Before diving into what’s new with the Colonies Edition, lets take a good look at what the original Lost Planet offers, especially on the campaign side of things.
Gameplay
As Wayne, players will spend roughly equal time on foot as in a VS, which is basically a two legged mech (although some models are different from this). Over the course of eleven missions, you will lead Wayne against the alien Akrid, Snow Pirates, and the forces of NEVEC as you attempt to stop the Frontier Project.
Now not a whole lot of that will make sense to anyone who is unfamiliar with the story. Without revealing too much, the story in Lost Planet is basically this: sometime in the future, Earth’s inhabitants settle on a remote planet that is literally covered in snow and ice. The Akrid, an alien race of large, bug-like creatures who inhabit this planet, are a constant threat, as well as the extreme frigid conditions. The Akrid are the key to Thermal Energy, this orange substance that is vital for staying alive. Obviously I am leaving out a lot of the details to the story, but I’m not here to spoil stories for folks, and you can get the drift. Suffice it to say that you play a young talented soldier, who with the help of his friends Luka, Rick, Yuri, and Joe, must not only fight the Akrid, but the evil NEVEC organization, who are hell bent on wiping out all life on the planet while terraforming it to suit human life. Nicely put together cutscenes will unfold the story for you during and in between missions, and while the story at first sounds pretty deep and intricate, I was pretty well confused by the fourth or fifth mission. I didn’t think the story was told clearly and coherently enough to not make it confusing, and there was too much vagueness to really understand much of it.
The story plays out over eleven missions. Each mission does follow a basic formula and they are distinct from one another, which I thought was a small drawback. What I mean by that is at the start of every mission you have 1000 T-ENG and 300 rounds for your machine gun. The T-ENG is your amount of Thermal Energy. This value constantly lowers as you wade through the snow, and you have to keep destroying objects and enemies to release their Thermal Energy, which you can then pick up by walking over the orange pool of goo the leave behind. If your T-ENG runs out, your life meter starts dropping, and Wayne will soon die. So anyway, what you do in one mission does not affect things in the next mission, in terms of health and load out. Each mission is also ended with a boss fight. You can almost always tell when you’re about to go into a boss fight; normally there is a room full of weapons and mechs, and once you are in the room there is no way out. Each boss has a health meter at the bottom of the screen. Sometimes you will be fighting fantastically large Akrid creatures that look like massive hornets or spiders. These all have a slightly unique strategy to them, just like the various Akrid enemies you fight during a mission. The other boss fights are with human foes piloting a VS. As soon as the boss is defeated, the game displays a mission summary screen including total kills and time and so forth. You will also see how well you did on finding and shooting these little icons with letters on them. Each mission has a word associated with it which you do not know what it is going in. If you look hard enough during play, you can find icons, which look like power ups, of letters that spell out the word. You essentially collect the icons during the mission to spell the word; it’s a nice touch, kind of like the Dog Tags in Gears of War.
Mission time can range between twenty and close to seventy minutes in my experience. During this time you must lead Wayne through massive outdoor areas and also indoor environments which are often also very large. Lost Planet employs a way point system to help you navigate from A to B; these are small towers that you approach and rapidly tap B; doing this will not only create a short beam of light which points in the general direction you are supposed to go, but it will also give you a nice boost of T-ENG, around 500 generally. On foot, Wayne can carry two weapons with him, for the most part. Some weapons that you find, which are marked with a blue box instead of the typical yellow box, are VS-attachable, meaning that you can attach these to your VS. These weapons are not able to be stowed on foot; if you switch from these weapons to a normal weapon, like your machine gun, you will drop the larger weapon. Other than that, you are free two carry two weapons and one type of grenade. The weapons include a machine gun, shotgun, rocket launcher, energy gun, plasma rifle, laser rifle, homing laser, a gatling gun-there are a handful of others, but you get the idea. Some of these weapons have infinite ammo, which are ideal for battling Akrid (which do not drop any ammo).
When not on foot, you are likely piloting a VS. These mech like vehicles are a lot of fun to use. Each VS looks somewhat different and all support two weapons, which you can remove and attach at your will. Being able to customize your VS is a cool part of the game. My favorite combination was EM Pulse Cannon and gatling gun; with the EM Pulse Cannon I could temporarily disable other VS and then pummel them with my gatling gun; the EM Pulse Cannon works well on humans and Akrid, too. Each VS also has a meter which indicates its structural integrity; when his runs out, you have to quickly tap B to eject before it explodes. Controlling the different VS that you find is not hard-in fact, the first time you find a VS of a particular type, an on-screen prompt shows you the control. There are about five or six different VS in the game, and they all control fairly similarly, so it’s not hard to get used to.
Control in Lost Planet is essential to learn. If you have played third person games before, then I wouldn’t expect you to have much trouble, but there are a couple of cool changes in Lost Planet that you must get accustomed to if you are to succeed. For one, when you are on foot, you have an anchor, which is basically a shootable grappling hook. This allows you to get to surfaces you can otherwise not get too, and it’s vital for navigating the cliffs and other tall structures that you encounter. It’s also important in finding those letter icons I mentioned earlier. You will know when you can use your anchor whenever the crosshair turns green on whatever surface you are currently facing. Secondly, the right and left Bumpers on the controller rotate your character’s torso and the camera ninety degrees in whatever direction you press. So it’s possible, and helpful, to be running one way and shooting another. You might not use this during the first few missions because you can turn with the thumbsticks, but later in the game I found it necessary to use them to quickly turn to face quick moving enemies. Now as far as being in a VS, things are similar with some minor differences. The Y button will change the VS in between forms if it’s a transformable VS, otherwise it gives the mech a thrust of acceleration for a brief amount of time in a direction. The A button allows you to jumpe and hover, or double jump. Being able to quickly strafe and rotate your VS, as well as jump and hover, is important, but thankfully not hard to learn. These controls, which you normally don’t see in a game, were a nice plus. I was also pleased to see that they were well implemented, adding to the experience.
There are a couple of other aspects about the game that I thought worth mentioning. One thing I want to mention is how ‘busy’ the screen can be at times and how this can be a real pain in the neck. Many times during the game, whether fighting NEVEC with rocket launchers, large Akrids, or VS, you get a bunch of smoke, fire, and craziness going on at once and your screen is just literally filled with it. You can’t see your character or what direction he is facing (although your crosshair does still change color to red when pointing over an enemy). I’m somewhat torn on this aspect of the game; on one hand, it’s frustrating, but on the other, it is ‘realistic,’ so take that as you see fit. Another nuisance with the game is also frustrating, but arguably more realistic: larger blasts from explosions and lasers, etc., will send Wayne flying and falling (when on foot). It takes a few seconds to get back up, during which time the enemy is often firing again, and the cycle can repeat if you aren’t careful. Granted, these are the same tactics many of us use on the AI when possible, so it isn’t really fair to complain, I suppose.
Lost Planet was a lot of fun to play through. I can honestly say that it’s one of those games that you can play for hours at a time and totally lose track of time doing it. The missions are engaging and long enough to keep you hooked to the screen. Lost Planet also has a very good sense of difficulty about it; it’s challenging, but it isn’t very hard. As long as you play with some strategy to ensure that your T-ENG doesn’t drop below 1000 (that was always my basic measuring stick), and keep switching out weapons in a timely manner, you should be set for a great time, albeit unfortunately short.
What’s New?
So with all that time past, what has Capcom added to this release to make it so special? Quite a bit, but it may or may not add up to much depending on what you’re looking for. There are a couple of significant changes that affect both modes of play, and those are the ability to switch to a first person view and the ability to make use of new weapons for on foot and VS battles.
As far as the single player/campaign, there are three new modes to check out. The first of these is the Score Attack mode. This mode simply attaches a points value to each enemy in the game and destructible, and as you defeat these with various tactics and consecutively, you earn more and more points that get tallied at the end of the game. This isn’t something I would get too fired up about if you’ve already completed the game once, but for the hardcore, this could be fun.
Secondly, there is a Trial Battle Mode, in which you are pitted against all of the bosses in the game, one at a time, in a five round deathmatch. This too isn’t terribly intriguing, but it bought me another hour or so of enjoyment from the campaign. Lastly, there is an arcade like mode you might call it, called Off Limit mode. In this mode, your weapons have unlimited ammo, are more powerful, and you move faster. While good for busting through the game even quicker, this is another questionable addition in terms of real value.
Lost Planet’s campaign can stand on its own, but the multiplayer is what has really carried this title to a state re-release as a Platinum title. That in mind, Capcom has cooked up no less than six new online modes, in addition to enabling cross platforms support for Windows Live users on Windows. Furthermore, five new character models and four new maps are included.
The new multiplayer modes include the ability to play as an Akrid in the Akrid Hunter mode, whereby you play one of those pesky bugs and snow pirates are trying to stomp you out. Playing as an Akrid is a pretty cool idea. VS Annihilator is another new mode where each team simply tries to destroy the others’ VS while defending its own VS. I haven’t spent much time in this mode, but what I have played of it hasn’t been terribly exciting. Counter Grab is kind of like Domination in Unreal Tournament, in which the team that has activated the data posts for the most amount of time wins. Point Snatcher is another simplistic mode in which you destroy your opponents and gather as much T-ENG as you can. Akrid Egg Battle is like CTF, except with Akrid eggs; it’s a decent enough twist, but still not very original. Egg Bandit is similar to Akrid Egg Battle, with the goal being to capture and hold opponent eggs for as long as possible.
On paper nine total new modes sounds great, but I have some concern as to the value of these modes as far as how it will effect how much extra value it brings to the table. Keep in mind too that Colonies and the original Lost Planet are not compatible, which is a surprising aspect that I didn’t know about it until reading around online. It’s certainly not something I would expect Capcom to advertise, but it’s good to know.
Presentation
Visually, Lost Planet is an excellent looking game, and at the time of its original release was easily one of the best titles the Xbox 360 had to offer. Even by today’s game standards, Lost Planet ranks up there. The beauty of Lost Planet is seen both outside and indoors. Textures and animations are smooth, colorful, and crisp. The framerate, despite the heavy effects, never seems to noticeable drop. I actually did have one point in the ninth mission where there was an unusual lot of action going on that caused the framerate to slow to a crawl, but this was an isolated event. I liked the shadows in the game a lot too; flying Akrid cast shadows on the snow and the walls if the lighting is right. The sheer variety in the Akrid appearance was really pretty spectacular, and no animation was anything short of impressive when it came to character movement in the game (be it Akrid, VS, or human). The cutscenes, which tend to run between one and five minutes long, look awesome, too. I thought them to be very polished and well rendered, definitely not something you want to skip over.
Voice acting in the cutscenes was also very good. The script was thin and overly dramatic at times, but the voices were nice. Other effects, like gun fire, explosions, the sound of screeching Akrid-these ranged between good and great, no major complaints to speak of. The soundtrack to Lost Planet is also pretty good; quiet, almost absent at times, and very noticeable at others, it fit well with the game. I don’t even remember noticing it a lot of times, which means it wasn’t effective enough or it was just right, depending on how you look at it.
Value
Lost Planet Extreme Condition features both a single player campaign and Xbox Live play. The single player story is eleven missions, and according to the game, took me just about 8 hours to complete. You could go through it on another difficulty setting or try to find all of the letter icons in the missions, but if you’re like me, you don’t really have the time to do this. That and nothing changes the second time through, so there is little reason to back through it. Like any game, all of the great scripted events and surprises aren’t as awesome the second time through. That said, the new additions included in this Colonies Edition could add significantly to your experience, but keep in mind most of the additions are for the more popular and well received part of the game, the multiplayer. Furthermore, the incompatibility with the original Lost Planet multiplayer community is irksome and curious, and when you get right down to it, at least a couple of the new modes seem awfully similar to each other.
Overall
Lost Planet Extreme Condition was a fine release for the 360 in early 2007, and eighteen months later with more content and a lowered price, it’s still something all 360 gamers should consider if they haven’t already. Those of us who played it back then may not see enough new content here to warrant another purchase, but hardcore fans and newcomers should give it a close look.