Written by: Ian

 

 

 

The first 'Lost Planet' was a fantastic looking game, with an interesting single player, and some great team-based multiplayer- how does the sequel compare? All the previews have certainly made the game seem like it will be far more varied, and certainly even more epic than the first game, which already featured it’s fair share of huge bosses... here’s hoping!

 

 

"Lost Planet 2" forgoes a main protagonist to keep everyone equal in the co-op design; instead you play as a group of nameless, faceless space pirates, which is fairly disastrous.

 

The game loses almost all sense of personality compared to LP1, and it makes everything feel pretty generic, whilst much of the emotion and sense of high sci-fi from the first game has also been lost.

 

What is even worse is the fact that everyone’s Gamertag is displayed over their head, further removing any sense of reality from the game- even if you are playing with AI this is still the case, as the game creates some faux tags for the computer-controlled players, which is just wierd...

 

 

Lost Planet 2 has had a huge revamp in terms of gameplay since the first game, it’s almost unrecognisable in many ways. If it wasn’t for the same control scheme that is pretty distinctive (whilst some find it clunky and difficult to work with, I feel like it’s fairly solid), this could be a totally different game.

 

 

The single player is now basically removed for a Monster Hunter style co-op game, with only a basic story to hold together the levels. This sounds fine in theory, but in practice, Capcom have made some awful design decisions.

 

When I first started playing, it’s immediately noticeable that there’s no drop-in/ drop-out co-op, which is annoying whilst you wait for a lobby to fill (you can only play as far as you have played before). Then, I played the prologue, and what was described to me as ‘mission 1’. Fine, I thought. The game saved, and I quit out to play some multiplayer.

 

When I came back, I had to replay that mission. Surely a glitch, I thought? But no. That was merely part of mission 1. And if you don’t complete a mission (most take at least 45 minutes), then you have to start a mission again, even if you complete all but one of the mini stages within them.

 

Most of the mini stages also end bizarrely- all you have to do is reach a magical invisible barrier. The most frustrating thing is that many of the bosses are also pretty tough (especially if any players have dropped out, leaving you with AI’s (which are appalling) in their place), so if you die, then back to the start of the level to play all the mini-missions again. It’s frustrating to the max, and I thought I was going to chuck controllers about the place again.

 

 

It’s difficult to know if these fairly significant problems could be patched out- because if they could, then the game would be pretty fun; but in its current state, Lost Planet can’t be recommended on the strength of the single player alone, even though it seems pretty big (it’s very difficult to put an hour-figure on it, because it depends on how many levels you end up replaying because of an untimely death).