the most unique Capcom's titles and I wished this franchise had more care and love by it's developers. Unfortunately they let this great idea die out after three entries, in which the 3rd one felt more like a Dead Space clone than an actual Lost Planet entry. If you are interested on this franchise I recommend sticking to the first entry, that while rough around the edges, it still delivers a better experience than it's two sequels.

After many years, I decided to finally finish Lost Planet: Extreme Condition from my Steam library.

In this game, you play as Wayne, a soldier boy that fights against the Akrids to restore their colonization on the new EDN III planet. Meanwhile, a secret project is being developed, in which all life on the planet is erased, after which a small selection of settlers can rebuild a new green planet. You discover this plan and need to stop the project.

In its core, Lost Planet: Extreme Condition consists of 11 levels, each with the same principle. Get to the end, fight a boss and proceed to the next level. The story and cut scenes are well done and the voice acting is great. The action in this game is intense and stuff blows up all the time while you blast away Snow Pirates, NEVEC Soldiers and Akrid. This could be some movie from Michael Bay. The Boss battles are brutal and the amount of carnage that takes place on the screen is insane. Sh!t flies towards you from every angle, you get stomped, thrown into the air, while you yourself, empty round after round.

The shooting mechanics and controls work well and the satisfying flash of orange when you headshot an enemy from afar feels very rewarding. The only issue here is the fact that you only need one weapon for this game, the Plasma Rifle. This thing has infinite ammo, shoots 20 lightyears far and always hits. This thing makes any other weapon obsolete.

The graphics in this game are still amazing. Back then this was Crysis material, but even now, it still looks stunning. The only problem with the visuals is the explosions, snow, debris and smoke, that constantly block your vision while in combat. Then you get insane boss animations where the boss throws everything it got on you and the game can’t handle it. He slams you, while the camera gets choked on the edge of the screen, debris is coming up, explosions in the background, and BAM, that’s 11 FPS for you, my friend. Afterwards, it goes back to normal. The sound effects, music and voice overs are great and deserve only praise.

So far everything was nice and dandy, until I reached around mission 4.

The special mechanic in this game is the use of T-Energy. This resource can be obtained from outposts and the bodies of killed Akrids and Soldiers. You need it to stay alive, and it is also replenishing your health when it gets low, meaning you can never really die when you have enough of it, except pitfalls and huge Akrid that can’t be killed. This is my first flaw with this game.

Then you got the stun lock. You get blasted by a rocket and get lunged into the air. Then you need to watch a four-hour long animation of our hero getting back on his feet and staying strong. The second he stands up again, another f*cking rocket enters your rectum and you fly, once again, to the moon. There were times that I could not move or do anything at all because of this. It made me absolutely furious.

Speaking of getting back on your feet. A special note must be made for the hit recovery time. My God, it is so, unforgivably slow, it takes years and years before you can move again and before that, you are bashing your keyboard like the Angry German Kid.

This stun lock, slow movement, and cheap deaths (getting into a VS and a boulder immediately crushed your sorry ass to death), continued all the way through the end. I was really done with this game and was glad that I reached the final level/boss. But, just as a final slap in the face, the game changed 100% and suddenly, I was playing Transformers, the revenge of f*ckyoutron. The VS suits that you find in the level suddenly got full Gundam and now you are a Mech, fighting another Mech in space with totally different controls. This boss is the one of the cheapest, unfair, lamest and most atrocious boss fights I have ever experienced. The only reason I beat him was by mashing buttons, like the rest of the internet told me to do.

In conclusion, the story was okay, the graphics are amazing, the cut scenes are well done, the gunplay is fair, but the mechanics, slow movement, stun locks, camera/graphical carnage with bosses and the final boss, ruined the experience for me.

Personally, I would not recommend this game.

Played for three hours, great presentation, nice cut scenes, interesting setting, not bad atmosphere and aesthetics. But, unfortunately, the gameplay is just raw and uninteresting.

The biggest problem is the poor implementation of the harpoon, it can only be used on a very limited number of objects, reloading the mech weapon instantly stops the character , the character doesn't have a running option, only walking, and that just kills me, because the game is already very limited in terms of movement. The Lost Planet strongly reminds me of something similar to Death Stranding, human enemies are enemies and their lore, the design of control points, robotic suits of various types and even the plot and gameplay.

I wonder how cool it would be if the plot and world structure of Lost Planet were implemented based on the gameplay of Just Cause.

Unfortunately my steam save files got corrupted so I'm going to shelve this game, maybe one day I'll get back to it.