Lost Planet: Extreme Condition (Collector's Edition) (Xbox 360, 2007)

When I first heard of Lost Planet I was excited. When I played the demo, I was amazed. When I finally played the retail version...well, not so much. It's not to say Lost Planet: Extreme Condition is a bad game, because it's not. There's a lot to like about it. Lot's of guns, Mech's (or as the game calls them, Vital Suits), creative monsters and a sweet grappling hook. I was very pleased with all the variety.

The game takes place on an ice cold planet run a muck with monsters called Akrid. Think Hoth and Starship Trooper bugs with glowing butts. These Akrid have a type of thermal energy within them that you and everyone else must use to keep warm and power all the equipment. Through out the game you have to collect this thermal energy to fill a meter that is constantly counting down and if it hits zero you die. And the only way to harvest said energy is, yep you guessed it, kill them. Killing off your only source of energy...humm, not very efficient if you look at it from an economical stand point.

One thing that completely bothered me was the thermal energy usage in certain environments. It seemed that no matter where you are, the loss of this energy remains at a constant. For some reason it drops even faster when you climb into a VS. Seriously, if you're inside one of these things, wouldn't you expect it to be warmer inside? Cripes! Even my 1995 Saturn has a heater in it! There was even one level and I kid you not, where you're inside of a volcano. Packed with lakes and rivers of hot lava and yet you can still "freeze" to death because you're meter is still dropping. Sure I can see if you're out in the tundra on foot but come on! A Volcano?!

What about the multiplayer? It's a bit janky, even incomplete in some areas. For starters you can't just leave a match once you've joined. When in a room and things aren't going well, too few people, don't like the map, a friend invites you or what ever it may be. You have to either exit to the 360 dashboard or completely shut the system down because the Start button does not work. It's a serious flaw by any standard. Another thing which really chaps my ass is that the multiplayer maps just weren't designed very well for this type of game play. In some cases you have a map that's way too small forcing everyone on top of each other (even with huge VS's bumping into things), while others are just too big leaving people to roam around searching for targets.

Reportedly Capcom is to release some updates to fix some of the technical issues, which is fine, but will they help in the big picture? The extras that come with the Limited Edition aren't all that great either. Unless you're a big fan of pretty concept pic's and/or want the extra map that comes with it, than you don't need to pay the extra $10 for it. Maybe my memory is failing me but not once do I recall it ever snowing in this game, very strange...