Lost Planet: Extreme Condition
January
is typically one of the harshest months to struggle through. The days
are short and the cold weather makes you want to stay inside and fire
up a new videogame…except that Januarys are usually devoid of quality
game releases after the big holiday rush. This January is anything but
typical. Even with the balmy weather, you may yet find a reason stay
indoors with visions of snow covered landscapes dancing through your
head thanks to Capcom's latest action game, Lost Planet: Extreme
Condition.
The extreme conditions mentioned in the title are no
joke. Lost Planet takes place on a planet that is so cold, freezing to
death would happen quite rapidly if it weren't for a strange orange
ooze that the local residents known as the Akrid produce and store.
This thermal energy can be harvested and used to keep the main
character from succumbing to the elements. Unfortunately, the Akrid are
a collective of giant bug-like aliens who haven't bought into the human
ideas of colonizing and terra forming the planet. Rather than looking
for a more suitable planet to colonize, humanity took the next logical
step; build giant mechs called vital suits and make bigger guns to
fight back.
Lost Planet's campaign mode places you in the role of
Wayne, a man whose last memory is of his father being killed by a large
and dangerous Akrid named Green Eye before being knocked into a coma.
This memory lays down the groundwork for his motivation to rid the
planet of the nasty critters one hive at a time which is how you spend
the early portions of the game. Other characters and human enemies are
quickly introduced to round out the action and confuse the story, but
it is the gameplay that makes this title fulfilling, so let's ignore
the story issues for a while.
The action in Lost Planet takes
place either on foot or from within one of the aforementioned vital
suits. The gameplay gimmick that helps to keep Lost Planet fresh is the
thermal energy bar. In this frozen planet, you're required to kill or
be killed…or freeze to death. Each enemy you take down or piece of
machinery you destroy leaves behind a small puddle of thermal energy
that helps to restore your constantly draining supply. Rather than
employing a standard life bar, Lost Planet opted to tie your life
completely to the thermal energy. If you take a hit from an enemy, your
thermal energy will drain into your life bar. The energy doesn't drain
fast enough to ever become a serious issue in most s***es, but it does
provide a nice nudge to the player to keep them moving along towards
the next big fight. In this way, the thermal energy mechanic is an
excellent addition to an action game - if you don't keep moving and
fighting and spend all of your time doing uneventful exploring, you'll
find yourself in big trouble.
The weapons and vital suits also
do a great job of keeping the action steady and rocking. The guns have
a nice variety to them, but it's the grenades and vital suits that
ensure that you have the firepower needed to take down anything and
everything (which you can thanks to the largely destructible bits of
cover). The vital suits range from simple walkers and transforming
snowmobiles to chainsaw equipped death machines and spider-esque
drilling mechs. And the guns these vital suits come with are no joke.
You can equip up to two interchangeable weapons per machine, or you can
rip them off and tote them around on foot. These huge guns do massive
damage for very satisfactory results. It's a good thing too, because
Lost Planet does a nice job of ramping up the intensity as the game
progresses, from being faced with a few car sized bugs at the beginning
s***es to all out war.
One of the great parts about Lost Planet is
the flexibility of the game. There is a noticeable amount of depth to
the combat, allowing you to tackle the same situation in a variety of
ways with new results each time. Much of this depth isn't readily
apparent and it's only after you play through the game that you gain
the skills and foresight to start exploring your options for how to
progress through a level. Each of the different types of grenade and
guns can be used in their own way with different results each time. For
instance, one of the first enemies you encounter resembles a pillbug
with a glowing tail. You can simply aim for the tail with your machine
gun to target its weak point. Or you can wait for it to start rolling
towards you and then toss a fragment grenade in its path to cause it to
splay out on its back in a vulnerable position. Or you can hit them
head-on with the anchor as they roll towards you to stop them in their
tracks. Or you can anchor onto them while they are walking along and
blast them with a few rounds at point blank range. You see where we're
going here. Towards the end of the game, much of this flexibility is
lost in the all out chaos that consumes you as you're attacked
simultaneously by tens of powerful enemies, but that progression of
difficulty just makes the game more enjoyable as you move through it.
Lost Planet: Extreme Condition - Colonies Edition
Publisher: Capcom
Developer: Capcom
Minimum System Requirements (DirectX 9 Graphics)
OS: Windows XP
Processor: Pentium 4 HT @ 3.5 GHz or Athlon *****alent
Memory: 512 MB
Hard Drive: 8 GB Free
Video Memory: 256 MB (GeForce 6600 or better) with Shader 3.0
Sound Card: DirectX Compatible
DirectX: 9.0c
Keyboard & Mouse
DVD Rom Drive
Recommended System Requirements (DirectX 10 Graphics)
OS: Windows Vista
Processor: Intel Core 2 DUO
Memory: 1 GB (2 GB on Windows Vista)
Hard Drive: 8 GB Free
Video Memory: 256 MB (GeForce 8600)
Sound Card: DirectX Compatible
DirectX: 10
Keyboard & Mouse
DVD Rom Drive
Notes:
NVIDIAA
GeForceA
7300 is not supported.
enjoy
DoWnLoAd