Lost Planet: Extreme Condition is played through a third person over-the-shoulder view.
Players are allowed to switch between first-person and third-person at any moment.
Players either travel on foot or ride various types of mechanized suits called Vital Suits.
VSs carry heavy weapons such as chain guns and rocket launchers.
They can pick up weapons lying on the ground and fire multiple weapons at once.
On foot, players are able to use a grappling hook to pull themselves up to normally hard-to-reach places, or to hook onto a VS and hijack it. Driving VSs and using certain weapons requires thermal energy.
Also, the planet's cold temperature causes the characters' thermal energy level to continually decrease.
Players can replenish their thermal energy level by defeating enemies or activating data posts.
Data posts also allow players to use their navigational radars to see incoming enemies. Each of the 11 levels is accompanied by a boss, which can be either a VS or a large Akrid.
Online multiplayer versus also requires players to monitor their thermal energy level, but here, reaching zero does not cause death. Instead, the characters cannot use VSs or fire the weapons which require thermal energy.
Online multiplayer versus consists of four modes, called Elimination, Team Elimination, Post Grab, and Fugitive. Players score points by killing other players and activating posts, and they lose points for being killed or committing suicide.
Post grab is a mode where players on opposite teams compete to capture as many posts as possible before the set time runs out.
Team Elimination is a 16-player team competition, and Elimination is a 16-player free-for-all mode. Finally, Fugitive is a game mode where one person is marked as a fugitive, and the other players try to take away all the fugitive's points before time runs out.
Lost Planet takes place in the year known in the game as T.C. -80, 80 years before the trial century, on the fictional planet of E.D.N. III.
After the Earth's conditions become too hostile for humans due to war, global warming and pollution, a fictional interstellar megacorporation named Neo-Venus Construction plans to colonize E.D.N. III, a new Earth-like planet in the grip of a brutal ice age.
NEVEC discovers that E.D.N. III is inhabited by an aggressive and territorial insectoid alien species named the Akrid, which come in all shapes and sizes and generate their own precious thermal energy.
150 years after a great war was fought in which the humans lost to the Akrid, civilian colonists and E.D.N. III military personnel continue to seek out a nomadic existence as snow pirates, harvesting T-ENG from fallen Akrid.
The plot of the game revolves around Wayne Holden, a soldier who attempts to overthrow NEVEC, who still vie for control over E.D.N. III, and help colonization efforts for the remainder of the human race by destroying the Akrid, all the while attempting to survive both betrayals and the extreme conditions of the planet.
