Lost Planet: Extreme Condition for Xbox 360 Reviews by Gamers

Lost Planet is a fairly straightforward third-person shooter on an icy planet populated by ravenous bug-like aliens known as the Akrid, and by human snow pirates and their VS machines. (This game's equivalent of a mech.)

While the game tries to push its story with lengthy cutscenes, it proves to be a bit convoluted and more confusing than interesting. The real entertainment comes in the shooting itself.

Throughout the course of the game you fight against both akrid and humans, some of which are piloting VS machines, which you too will often use. Generally speaking, akrid make a far more fun opponent than the humans. These hideous creatures range from roughly human size, to an easy 50 feet long. Most of the larger akrid have specific weak points that must be exploited to weaken and finish them off. The gruesome visual effects of blowing off a limb to cripple the giant critters are a lot of fun while the human battles are pretty lackluster.

The game has an over-the-top arcade quality to the controls which works well against akrid, but is ultimately unfulfilling against human enemies. Due to the wide open environments and very nature of the game, you're generally fighting humans from such a distance that they appear as little more than generic black specks.

To cap off, I will quickly list my issues with the game that keep me from rating it any higher.

- Your movement is a little slow.

- You can't aim straight up.

- The fire and smoke effects, while visually stunning, often cover up the whole screen completely blinding you, but not the opponent.

- Too many invisible walls and barriers.

- You are plagued with a slow falling and getting up animation which with bad luck can allow enemies to juggle you infinitely with attacks until you die.

- Your character has to stop moving to switch weapons.

- The controls are often unresponsive. Particularly the rocket launcher.

- Game is short. About 10 hours.