Lost Planet: Extreme Condition (Xbox 360) Review

Fugitive, the least liked game mode of everyone I spoke to online, sees the host of the match playing the fugitive, and a selected number of hunters that have to seek him out. To win, the fugitive must reach a specified number of points, or avoid death until the time limit is over. Obviously, on the bigger maps, this becomes hide-and-seek, and incredibly boring.

The best experience I've had so far is Team Elimination with three teams of four people each on one of the smaller maps like Training Facility or Pirate Fortress - with Shotgun selected as the starting weapon. If you're struggling to find enjoyment with the Multiplayer aspect, give this configuration a try.

Some of the levels are too big and would have been more appropriate with 32 players, and it's incredibly frustrating when you spend more than half a 15 minute match running from a spawn point toward the battle. Some of the other maps are too small for 16 players, and you're lucky to survive for twenty seconds after you spawn - provided there isn't already four enemies camping at your teams spawn point. Hopefully at some stage, Capcom release the ninth map for download via Xbox Live Marketplace.

Once your character is downed, you're invincible until you get back up. This is pretty much essential to your survival during the more intense battles you'll encounter during the single player missions, however it detracts from the pace in online matches. You might have to down someone three times before they're dead, and each time you'll be waiting a couple of seconds for them to get up - pretty boring stuff, that becomes incredibly frustrating when it gives his team mates enough time to come and blast you from behind.

No one seems to talk at all, which is odd, as at least 75% of the players you see have headsets, and a great shame because whenever you luck out and end up on a team that communicates, it's a lot more fun, and always gives you the edge over your opponents.

As you might expect with one million copies out there, some with 24 hour trial subscriptions included for those who need their first bite for free, there's plenty of people playing the game online - at times all 16 positions in a match will fill up before you've had a chance to blink. Numbers tend to drop dramatically after a month or so, so get online while the competition is plentiful.

With a game that was so likely to sell world wide, we're still coming to terms with why on earth Capcom left out the ability to view the ping from a server. You can see who is hosting a game before joining it, which helps in finding your hosting friends, but when you have no friends online, more often than not you'll end up playing on a host over the other side of the world. Given how poorly the game plays when you're lagging, this is an incredibly frustrating oversight.

The lack of a Team Matchmaking system in yet another Multiplayer Xbox title really illustrates the fact that Microsoft need to develop a Matchmaking system as part of the Xbox Live API, as it's clear that developers just don't have the time to do so themselves. We understand this will interfere with the TrueSkill rankings, but there is nothing stopping a seperate ranking system (TeamSkill perhaps?) from launching alongside. There is a reason people still play Halo 2!

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