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Review

Lost Planet

8.0

Format Xbox 360

Developer Capcom

Publisher Capcom

Genre Action

10-Jan-2007 Too hot to handle, too cold to hold

11 Comments

Whatever happened to 8-bit gaming? Once upon a time, Capcom was the undisputed master of; gigantic end of level bosses, weapons bigger than a house, lurid colour schemes and amazingly over the top music. We have a suspicion that they took all these elements and put them into cryogenic storage.

The good news is, the Japanese developer has finally thawed out the old-skool tradition, bringing it back for our generation. Playing Lost Planet is like battering Ghouls and Ghosts for the first time. You simply won't believe how stunning it looks. But more importantly, it's one of those games that pits you against incredible odds and satisfies by making it just about possible to beat them!

There are no serious pretensions. No AI-controlled squad to order around, no driving levels, no puzzles to solve. You pick up a gun or a heavily armed mech (known as Vital Suits or VSes) and kill stuff. LOTS of stuff.

It's a game made for show-offs with a flair for the dramatic. You can put Lost Planet on round a mate's house and they'll be blown away. From the word go, you're faced with one of the biggest bad-mothers of a bastard alien hellspawn in any game, period!

In a moment inspired by Verhoeven's Starship Troopers, a colossal insect bursts out of the snow and tries to impale you on one of its giant spiny legs. This would normally be a bad thing, but the fact that you're already tooled up with a dual-minigun toting VS makes you relish the occasion. We found ourselves flipping a finger at the screen, shouting "come get it bitch!!" It wasn't exactly just another day at the office.

For a game that starts off packing heavy punches, you might expect the action to lose its way or run out of new spectacles to make you go "wow!" Somehow, Lost Planet keeps on getting bigger and more impressive. It's a sign of majestic pacing. Wait until you see the giant worm on level three or the incredible boss battle at the end of level six. The enemies are so big that you can't even fit them on an HDTV screen!

The monsters and VSes (see our VS Guide to the right) are great to look at, and
at the same time are totally believable. All the moving parts on the VSes click and whirr together like the genius vision of some demented mechanical toymaker. Likewise, the giant Akrid creatures move like real creepy crawlies, albeit really savage bloodthirsty ones. If you thought the Corpsers in Gears of War were nasty, you haven't seen anything yet.

Gears of War proved a lot, including that a captivating setting is just as important as the heroes and villains. Lost Planet's E.D.N. III is a barren arctic wasteland, but the snow is just a veil, covering foreboding ruined cities, decommissioned military outposts and beautiful, but sinister, subterranean caves.

The Akrid hives and particularly the volcano tunnels are a stark contrast to the cold and hostile outdoors. They burn with orange fire and ooze with glowing yellow and green slime. Beauty is everywhere, numbing you to the fact that you could be killed at any moment. Carnage and devastation has rarely been so appealing. The particle effects used in explosions are extremely complex and full of volume. Likewise, there's loads of dynamic and high-dynamic range lighting.

Playing Lost Planet is like being stuck in a kaleidoscope full of giant scorpions, albeit a lot more fun. The game engine is capable of dramatic feats of the imagination, not least displaying 20-30 massive enemies on screen at once, with not a single drop in frame rate.

The game is best played in third-person. Although you do have the option to play Lost Planet as an FPS, you don't see the gun on the screen and will suffer from a dramatically reduced arc of vision. It's very much a conventional shooter in third-person, with the Left thumbstick controlling movement and the Right one used for aiming. We recommend switching auto-aim off. It's a little too helpful, at times robbing you of the deep satisfaction of using weapons like the sniper rifle.

Overall, the camera is very solid. There's a quick-turn button that allows you to turn 90 degrees left or right in an instant to catch the faster-moving enemies. It's not the most intuitive, but can be useful. The only time we found our view being obscured was when we were being crushed underfoot by enemy VSes or being blown up. Sometimes the smoke effects and explosions make it impossible to see anything. This can be a little frustrating.

Apart from that, the ammo bar and reload system isn't big or shouty enough.
We were constantly forgetting to change magazines, partly because the weapon magazines are immense, but also because the ammo icon is underneath the crosshair, a pretty confusing place to put it. The game also over-uses the B button for context sensitive commands. Unless you're especially careful, you'll often accidentally exit your VS while trying to pick up a new weapon.

We also have a gripe about the running speed of your central character, Wayne. If a 50-foot maggot tried to eat us, we'd leg it like Linford Christie, not jog around leisurely. It might be 50 below freezing, but that's no excuse! Thankfully there are no such problems when you jump into a VS. For a big chunk of metal, they're exhilaratingly agile. Leaping into the air over an entire skyscraper never fails to raise a cheesy grin.

Being able to strafe-hover forward and backward using jump jets is remarkably intuitive. This even extends to a tribute to Zone of the Enders at the end of the game, which provides one of the game's most dramatic set-pieces.

By the time you finally get to the end of the game, you'll either be in love with the characters or be left really confused. It's a bit like watching a very serious anim� film. If you're not giving it your full attention, you'll be lost. We found this a little at odds with the 'switch off, kill stuff' gameplay, but there is a sense that the plot is increasingly aimed at a Japanese audience. This might have something to do with the casting of Korean superstar Lee Byung Hun who is undoubtedly more famous in Japan than over here - although A Bittersweet Life is well worth watching. His performances are usually quiet and understated, making him good for the role of amnesiac Wayne, but not exactly a man you can really relate to.

Typically for Capcom, the end-of-level villains are laughably over-the-top, you won't believe quite how outrageous they are. Nothing is done in half-measures. Lost Planet Multiplayer is more about getting the best weapons than playing strategically, but it's still heaps of fun. The maps are fairly large and open, and most players will instantly make a beeline for the vehicles. It's easily the most entertaining mech-combat game on any console at the moment. The game modes are fairly conventional; elimination, team elimination, post grab (conquest), and fugitive (cat and mouse) and the eight maps are split evenly between small and confined interiors to sprawling wasteland environments. The larger maps are obviously balanced for 16-players, but just two or three players will have a hard time finding one another. Overall, multiplayer is a fun, but lightweight experience. It's great for a few hours of messing around, but unlikely to keep you coming back for more.

Ultimately, Lost Planet's biggest strength is that it's wonderfully easy to get into. That's largely because of its old-school sensibilities and sublime learning curve. You get to take down some impressive enemies at the start, but they soon get even bigger and more challenging. Sometimes you feel like the odds are too stacked against you, but that's just an illusion spurred on by the game's underdog premise. There's huge satisfaction to be gained without a vast amount of perseverance.

On almost every level it succeeds brilliantly, with only the controls failing to quite nail it in the way Gears of War did. In short, they're not as straightforward and not quite decisive enough.

It's also a dazzling graphical showcase for Xbox 360. While the game is nowhere
near as detailed as Gears of War, it compensates with increasingly spectacular dynamic lighting and particle effects. Lost Planet is the true definition of videogame eye candy. We love it.

Ben Talbot