Lost Planet: Extreme Condition
Lost Planet seemed to have a lot of potential when I first started. To begin, I got it in a five dollar deal on Steam, so it wasn't going to be a big waste of money no matter how the game was. The entire game taking place on a freezing, snow-covered planet was a unique and non-terrible idea. The grappling hook is a neat little device for getting around. The large insect-like Akrid make for a somewhat interesting foe. The "Vital Suit" mechs are a cool way to mix up the standard run and gun style of play. And every level ending with a giant boss fight is classic video gaming. Unfortunately, a lot of problems cause the game to run out of steam long before its story ends.
The basic idea with the health system is different from most other shooters. You have a supply of thermal energy to keep you warm, and you can pick up more from the corpses of enemies and destroyed machinery. This energy can boost your health if you're injured, acting as both a sort of armor and a regeneration system. However, this energy also ticks down over time as it's expended just protecting you from the harsh elements, and once it runs out you slowly begin to die. It's not a terrible system, but it often seemed like I spent more time looking for sources of energy than focusing on fighting the guys shooting at me. Also, there are no situations where the surrounding area is warm enough not to constantly drain you even though some look like they really probably should, and if you ever have a case where it actually makes sense to destroy the expensive equipment you're using to take the energy from it, that's not exactly the best design.
The shooting feels insubstantial, with the standard weapons and even most of the better ones lacking much of a punch. I often laugh when a certain game review site constantly refers to the "crunch" and "friction" of an experience when talking about a good game, but there is truth behind it; the best games usually have something that makes the core mechanic of play viscerally satisfying, whether it be through sound design or whatever, and Lost Planet seems to lack that. The standard weapon feels like a pop gun, and along with the lackluster aiming in this shoddy PC port (they didn't even bother to change the button icons from the 360 version in some cases), it makes just fighting most enemies a bit of a chore rather than a thrill. It's still kind of fun to blast a group of ravenous monsters, but the human enemies are much less enjoyable to fight, and unfortunately the focus is on them more and more as the game goes on. You can either stand just out of their site range and pick them off with ease or just run straight at them firing, it'll rarely feel exciting or challenging.
The boss fights are disappointing too. I said giant enemies are classic gaming stuff, but the other side of that is the boring classic gaming trope of destroying all of them by spotting the obvious glowing weak points and targeting them until something happens to expose a different weak point, and hammering it until they die. Why exactly does shooting the yellow pods on the side of this giant monster expose the secretly more important ones inside his head? I don't know, I'm just supposed to do it. These fights are only slightly better than the VS on VS fights, which basically consist of hammering them with missiles a little faster than they hammer you with missiles. It's all supported by a typical anime plot that has a couple briefly interesting plot twists but mostly relies on boring characters with crappy voice actors going around in circles before the confusing ending that thinks it's smarter than it is. The game has an interesting look to it and is actually pretty fun for a while, it's just that the cracks in the armor started showing before it ended and it kept going after it should have.
