On Thursday, Norm and I sat in a hands on demo of the upcoming Capcom game, Lost Planet 2, the sequel to 2007′s Lost Planet: Extreme Condition. In Extreme Condition, you played as Wayne Holden, a “snow pirate” who fought Akrid and NEVEC over the planet E.D.N.III. The planet was a harsh and freezing place in the midst of a brutal ice age – so cold that you constantly required thermal energy to survive. You used a multitude of weapons plus Vital Suits (VS), mechanized suits that carry heavy weapons that you could enter and do battle in. In Lost Planet 2, you find yourself back on E.D.N.III only the snow has melted to reveal a planet featuring several different terrains and climates, a planet a lot like Earth. The demo showcased some of the many changes that have been made in an effort to improve the game play experience. In order to make this game what fans wanted, they went directly to the Lost Planet community and asked them what they wanted to see. After seeing some of the new features, it obvious that the response was overwhelming and Capcom did everything in their power to listen and try to incorporate these things.
First off is the inclusion of a co-op mode in the single player campaign. You can now play it in split-screen local co-op or online over Xbox Live with up to three other friends. People can jump into the game in between missions as well as at certain checkpoints – in other words, the longest you may have to wait to join in is about 10 minutes. You can drop out of the game at any time while the other person can continue playing. All the Multiplayer modes from the first game are also available with some new ones thrown in as well. All modes and maps will be available from the start so you can choose to play the campaign or you can hop in for some immediate online multiplayer fun however, finishing the campaign will benefit you in the multiplayer modes with the unlocking of items and weapons that can be used in all modes.
Another notable change is the complete character customization that the game offers. You can build your character to be what ever you want it to be and you will continue to unlock different pieces throughout the game. You can choose the head, torso, legs, and backpack of anything…so if you choose to have the head of a man with the torso of a fat bellied guy and some Lady Pirate’s legs – you can have it. The choices have no effect on your stats or game play – they are purely aesthetic, so go crazy. The other cool thing is if you have certain game saves on your hard drive, Lost Planet 2 will be able to read that game save and you will have access to special skins and weapons. For example, if you have played Resident Evil 5, you will have access to the Wesker skin and more importantly, Wesker’s badass Magnum – a powerful weapon that can give you a great advantage in online multiplayer mode. Other Capcom characters also appear like Frank West from the Dead Rising, and most recently announced, Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago from Gears of War. Details of how the Gears of War characters will be unlocked have yet to be revealed. Capcom uses their own engine, MT Framework, for a lot of their games – Resident Evil 5, Devil May Cry 4, and Lost Planet were all built using the MT Framework. Lost Planet 2 is the first to use the MT Framework 2 engine. The game is played in engine and uses no CG so all the cutscenes will feature your custom character as well as your teammates characters. Also announced earlier, is the inclusion of the Lady Pirates as playable in the game. Now you can create a beautiful and deadly Lady Pirate character or use their parts to create crazy looking characters as mentioned earlier. The possibilities are endless but what is nice is that there are possibilities to make the experience completely unique as no two characters will be alike and you will have no problems identifying yourself amongst others.
Before going into battle, you can customize not only your look, but what kinds of weapons you will find in the levels as well as other things like emotes, nicknames, and abilities. You can choose the weapons based on what you will face in the level or mission ahead. Choosing weapons adds more strategy to the game and can be crucial to your team’s success. You can even test out all weapons in the customization menu. Abilities are exactly that – you can add special abilities to your character to enhance the your game play experience. There are dozens upon dozens of combinations available. You can combine some abilities to create a pretty powerful character. The game balances things out though by making some abilities take up more than one slot. You can even customize how your character emotes on screen. You can use up to eight slots and use the emotes to communicate with your other teammates or you can jump up and down like a giddy little schoolgirl or tell someone to literally come over and kiss you ass. Life Sucks was one of my favorites as it shows your character sitting and pouting while a dark rain cloud forms over you and rains on your parade. The game will feature over 120 different emotes to choose from. A couple of really big Lost Planet fans actually made a video of some of the emotes they wanted to see and Capcom listened and made some of those ideas a reality. You can unlock nicknames in the game as well. These are unlocked through various ways and hundreds of them are available to choose from.
Throughout the levels, you will find ? boxes. These boxes can contain anything from credits to weapons and so-on. You can check the contents of the boxes at the end of each mission. If you get credits, you can spend them by using the slot machine which will randomly give you items.
There are literally hundreds of thousands of combinations available that will alter the game play as well as just the aesthetic offering a fully customizable experience. You will unlock items based on your play style as well so if you love your shotguns, the game will reward you down the line with a badass shotgun that shoots confetti (and kills enemies) or if you love to use a sniper rifle, you may unlock a rifle that shoots three bullets at a time.
You also have the option to turn off some of the more powerful weapon choices. This may come in handy when you first start playing the game as you may not have unlocked some of the items that some other people have. All the aesthetic choices will be there but you can turn off the ability for someone to use Wesker’s Magnum for example.
I let Norm play the hands on demo since I had played the first game and the Lost Planet 2 demo before. It took some getting used to but he was able to jump in and play with ease. Along with the fully customizable characters, you can fully customize the controls as well. There are 8 different presets as well as the option to customize each button to fit your style of game play. In Lost Planet, you constantly lost thermal energy (T-ENG) during the level and had to replenish it by collecting orange energy from enemies you killed or by making it to certain check points. Lost Planet 2 gets rid of this mechanic of the ticking clock health to allow players to fully explore the levels. In Lost Planet 2, you can convert thermal energy to health or you can use it to power a VItal Suit (VS) or power a thermal based weapon. So now, even your health and T-ENG can be used strategically depending on your situation. You can even use thermal energy and shoot it at your teammates to help replenish their health – just one more thing to think about in your game play strategy.
Lost Planet 2 will be available for the PS3 and Xbox 360. The PS3 version will be in 1080 while the Xbox 360 version will only be in 720 upscalable to 1080. However, you will want to buy the game on the console that has the most Capcom save data so you can unlock those features in your game.
A co-op demo and a multiplayer demo are available on Xbox Live and the Playstation Network. Capcom has launched a new campaign called “Kill Big for Charity” that is tied to the multiplayer demo. When the demo hits one million downloads, Capcom will create a charity fund of $20,000 with an additional $5000 to be added for an additional 500,000 downloads after the one million mark. The donation will be made to the Music for Relief and on May 6th, Capcom will hold a pre-launch party in Los Angeles where a celebrity tournament will take place with the winners will choose which Music for Relief cause will receive the grand total of the demo download fund, which can be up to $25,000. More info can be found here.
Lost Planet 2 is rated T for Teen and will be available on May 11th, 2010 on the Xbox 360 and the PS3.
Features trailer:
Lady Pirates Trailer:
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