Lost Planet: Extreme Condition for Windows PC

The story behind this game is epic on a science fiction scale. It all takes place many years into the future where environmental conditions have left the planet no longer inhabitable, so a group of pioneers set out to find a new planet to inhabit. As you might imagine, the local giant alien types don’t like the humans being there, so they all fight. You play one of the humans and have a variety of weapons and vehicles available to massacre the ‘locals’. When the action gets going, it’s a lot like the movie Starship Troopers in snow.

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The problem I had with the graphics was that performance wasn’t so great. I’m running a dual core AMD 5000+ system with 3 gigs of RAM and a GeForce 9600GT video card. Even on my system - which can run the Call of Duty games and Left 4 Dead without a problem - had trouble keeping up with this game. Part of that is for the inefficient porting over of the game from Xbox 360 to PC. In the ‘loading’ screens, it still shows you pictures of the Xbox controller!

In the end, I enjoyed playing Lost Planet: Extreme Condition, but I found that the numerous technical issues experienced on my PC kept me from really getting into it. I think this game had a lot more potential than what it offered, and I couldn’t help but feel like not much effort was put into porting it over from the Xbox 360.

I’ve heard that a Hollywood movie is being made based on this game, and I have to say the story and setting would make for a decent action movie. It’s too bad the original console version of the game was so much better than this PC port. Rather than overhaul or patch this game, a whole new game called Lost Planet: Colonies is due out later this year that is supposed to be a sort of remake of this game, minus all the bugs.