If you’re like me, Lost Planet’s a game that you’ve been anticipating since Capcom released its 2006 E3 demo on Xbox Live. You also squealed with joy (as I did) when the multiplayer demo dropped around Thanksgiving of last year, yet again torturing your gamers soul with a small taste. Maybe you even drove and stood in line like us, braving the intense cold of an unseasonably freezing San Francisco evening to attend the Lost Planet launch event (and if you froze your gaming ass off in that cold, I commend you). If this sounds familiar, you probably already own the game and know exactly how you feel about it. For those of you still sitting on the fence about Lost Planet though, this is for you: read and find out all about where this game’s short-comings and strengths lie; then make your choice.
While exponentially more beautiful than, say, Contra, LP is in a lot of ways a throwback to classic shooters of the late 80’s arcade era. Your most common enemies, the Akrid (giant bugs), have glowing orange spots that serve as their “please for the love of god shoot me anywhere but here” places. The game justifies this by establishing this as the creatures’ store of glowing thermal energy, known as T-Eng in the game. You shoot the orange spots on the bugs, you collect the orange juices they drop, and you keep your T-Eng meter from running out.
Beyond the “shoot here, idiot” spots, the T-Eng meter also brought back those old shooter instincts for me. You are timed in a sense by your constantly depleting T-eng level (a la Gauntlet and similar games), and you kill to pick up additional time (T-Eng) to keep yourself alive. Your T-eng level also takes a significant hit any time you do something that requires additional energy, for example by healing damage taken or boosting when piloting a mech. Really though, unless you play on hard mode, LP will have almost few moments where you really feel like you have to monitor your T-Eng; ordinarily, the stuff flows like milk and honey.
That is a big orange ass.
While LP could have been a great game even without any additional shooting elements aside from running around as a human amongst giant bugs, it really adds a certain element of badassery when it introduces the mechs, or Vital Suits (VS). Although these suits aren’t necessary save for during a few boss fights, they give you much more firepower and help break up the on foot running and gunning. Most of the VS have some sort of explosive projectile weapon allowing you to waltz through an area and feel like Rambo, if Rambo drove a 10 ton motorized bipedal robotic suit into combat. Similarly to when you are on foot, these suits also deplete your T-Eng, but at a much greater rate, requiring even more insect death to sustain them. Again though, LP provides enough bodies to fuel your energy needs pretty consistently, so you rarely feel pressured to hurry, and the levels are also designed in such a way that there is almost always a new VS around should you “need” one.
The game’s controls are a point of contention amongst many players; I felt that the controls worked well amidst the action in the game, I have heard on both forums and during Live play numerous complaints that the controls are “clunky.” The control scheme takes some getting used to, but generally works for the game. It isn’t Gears, but it’s probably for the best; otherwise the game would be that much easier.
Visually speaking, the game is gorgeous. When I first played the E3 demo, I thought to myself that this game was truly next-gen. The final product is no exception. The explosions, and man are there enough that it matters, are exceptional looking. The levels look great, but are covered in snow, and the level of detail is nowhere near that of titles like Gears, though it didn’t really need to be. The VS look both powerful and limited in functionality, which they are.
There's actually quite a bit of variety of mech design in the VS
My biggest complaint is that the action can start to feel repetitive. Although there are levels where you will almost exclusively fight Akrid, there are far too many times you will encounter Snow Pirates and other humans living on the planet who you compete with to survive. This is where the game starts to drag. The human enemies in the single-player campaign pose an almost non-existent threat to the player whether on foot or in VS. On more than one occasion, I ran by human enemies because I could just as easily run past their stormtrooper-like attempts to shoot me down as fight them. Unless you are playing on hard these guys will present you with little to no challenge and end up being a speed bump to the next great action sequence or boss fight.
There's not much point in running around when they don't get out the way of your bullets.
The story of Lost Planet is another big disappointment, which plays out like bad anime. I think the characters could have been much more compelling had Capcom left in the original Japanese voice acting with subtitles. Instead, the player is forced to listen to cheesy, campy dialogue that only vaguely builds toward a plot. It sounds harsh, but eventually pressing the A button to skip to the next Snow Pirate bloodbath becomes tempting. The back of the box gives you as much premise as you really need. Though the storyline is ultimately forgettable, it does drive the game along and I would not want to ruin that for anyone still considering the game. The game might have benefited from not attempting any story-line beyond the back of the box. In Contra we did not need to know why the aliens had to die, we just dropped into the game and started shooting. Lost Planet is better suited to be a brain-on-autopilot shooter.
Multiplayer wise, Lost Planet delivers a solid experience that gives the game much more replay value than it would have had with the single-player campaign alone. In multiplayer, you play as Snow Pirates in battlefields with access to all the weapons from the single-player game as well as various VS’s that are placed throughout the level. The game offers numerous types of multiplayer matches, the most rewarding of which are team and free-for-all deathmatch. Each player starts with a base score, and you’re rewarded for kills and penalized for deaths. Chain killing gives you bonus points to your score, making death even more disappointing during a streak. And, unlike the single-player game, you do not regenerate health, which should make you wearier of jumping out in front of a cannon than you would have been in single-player.
The inclusion of the grappling hook in multiplayer allows players to really use terrain to their advantage. It also allows for interesting level design, and certain weapons can only be reached through clever use of the grappling hook. The grappling hook can also be used as another dodge, allowing you to pull yourself away just as the ground explodes beneath your feet. While it is limited in range, the grappling hook addition makes the multiplayer more exciting than may have been otherwise, and forces players to watch their backs, as someone could literally drop in behind them from a higher level.
Lost Planet delivers a solid multiplayer experience, and despite its negatives, the single-player campaign is fun. Graphically it holds up in the now current-gen, and as a 360 exclusive, it is worth picking up if you are looking for a fun and campy shooter. There are moments in the game where you will find yourself breathless at the sight of a huge monster, and other times when you will sigh at yet another band of hopelessly outgunned Snow Pirates. If you are on the fence, I would suggest renting this game before you buy it to see if it is for you.
