It happens that in the middle of a hot summer you want winter coolness, so much so that your cheeks freeze and your eyes become glassy. You can stick your head in the freezer or go to the meat and fish departments, where there is such an oak that two minutes will be enough for your eyes.
Or you can plunge into the winter atmosphere through a game, movie or animation. The first thing that comes to mind is to re-watch “The Cliffhanger” or “The Thing” by Carpenter, and replay Lost Planet and Cryostasis: Sleep of the Mind. I loved the first one for its dynamics, crowds of opponents and giant bosses, and the second one for its viscousness and gloomy atmosphere on a frozen icebreaker.
I left the stringiness for later and took up Lost Planet.
The first part of the game was released as one of the opening exclusives for Xbox 360 in 2006. By those standards, it had everything to increase console sales around the world: an unusual setting, giant monsters, pleasant and very smooth animation, mechanical armor and a Korean movie star in the title role – Chow Yun Fat Byung-Hun Lee (I won’t write in Russian). The authors proudly declare the latter in the main menu of the game. I saw a real next-gen in the game, which no one had shown before. I learned about Crytek’s brainchild, Crysis, only some time later.
Our protagonist Wayne in a hat and fur jacket and a fashionable device on his hand.
I played it in 2007 after it was released on PC immediately with support for DirectX 10. The game is etched in my memory, leaving only pleasant memories.
Plot and plot
During research, humanity has discovered planet E.D.N. III, suitable for habitation. But there’s one catch – it’s very cold there, therefore, it is necessary to carry out preparatory work to terraform the planet into a habitable one. A little later, let’s assume that approximately halfway through the preparation, terrible and incomprehensible things begin to crawl out of the bowels of the planet monsters – locusts, life in which supports liquid orange substance. To fight the creatures, special squads and armored suits are created – in fact, this mechs with guns, which are called Vital Suits (VS). Some of them can transform into snowmobiles, fly a little or jump high.
One of these detachments, which included main character – Wayne and his father, organize an attack on a huge worm, which smashes them to smithereens. Wayne is found in the snow by a small group of people calling themselves snow pirates (Snow Pirates), led by a certain Yuri. To maintain warmth and life in general, Wayne has a device on his arm – harmonizer (Harmonizer), which Yuri asks us to keep silent about. The main character himself does not remember what happened, but he remembers that he knows how to shoot and use equipment.
We, probably to save lives or out of the goodness of our hearts, begin to carry out instructions for the snow pirates, make our way through the snow and crowds of locusts, activate special beacons with heat sources and in the end fight the bosses. This is the whole gameplay. The differences lie only in what weapon or VS we will use to do this.
This frozen locust goes well with modern box architecture and ancient Roman triumphal arch.
Myself the plot is pretty simple, no frills. There are rare twists of events and villains that appear at the right time in the right place. The story of betrayal and eternal confrontation, which you learn about only from the cut-scene and when the time comes, is not surprising. At the same time, you don’t have time to get into the main characters, love them or get used to them, and hate the villains. They are very cartoonish and flat here, and their speeches have no meaning.
At some point we find out that we lay in the snow for 30 years and survived only due to a modified device on our arm. At the same time, we return to the same worm that kicked our ass at the very beginning of the game and destroy it. For 30 years the worm lived in one place, in some building, awaiting retribution in the person of the main character. Maybe this is his cave, and he himself is such a homebody and sociopath, that’s why he never left his home.
Gameplay
Lost Planet is a third-person https://yukon-gold.co.uk/mobile-app/ shooter that works on the principle "shoot and run".
Initially, we have at our disposal a standard machine gun and grenades, to which after 5-7 minutes a shotgun and a rocket launcher are added. A little later you can pick up a plasma weapon and a sniper rifle, which can easily shoot everyone. You can carry two types of weapons and grenades, the number of which is limited to 20. The only thing I didn’t like was the reset of all weapons at the beginning of each level. Regardless of whether this is the beginning of the game or the end – keep a machine gun and a dozen grenades, and then you’ll figure it out yourself. This is weapon amnesia.
Small locusts, which look like onions on crab legs and flying fish skeletons, do not cause problems and are mowed down in batches from any weapon, and nests are cleared in the same way, or with the help of grenades. Then local analogues of Sonic the Hedgehog and crabs straight from Dead Space begin to burst out of the ground (By the way, in 2006 it didn’t exist yet). About artificial intelligence there is no need to say, since the levels are linear, there are many enemies, they are large, clumsy and stupid. Spinning monsters can get stuck in one place, small fish just walk or fly next to the main character and do nothing, and crabs quickly give up after shooting off their limbs. There are also opponents people, who are also no different in intelligence. They are simply placed at their points, and when a hero appears in the field of view, they sometimes run from one cover to another. But they do it so ridiculously that the motif from the “village of fools” gets stuck in your head until the last dummy. The level usually ends boss – a giant locust or a man in an armored suit. The former have weak points that can be seen with the naked eye, while the latter often just need to be shot non-stop.
Communication with small things looks like this at first. Then you just stop paying attention to them.
Despite the stupidity of the AI, It’s fun to shoot enemies. The weapon looks and sounds good, and the monsters spray orange liquid in all directions. Wayne easily climbs onto a hill with the help of a special cable on which you can hang and shoot, and Akrids walk on any surface and try to interfere with the passage. At some point, it begins to tire, like any process that you do for a long time without stopping.
The bridge and the rickety train car hint at the existence of infrastructure, and also at the fact that it was taken straight from the 20th century.
In addition to simple and long running you can wear one of the armored suits and make your way with the help of two stationary guns – machine guns, a rocket launcher, a shotgun and various laser weapons in the future. The guns themselves are removable, Wayne knows how to shoot them like that, but it’s better to arm the mechs than to run around yourself. The mech is protected from falling when hit by missiles, and Wayne falls, rises for a long time, then falls again, and so on. Sometimes there are situations when you simply cannot get to your feet because rockets are flying at you, you get up, and a second one is already flying. And at these moments the game begins to infuriate. In addition to this, the effects here are such that due to explosions and smoke it is not possible to see enemies. You’re just shooting blindly, focusing on the color change of the sight. This is the case when beauty is not good.
A typical picture of enemy fire from rocket launchers
You can die here only if we run out of warmth and health, are devoured by a giant worm from Dune, or we just fall into the lava. Jumping from great heights, rockets in the face or claw strikes do not bother us. And sometimes it comes to the point that there is so much thermal energy that you can calmly feel immortal in any situation. Only bosses inside armored suits can provide decent resistance, since they can only be killed with a mech or a mech weapon, and also a rocket launcher with grenades. And they attack in such a way that it’s difficult to dodge while standing on your own two feet.
There are no other gameplay features here. We go to the point and shoot, shoot, shoot, meet the boss, kill, repeat again. New opponents stop appearing around the middle of the game, and you get tired of killing old ones even before this very middle. And in the future, a simple method is used – we activate a couple of beacons, kill a few small locusts and with the current reserve of thermal energy we simply run the entire level to our destination. Killing absolutely all enemies here is a thankless task. The whole process is strictly scripted, and in such a way that after killing several enemies that appeared out of nowhere, they can immediately appear again, since you stepped on the script again. This does not apply to human opponents. They are carefully scattered around the map from the very beginning.
Note. Apart from the bosses, there are no quests to complete here. Before each mission there is a briefing where our goal is explained, and some information is periodically given over the radio. In this case, you can just forget about everything and run to the check point.
Big bees need a big beekeeper
Only the ending of the game dilutes the gameplay, in which the action is transferred off-planet for only one 3-5 minute battle. I have nothing against variety, but I think it’s illogical to add new mechanics to an incredibly small piece of the game. Other examples include Devil May Cry 5, in which Nero gets his demon form at the very end of the game, but there you can start New Game+ and try it out throughout the game.
Write examples of games in which the developers did a similar thing, adding new mechanics purely for the ending.
Graphics and sound
Visually the game still looks decent. Beautiful animation, effects, light and shadows. The main character moves smoothly, the flying locusts seem to float across the sky, and the giant earthworm flaunts his stately mustache in all its glory. Externally, the feeling of cold and snow is conveyed perfectly, but it is not transmitted to the player. The contrast of blue and orange colors and their shades is pleasing to the eye, although sometimes you want to make winter a little more faded, mute the colors, make everything gloomy.
When this creature crawls out from under the thickness of the snow, a genuine feeling of epicness is created, albeit one-time
But where there are pros, there are also cons. The developers failed to convey all the power of the engine and beauty through the environment. The same type of snowy hills, box houses and old cars, industrial-style buildings and caves that cannot be distinguished from each other. Playing through the game in one sitting, I can’t name what happened in which mission and list the key points and features that would distinguish them from each other.
People simply took a piece of the city, loaded it onto a ship and landed it on a new planet. That’s how I see it.
There’s nothing special to write about the soundtrack. Several compositions, a battle theme before the start of a mission, and different accompaniment for each boss. The sounds themselves are good. The crunch of snow, shots, squeals of locusts, movement of mechs, explosions – everything is in place. In the heat of battle, the amount of surrounding sounds begins to go off scale, forming a cacophony.
Unanswered Questions
By the way, why in the future on a new planet people built houses according to the old type and drove the same cars?? And when did they have time, if according to the plot they set out to colonize the planet, and there was always eternal winter on it. Why are there barrels of fuel scattered all over the planet and in caves?? Why are snowdrifts only knee-deep for the main character?? What is the temperature on the planet and why does everyone wear jackets with a fur collar if the heat is maintained through special thermal underwear? How does the warming device work and how does it collect liquid?? And what kind of liquid is this? If we assume that the locusts crawled out from an area close to the center of the planet, then this energy is melt or, in other words, magma. Without maintaining the necessary conditions, it will quickly turn into a solid state. Maintaining high pressure inside the locust, an organic being, is impossible. In addition, without an energy source, locust instantly freezes, turning into a block of ice, after which it leaves a clot of magma. At the same time, the snow does not melt from direct contact with the energy puddle. To this we can add about the meaning of locusts and their unknown purpose within the planet.
Found something to get to the bottom of. It’s fantasy, that’s all. And some features can be explained by the technical component, which would not have allowed all this to be implemented on systems of that time.
At the end of the game, the terraforming process is finally started, the snow melts before our eyes and clearings full of fresh grass open before the eyes of the heroes. The only thing missing is the trees growing right before our eyes.
Results
Lost Planet: Extreme Condition is a tech demo of its time to demonstrate the capabilities of the Xbox 360 and, subsequently, the beauties of DirectX 10. The benchmark built into the game does an excellent job of this task, describing the entire game in a few minutes.
I only enjoyed the beginning of the game and some of the bosses, but mostly I tried to complete the storyline as soon as possible, because I was tired of the monotony of the process and locations.
The developers did not explain either the nature of the planet, or the emergence of locusts, or the transformation of energy, or the process of terraforming, instead spitting in our faces a certain “Frontier Project” and a completely incomprehensible confrontation between people.
My rating is 5.5 out of 10. You can play, but if you want something cool, stick your head in the freezer.