The Snowy Tundra's of Lost Planet are Pretty but does the Gameplay stand a chance against the shooters out now?
Graphics There's no doubt about it if you've seen the screenshots you know that this game is visually stunning. Snow has never looked so good, but that much is obvious. What really is surprising is the smoke/explosion effects, you'll almost piss your pants when you first see a rocket coming straight towards you it looks so awesome. The mechs or VS. as the story calls them also are visually pleasing, and with varied types the mechs are about as good as you can get without being a "Mech-Game". The multiplayer graphics dont even take hit either, like other games (Rainbow Six,GRAW).
Story Unlike some people I found the story compelling, in a sense like action movies, while cheesy keep the ground for the "ACTION". The game is about humankind needing to find another planets resources because they were running out, they find this planet snow covered regions of E.D.N. III suitable, but things go wrong. Insect-like "Akrid" try to prevent them from habitating the planet. Before the humans give up there fight they discover that insdie the bodies of these "Akrid" lie thermal energy capable of warming them enough to make the planet livable. The Humans are determined to fight for the planet. You take control of Wayne a "Rebel" of sorts who after his father dies is discovered frozen is a VS. by snow pirates and begins a new lifestyle. Although the story is cheesy it's enough to keep the action going.
Gameplay Game play is very simple and intuitive you travel through varied locations (not just snow) looking for large sources of Thermal Energy, whcih also is a big part of the game. You run though the levelslooking for thermal energy which you can run out of, its a minor addition to the games that only comes into play when playing it on the Harder difficulty levels. Mechs controls like they should, Slow but powerful. A cool addition to these mech is the ability to transfrom some of them into fast objects i.e. snowmobile,tank. Wayne has the ability to use a grappling hook to get onto higher spaces, but it would have been cool if you could have used the grappling hook more than once and in the air. Something i liked and disliked were the boss battles although they are spectacular all of them use the same old "Shoot the glowing weakspot" formula and it does get old.
Sound Sound in this game can be good and bad. Bad first, the voice acting in the game can sometimes be not very good, and followed in weird long pauses even though the voice actors are talented overall. The good, the weapons in this game sound sick especially with Dolby 5.1 the rockets can sounds as if someone was actually blowing up your house (scary, I know).
Overall
Pros:
+Spectacular Visuals
+Equally Spectacular Sound Effects
+Cheesy but loveable story and characters.
Cons:
-Repetitive Boss Battles
-Will Take you no more than 8 hours tops
-Bad Dialogue