The season of winter has its ups and downs, especially when it snows. The cold weather is very hard to deal with, and means you have to bundle for the outside conditions. Usually this kind of weather is what encourages you to stay indoors, unless you have the courage to make your way across a snow covered landscape. This defines the words Extreme Conditions in title of the game Lost Planet: Extreme Conditions.

The words “Extreme Conditions” in the title, are no joke. The world of this game is placed on a planet that is so cold, freezing to death would happen quite rapidly if it were not for a strange orange ooze that the local residents known as the Akrid produce and store.

This ooze is a kind of thermal energy that is harvest and fuels the Akrid’s on the inside for them to survive the conditions, even though your goal in the game is to eradicate the Akrid and warm the planet. That means destroying the Akrid nests by killing the bosses.

Aside from the Akrid, there’s also a mercenary faction to face in the game. But you do not encounter them until after making it half way through the game. The Akrids themselves are as most people would say “scary monsters,” which is true. But they are even scarier up close in the game if you are not piloting a VS and if one ends up in a dream your having, especially one of the bosses, then you will never forget it.

Each mission you fight on your own up to each Akrid boss, and each mission and its Akrid boss gets tougher to beat than the last – especially when you have to keep filling up on thermal energy each time you are in combat. Though fighting the Akrid on foot with two weapons at your disposal, and variety you can pick up from enemy’s is good, I like fighting with the VSes more. The letters VS is short for Vital Suit, which is a battle mech. It is just like the AMP Suit from Avatar, but just more powerful. There are a few different types of VSes in the game, and are all really powerful.

Playing a game like this is challenging depending on the difficulty, but a lot of gamers that love playing the campaigns of certain games enjoy a good challenge. Even I found the whole game to be challenge, though some of the boss battles took me a few tries to beat. And keeping my thermal energy amount up at the same time while crossing the terrain.