Lost Planet: Extreme Condition

Did expectations for Capcom's latest leave us cold?

	Version Xbox 360	Developer Capcom	Publisher Capcom	Genre Third-person shooter

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By Alex Wollenschlaeger

The industry Japanese developers find themselves in is very different from that of a decade ago. Gone are the days when their home country could be the focus. Any team aiming for success has to give more thought to what the rest of the world is interested in - especially when the platform is the Xbox 360. Lost Planet: Extreme Condition is Capcom's second go at that on the Xbox 360, and it arrives just as its first, Dead Rising, reaches a million sales.

Unlike Dead Rising, though, Xbox 360 owners aren't bereft of choice these days, and that could weigh down what is a competent shooter but not much more.

Executive producer Keiji Inafune, of Mega Man and Resident Evil fame, said Lost Planet spent around a year in pre-production as a concept and a plotline. The second Iraq war was just getting underway and Inafune wanted to present a story that didn't paint its characters in black and white.

That was the plan at least. In reality, Lost Planet doesn't do that effort justice. Rather it tells an ever-more-confusing story of humans returning for a second attempt to recolonize a snowy, giant-bug-infested planet, and along the way you'll discover that the humans are just as malevolent as the bugs. It could and should have been handled better.

My initial experience with the mechanics of Lost Planet was not good. The developers have defaulted the controller configuration to some bizarre accelerated reticule tracking. Perhaps it works for some people but it didn't sit right with me. Thankfully Capcom saw fit to give you a lot of freedom in customising the controls, and once I had set it to fixed, where the reticule is locked in place relative to your movement, I could start to lose myself in the game.

Spend five minutes with Lost Planet and it won't surprise you to hear that two of the movies that inspired the production were John Carpenter's classic horror The Thing and the touch-in-cheek adaptation of Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers. Think snow and giant bugs and you're halfway there. The other half is populated by mechs, which play a much bigger part in the game that I thought they would.

You'll spend a large portion of Lost Planet in a healthy array of mechs - or Vital Suits, as they're called here. These give you a health boost and gift you serious firepower, but they're more fragile than they initially appear. There are also quite a few of them, and each one you encounter behaves slightly differently, so it's worthwhile to get to know them.

Unfortunately, they don't control particularly well and they generally suffer from the same issues that hamper Wayne, your character. Long animations that look good the first few times you encounter them quickly become annoying, and it has the result of making the game feel less responsive than it is.

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Video Coverage (See Latest Videos & Video FAQ Here)
PLEASE DO NOT DIRECT LINK TO ANY MEDIA FILE ON KIKIZO
Description	Dur.	Size	Details
VIDEO INTERVIEW
Lost Planet Video Interview Keiji Inafune in-depth interview (High quality version - Download WMV)	15:46	296MB	ED, 16:9 856x480/30p 4Mbps
Lost Planet Video Interview As above - normal quality version (Stream)	15:46	52MB	SD, 16:9 640x360/30p 1Mbps
Previous Videos
Lost Planet Latest extended trailer (HD quality)	3:27	120MB	DF, HD, 16:9 1280x720p30 5.0Mbps
Lost Planet Latest extended trailer (SD quality)	3:27	28MB	DF, SD, 16:9 640x360p30 1.7Mbps
Lost Planet Direct feed trailer   (X360 - Capcom)	01:14	40MB	DF, HD, 16:9 1280x720p30 7.0Mbps
Lost Planet Direct feed gameplay   (X360 - Capcom)	06:18	136MB	DF, SD, 16:9 640x360p30 3.2Mbps
Lost Planet Direct feed trailer (regular)   (X360 - Capcom)	01:14	13MB	DF, SD, 16:9 640x360p30 2.3Mbps
Lost Planet Official trailer (hi quality)	3.02m	26MB	HD, 30, DF 700x400 1.3Mbps