Lost Planet: Extreme Condition

As popular as the online demo for Lost Planet has been, the full version is lacklustre. Battles feel as if they carry on longer than they need to and the addition of mechs to the tweaked-but-still-standard deathmatch and capture-the-flag modes of gunplay takes away some of the immediacy.

The game supports up to 16 players in multiplayer but it starts to lag once you push it that high. And because of the way you pick up guns, by holding down a button for a second, it can sometimes be difficult to properly arm yourself when things start to stutter.

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Lost Planet's biggest flaw, however, is that it's just not compelling. Outside of the gigantic bosses, enemies, whether organic or metallic, are uninspired and lacking in variety, and some levels have snow that just seems to carry on forever.

It's not quite death by a thousand paper cuts for Lost Planet, but it's not far from it. This is a competent shooter for the Xbox 360, but with heavy-hitters out and more coming soon, that may not be enough.

Graphics Sound Gameplay Depth Presentation OVERALL 8.0 8.0 7.0 7.0 7.0 7.0

THE VERDICT: Lost Planet is not bad but the problem is that it isn't as good as it could have been. I was quite interested in the story initially. That quickly devolves into the sort of mess you start skipping through to get at the action, yet even that becomes tedious outside of boss battles. Still, Lost Planet does a lot of things well enough that if you can look past its flaws there's a worthwhile dozen hours of gameplay to satisfy you here.

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