Even though I was less than satisfied with the first Lost Planet, I was excited when I heard they were making a sequel. Sequels are inevitable these days but the fact that the game would take place on the same planet, E.D.N. III, and it was NOT covered in snow and ice intrigued me. I was curious how the new climate and terrain would affect the game play and overall feel of the game. While Lost Planet 2 is a gorgeous effort, the game caters to a multiplayer audience and leaves the single player out in the cold.
The game features a single player campaign along with an extensive multiplayer mode with tons of things to unlock and discover. After having seen the demo only one week before, I was very excited about the custom characters. I popped in the disc and immediately created myself a fancy lady pirate with a big teddy bear back pack to play the game with. Much to my chagrin, you are not able to use your custom characters in the main campaign until you have played through the entire game. You are, however, able to use the custom character in the online multiplayer mode. The character can be fully customized by changing the head, torso, legs, and backpack. If you have certain game saves from other Capcom games like Resident Evil 5 and Dead Rising, you will get some special custom skin sets like Wesker from RE5 and Frank West from Dead Rising. If you have the Xbox 360 version, you can even play the game as your favorite Gears, Marcus Fenix or Dominic Santiago from the Gears of War series. PS3 owners will get skins for the Helghast from Killzone 2 and a skin from Monster Hunter. You can even unlock special weapons like Wesker’s gold Magnum for a 1-up on your competitors. Your character’s look, however, gives you no other advantage other than differentiate you from others on the battlefield.
You can choose to play the campaign through alone or engage in 2 player local co-op. You can even jump online and play the campaign with up to three other players. The drawback is that only player one will unlock achievements. The other drawback is in the local co-op. The splitscreen is similar to the splitscreen featured in Resident Evil 5. However, the play screens are even smaller, giving more room for the game map. This makes playing the game rather difficult as you can’t really see what is going on because the screen is so small. There is no way to configure it and it’s just a frustrating experience. Once we completed one chapter, I had to kick Norm off in order to continue playing. I would only recommend playing the splitscreen co-op if you have either played the campaign through once already or you have an enormous television. We have a 52″ LCD and it was not big enough to play the game comfortably.
The game is broken into six episodes. Each episode is broken up into chapters and chapters are broken up into areas. Once you complete an objective or set of objectives, you must go to the area that is surrounded in red in order to progress to the next area. This breaks up the gameplay in order to allow other players to join your game provided you have open slots available and you are playing in a joinable game session. While this is great for those that are playing online, it is not so great to those looking for the single player experience and immersion into the story. It becomes a disjointed experience and really pulls you out of the story ahead of you. The game does not even do an autosave at the completion of areas, only at the end of a chapter. So if you stop playing before you finish the chapter, you will have to replay all the areas you cleared all over again.
The game does not feature one main character. Instead, you will play through levels as a member of four of the factions on the planet. Sadly, this breaks any connection to the story since you are not playing one character throughout. In fact, I don’t recall the names of ANY of the characters that I played. Towards the end of the game you see how all the factions play a role in the battle but by then, I didn’t really care. That extends to the overall story as well. I really didn’t get what was going on and didn’t really care. For me, it was about completing areas, chapters, and episode and earning achievements and Good Job Awards.
The game features a ton of unlockables and these can be found by collecting ? boxes. These ? boxes are not a rare occurrence as they are dropped by fallen enemies, defeated bosses, smashed boxes, and more. They do disappear rather quickly, so try to collect them when you see them. I found that using the grapple hook was the fastest way to collect them since your character moves rather slow. The ? boxes can be opened at the end of chapters and will either give you credits (in most cases) and occasionally unlock actual items, although I usually only got Noms de Guerre (a name you choose that labels your character in game). You can use your credits in the Slot Machine which can be accessed in the Character Customization screen. It costs 2000 credits to spin and you can get some really cool and some really crappy items. Some items are only obtainable through the slot machine. You can unlock character parts, weapons, abilities, emotes, and Noms de Guerre. You can update your custom character and these are the items you will find throughout your game. I find it funny that while you can’t use your custom character in the main campaign until you complete the game, all the modifications you make will be reflected in your game…everything except the look.
The controls are virtually the same as the first game and offers a wide variety of configurations to accommodate all types of control schemes. The most notable change is the role of Thermal Energy or T-ENG. In the first game, any activity would deplete your T-ENG reserves and once you were out, your life meter would deplete and you died. You had to collect it from various sources. In Lost Planet 2, T-ENG still exists however due to the climate change, you no longer need it to survive. Instead, you collect it and store it to use with weapons or as reserve health. This changed up the game play dynamics as you no longer need to worry about running out of energy. Certain vehicles need T-ENG to operate but its overall role in the game is more like stored health packs.
The characters control similar to the first game. The game is presented in third person similar to Gears of War. The character moves a bit slow but there is a run, or dash button, which allows you to sprint. The grapple hook is back and can help you reach areas that would otherwise be out of reach. My only complaint is that you could not jump and grapple on to things nor could you grapple to save yourself during a fall. If you fell over a ledge, the grapple would automatically “save” you but it frequently got in the way. If you are going to give us a grappling hook, give us some uses for it other then getting from point A to B. I constantly tried to use the grapple hook to save me from a fall or pull me out of harm’s way to little or no success.
If you played the first game, you would be familiar to the large scale boss creature battles as well as the mech armor or Vital Suits (VS) you could pilot. Both are back and they are what makes the game. There are several different VSs available in the game, from small speeder bike style VSs to the fully mech giant that will even allow your companions to hop on for the ride. The boss creatures are some of the grandest battles and, while easy to figure out how to kill (aim for the orange!), they will sometimes give you a run for the money. You also have a large arsenal of weapons to choose from and you can choose the weapons you would like to appear during your gameplay in the custom characterization menus. Part of the games strategy comes from choosing the right weapons for battle. You may have to collect a lot of ? boxes to unlock some of the cooler weapons, but it is nice to be able to choose your weapons for the coming battle.
The game is centered around a giving a rich multiplayer experience with six different online game types as well as a Faction Match where five factions battle in three different war zones. The results are tallied up weekly and you can earn a lot of credits based upon how well you do. I played several online matches and found it to be a bit boring. The multiplayer maps are so large that for nearly five minutes I didn’t see a single player. I had no problems connecting or finding a game to play and I never had to wait to long for the next game to start.
The game features a training mode to help you master the controls…I couldn’t pass the first one. I think that’s a mixture of the control and the fact that I had no idea what I was supposed to do. I was just happy to be able to play my fancy lady pirate.
In addition to achievements (360) and trophies (PS3), the game has another achievement system called Good Job Award or GJ Awards. These awards are earned by completing specific tasks in the campaign/online play. GJ Awards will earn you points which will help your overall area and chapter results. There are three types of awards: Episode GJ – earned while playing the campaign; Battle GJ – earned based on your play style; and Co-Op GJ – earned via co-op play with teammates (this can also be done with AI). You are ranked as gold, silver, and bronze with gold yeilding the most points. The tasks you can do to earn higher ranks can vary from performing emotes to activating all the data posts.
The game had a few glitches like weapons being spawned inside walls making it impossible to pick them up. Some of those may be caused when you are swapping out weapons, but still, it should happen. I didn’t encounter any game breaking glitches, so that was good.
Lost Planet 2 is not a total lost cause. The game is packed with gorgeous graphics and a world that features various landscapes like desert, jungle, underwater and outer space. Perhaps the game took on more than it could chew with it’s extensive upgrades to the multiplayer portions of the game. Unfortunately, with all the attention to the multiplayer features, Capcom seems to have left the single player with a rather stripped-down experience. I wouldn’t recommend this game to those looking for a dynamic single player game nor to someone looking to delve into the multiplayer experience for the first time. I would, however, recommend it to those familiar with the franchise. If you liked Lost Planet: Extreme Condition, you will probably be quite satisfied. If you were a fan of the multiplayer, this is a game aimed at you.
Lost Planet 2 is rated T for Teen and is available now for the Xbox 360, PS3, and PC. This review featured the Xbox 360 version.
A review copy was provided and did not affect the outcome of this review.
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