Good greif. Lost Planet is a game to give you a headache.
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+ Offers a mildly fun online mode.
+ Game over screen is cool.
- Absoulutly horrendous camera control.
- Still carries out the pointless blueprint of RE's story.
- Tideous time limit forces you to pick up thermal energy or die.
- Graphics are black and white for some reason.
-Aweful voice cast that, once again, keeps up with RE.
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When you see the 6 letter blue word of death (CRAPCOM) on any game box, you should stop and think weather this game will be worth it in the slightest. Although Capcom was by all means an important principle of NES gaming, trying to keep up with modern day gaming tradition as proved a tough process for them, and to this day, the company has just sank downhill. Dead Rising, RE, Streetfighter, you name it; they all suck thanks to Capcom's misdirection. So when Crapcom got its hands on the whole alien-shooter-upper motif, I was surprised in the slightest. However, it takes quite a bit of effort to cram in a game featuring black and white horrendous thrid person alien shooting. Fortunetly, instead of suffering the game yourself, you have a buddy to experiance the pain of this game along with you.
Your buddy is Wayne (an extremly randomly picked name). He's a completly memory-less army marine set in near-future. His memory stripped from him, the only thing he remembers is that he is a solider hired to 'mildly' kick alien arse. The story is as simple aliens invading and somebody has to kill them all one by one, only in a snowy winterscape. So after he suffers a few cutscenes, with a RE rip-off chick named Luka saying that he's "weird for not knowing what a snowpirate is", the memory-less bum is cast into the snowy winterscape to defeat the alien threat. No kidding, this is as bad as the storyline can get.
The first atrocious element you find when you first start playing this game is that the camera controls is either broken or was intedned to be fusterating. Think of Gears of War. Then think about the Gears of War camera moving at 1 mph. The result is Lost Planet's gameplay. You can't adjust the camera in-game. Capcom decided to torture the player by making it so the only way to adjust the camera senseitivity is to quit the game, lose any progress, and adjust it at the main menu. There's no way to be sure if its at your perfered sensitivty so you have to start the game again and test it out. And if it still isn't right, you have to exit the whole damn game again and adjust it once again. Riveting job, Capcom.
This will obviously never happen, but lets pretend that after 6 useless hours wasted that you actually got the horrendous camera at the right sensitivty. The game still isn't that fun. You just randomly run through a level as such a slow pace, shooting some aliens, and hope that the end of the level is at the next turn. The graphics are devoid of any color whatsoever. Everything in the levels are either white snow or black caves or aliens so you will not see any other form of color in the game. What's even worse is a "time limit" form added to the gameplay. Since its a snowy world out there, Wayne is supplied by thermal energy that decreases overtime. By killing aliens, he replenishes the supply, but it forces you to move along without any hesitation. If you take too long in a level, the thermal supply bar reaches zero and effects Wayne's health. Even if you pick up thermal pickups, it decreases so fast that it doesn't make a difference. Basically, you are timed in every level, and if you can't beat the level in the time, you die. The reason why Capcom has a tendency to put a damn time limit in every game is beyond my mortal comprehension.
Wayne is equiped with a standard machine gun, as well as some other weapons burried under the snow, but you never have time to use them, thanks to the time limit. You probably won't find much ammo either, because in Lost Planet, when you kill aliens, you don't get any sort of ammo, and I'm not positive if you even get any points or experiance. You DO get thermal energy as stated before, but since it runs out so quickly, you barely have time to shoot the momsters. In short, Lost Planet has no gameplay. The 'gameplay' if you want to call it isn't about shooting aliens. Its all about trying to finish the level as fast as possible, hoping to dear god that your thermal energy doesn't run out before you reach the end. Even in shorter form, there is no point to Lost Planet other than to just run, run, run before your thermal runs out. Just run, run, run, run, run.
Lost Planet now tries to bribe you away from its awefulness with numberous veichle sequances. While these are alot better than some games, they're also really annoying. You can pilot Mech-like walkers, but none of them are fun to use. They got guns and some cool stuff, but you move alot slower, and conisdered that Capcom put in a 'time limit' you rarely want to use them unless your up againest semi-bosses or lots of aliens, which actually, you still do not want to use them. When the veichle suffers enough hot ones, you'll be given a button command to eject before it explodes. Even if you hit the button in time, you still explode and die, but Capcom appearantly thinks its fun to hit a button before dying. They also didn't notice that given your going to run out of thermal energy soon, its easier just to keep running to the exit. Just run, run, run, run, run, run.
The only good thing I can say about Lost Planet is that online beats singleplayer. However, Lost Planet can't even get that part of the game right. Online is still the black and white graphics, the same controls are still in effect, and the only real difference is instead of just Wayne to suffer the game with you, you have millions of other people to suffer as well. It really isn't that different.
Crapcom was good back in the NES days, but those days are long gone. Now the company has strayed away from everything that involves replay value or "The logical fact that the player should KEEP playing the atrocity they're playing." or "A reason to play". Lost Planet has about 5% replay value. Lost Planet is just a simple side project to RE. Lost Planet is an episode of just run, run, run before your thermal runs out. Just run, run, run, run, run. Just like when you see this game at the store. Just run, run, run, run, run, run.