Something special this way comes…
If you’re going to shove players on a planet with terrain consisting of snow, snow and damned snow you better have a bloody good reason for it, and an even better game to back it all up!
The actual story behind Lost Planet is wonderfully intriguing and will have you on edge from first to last. The writers have actually managed to pull off an incredible feat here by squeezing such a great, detailed story which really makes you think into such a?well?short game.
In all honesty, Lost Planet clocks in at a meagre 8 ? 10 hours, which is preposterously short, even for Capcom, who usually stretch out playtime with ranks and uber difficulties. Sadly, Lost Planet contains nothing of the sort.
The game itself however, is something truly, truly wonderful and has managed to accomplish a number of great feats involving things which other developers left in the 1980’s.
The first of these accomplishments is the idea of overwhelming odds; whilst a lot of others are concerned with realism, tactics and squad command, Lost Planet pits you, one man, against multitudes of humans and swarms of Akrid. All whilst being pummelled by long range VS support. Oh, and you win (well, duh, if you wanna finish the damn thing!).
The multiplayer element of Lost Planet is full of ups and downs
This flows neatly onto our next great achievement which is arcade-ism. Yup. Lost Planet is classic arcade action through and through, slipped neatly into a next generation obsessed with realism (yet lacking in believability). You only have to take a real look at the system the game employs to realise this; T-ENG is essentially your timer, replenished by killing enemies but also depleted to constantly restore your life gauge, adding to the lightning pace that is Lost Planet. Even the theme reminds us of the games of old, plasma rifles, energy guns, giant robots and swarms of aliens. What? They were all in Halo? 1,2 and 3? And Mass Effect? And every other Sci-Fi game to come out within the last few years? How about this though; Lost Planet employs all of these classic icons of adventure in a way so special, you can’t help but feel nostalgic for no apparent reason!
The third (and final) great hurdle Lost Planet has managed to traverse with great agility is the classic concept of boss fights spawned straight from hell.
How many wonderful, epic, tragic or exhilarating boss fights can you recall from the last five years? Personally, I can point out a few (most of which are from Final Fantasy 10), but no matter which ones you think of, they won’t seem to be all that once you compare them to those that feature in Lost Planet. So, after tirelessly complaining that boss fights aren’t what they used to be for the last two or so years at least, Lost Planet finally puts my mind at rest that, yes, somebody out there can still deliver.
Every fight will simply have you on edge, ducking and diving; trying frantically to work out that essential weak spot you need to target, which is far more than I could say for pretty much any other candidate if there were a ?Boss Battle of the Decade? contest.
It isn’t just the bosses in Lost Planet that will hold you in awe though; every alien piece of scum is just as well designed as the last. They feature everything, from jumping giant scorpions, to rolling dung beetles and praying mantis’ that will have nobody but you praying! And just wait until you’re let loose on the humongous snow plains?
Of course, killing these beasts is mostly just down to finding their weak spots (usually indicated by rather conspicuous glowing bits) and laying into them mercilessly. Don’t be lured into a false sense of security though as this is often much easier?said?
As you would expect from most PS3 games, Lost Planet does indeed have PSN play. The multiplayer element of Lost Planet is full of ups and downs though; you don’t have to worry about your opponents regenerating their health, but then again you don’t regenerate either. You can easily stun lock an opponent by knocking him down, but the same can be done to you. Unlike a lot of PSN games however, you don’t have to wait an age and then some for a game to be found, as it all happens very quickly. You can also easily see which country you are connected to by a handy little flag appearing next to the hosts (and others’) name. The server location is very important in Lost Planet, as server distance can often culminate into a sizeable advantage for your opponents (more apparently so than other games), so pay attention.
Multiplayer matches take place across four modes, but essentially it may as well be two; there’s Team Elimination, where you have to battle it out against the opposing team to score more points than them, gaining additional points through the activation of data posts. Two more of the four total modes are solo and ?one man versus? takes on this premise.
Then there’s Post Grab, which is a slightly tenser zone control type game, where points are captured by activating the data posts.
In general, the elimination matches are far more fun and provide an experience closer to the single player action-fest, the only downside being that VS suits are much more vulnerable to firepower than in the campaign mode.
The multiplayer also feels like much more than appears to be, lots of images spring to mind of being a rebel fighter on Hoth, or waging a faction war a la Savage or Perimeter. Lost Planet does a brilliant job of appearing as much more to the imagination than it really is; both single and multiplayer.
Lost Planet, like any other game, isn’t without its annoyances however.
I’ll start with the biggie; it’s a third person shooter with a camera hovering a fair way behind the shoulder. This is an instant recipe for bad camera angles to get in the way and generally get you killed. Not so much during the normal course of play, but it can have you yelling in frustration during those vital big boss moments where every rocket needs to count.
The second major annoyance comes in the form of occasionally irresponsive controls when the action gets frantic. Often this lack of response can lead to an easy stun lock by your enemies (especially when up against explosives) and thus death. The worst offenders here are the VS suits, specifically when you try and pull of complex combinations of jumping and sliding in the advanced models.
The third (and final) annoying flaw in Lost Planet is maaaaajor slowdown in the midst of a lot of action, which coupled with the irresponsive controls, is probably the most irritating thing in the whole game.
That sour note is about as much as this game deserves though, so now we must see one of Lost Planet’s defining features. The Experience.
Lost Planet is just like playing a fantastic action movie – as opposed to playing a bad action game – in snow. You can use the evasive dive to roll under the axels of 30 foot long lorries and clout people in the face on the other side. You can stand atop bridges and casually snipe enemy turret pilots, or you can
even have the classic movie cliché of blowing up a tall scaffold full of enemies by using explosives, whereas tense moments reach climax after climax when you dodge lethal attacks by inches and thus preserve precious T-ENG.
Lost Planet is a game which does so much, but shows so little on the surface, leaving the player to examine the more complex nature of the game such as how it feels and what it compares to; how it all comes together even. Not only that, but this level of thought provoking often seems deliberate, intentional and?inviting. For those thinking of buying Lost Planet I have one piece of advice; take no movie, screenshot or preview at face value. This game demands and deserves a lot of justice to be done unto it, which at the end of it all culminates into an abstract reward of thought and satisfaction of which the overall experience becomes the defining element of the game.
The Bad: Bad camera.; Often frustrating. ; Rather short.
Gold Y Award