Fun filled Xenophobia!!!

Old school gamers remember the days when virtually every game or shooter played featured massive boss battles that tested your evasion and accuracy skills and frequently made you toss your controller around. As the age of 3D games came about, these frantic battles seemed to fade a bit in difficulty and appeal as it seemed the quality of gaming seemed to fall as graphic quality improved.

In comes the ‘next-gen’ age where casual and hardcore gamers alike wonder what attributes of a game make it ‘next-gen’ beyond graphic quality. Well, Capcom has always been known for delivering games more focused on fun than ‘pushing the envelope’ and their recent entry is a testament to that.

LOST PLANET is a nail-biting, explosion filled, ammo draining, white-knuckled gaming experience that will reside in thrill seekers’ hearts, minds, and gaming libraries for quite some time!

While only allocated to the Xbox360 lineup, LOST PLANET takes a page from the appeal of classic shooters like Contra, Mechassault, Freedom Fighters, and others in that you wield a dynamic array of weaponry against an alien scourge of bug-like creatures. Deep in arctic reaches, your Rambo-esque character battles these creatures both small and gargantuan as well as Mech-riding pirates in an effort to ... well, destroy stuff (as you can see I didn’t pay attention to the storyline much!). As he does so, he’ll try to stay warm by acquiring ‘thermal energy’ used to keep him alive and power up the various types of VS mechs and their weapons. You’ll find grenade launchers, plasma rifles, sniper rifles, shotguns, rocket launchers, lasers, and more at your disposal to unleash upon the hordes of creepy crawlies that will come at you from above AND below. And trust me when I say he’ll need them because the boss battles and hives that he’ll explore will require some serious firepower to escape. From worms that can and will swallow him whole to massive beetles to huge wasps with explosive tendencies, you will need every mech, rocket, and gattling gun at your disposal to escape alive!

Now, fun factor aside, this game is far from perfect. Graphically, though impressive, is not quite the next gen wow factor that will have you gaping like say Gears of War or the like. Sure you have plenty of advisably skippable cut scenes to show off a tiny bit of animation and graphical prowess, but in truth, you can find similar quality in games like Ninja Gaiden and even God of War. You’ll be somewhat impressed by the massive caverns or fairly detailed creatures but the human or realism factor of the graphics in this game are decent at best in today’s market.

Not only that but sometimes your camera and suspect ‘radar’ will occasionally up your WTF meter from time to time as well. Though you have control of your third-person view camera for the most part, you’ll find that your need to master where it points and how quickly will often hamper your ability to stay alive. Thankfully, weapons and thermal energy show clearly for the most part onscreen but sometimes enemies do not. Oftentimes, mechs (or operational ones) don’t tend to show themselves to well either. Sometimes you’ll find yourself appearing in a mech mounted boss battle and if you forget to look to one side or another quickly, you’ll miss the mech you were expected to use or take a few quick hits running towards another in view but clear across the battlefield. Can anyone say ‘suicide run’? Now I’m not saying that the AI in this game is ridiculously hard or even challenging on the normal setting as far as regular pirates or bugs go but most of your gaming curses will be reserved for either the bosses or the somewhat involved grappling hook usage that is required at certain points of the game. You’ll occasionally get the feeling that your character is a part of the anti-evasion club too as he has little to no dives, rolls, ‘take cover animation’, or grappling hook acrobatics. So, occasionally you’ll get stuck in the midst of jumping, grappling, or running to something in the distance only to get pummeled over and over by rockets, beasties, or the like. In fact, it actually feels you can pilot a mech better than you can control your character (which just seems odd to me).

Plop these pros and cons in a multiplayer battle and you have the potential for some pretty frustrating battles against seasoned vets who spawn camp and run over foes with mechs or grapple to an unsuspecting snipe point racking up kills. Of course, if you are on the side of these vets, the effect is slightly different! Still, multiplayer is a mish-mosh of Rambo’s running around searching for weapons or thermal energy flag posts usually well hidden throughout the various maps. With little to no strategy or teamwork involved, these online battles usually degenerate to who can get to the mechs first or who can snag the key weapons on the map to take those choice mechs out. Even with that, the effect of having enough thermal energy to power the mechs and weapons keeps things a tad bit more honest at times. Thankfully, weapons are fairly visible from a distance (with yellow highlights for personnel weapons and blue for mech sized weapons) even though your foes will not be. You’ll have to keep a sharp eye out for movement across the landscape to identify foes because your radar will not differentiate friend or foe. The only visible indication you’ll get for your teammates is the color of the gametags that hover over the other people in the game. Then you’ll have to remember what color your team is to avoid killing teammates. Again, this is slightly frustrating at times since the player models have very little detail and are quite hard to differentiate when close up. Still, the joy of hefting around a mech’s gattling gun and blasting across a snowy landscape is so much fun. The weapon variety found in the campaign mode finds its way into every multiplayer map and keeps things spicy as ammo and explosions are heard and felt throughout.

With all the blasting and killing going on, you’ll marvel at the game’s quality surround sound and sound effects. What will spook you at times is that the game has little to no soundtrack at all during gameplay. You’ll tend not to notice due to the amount of firefighting that you’ll be thrown into but playing your own music to assist in the fun will be required if you pay attention to that sort of thing.

In the end, Lost Planet is an action packed shooter that will fill the arcade-like void on the 360’s game roster. With guns, mechs, and buggies galore, it will be fun to play over and over.