The Lost impressions

Since the 2855948last time we checked out The Lost , it has progressed considerably. The game is far more complete, now including Amanda's third playable alter ego, as well as more levels and generally much more to see. If you're not up to speed, The Lost is Crave's survival-horror-inspired action RPG, which is based on the story of Amanda, a single mother who loses her child in an accident and then traverses a modern version of Dante's Inferno, the nine circles of hell, in an attempt to rescue her soul.

Along the way, Amanda and her entourage will encounter lost souls, who must be rescued through the defeat of enemies or by solving puzzles of the lock-and-key variety. Saving these lost souls will net you "lost points," which are spent for character advancement. When we were last visited by Irrational and Crave, we were able to get our hands on two of the three primary characters that Amanda can trade places with during her adventure: the stealthy Shadow and the combat-focused Instinct.

Amanda is the weakest of the playable characters, armed only with a kitchen knife and dressed in her waitress uniform, but as she encounters these characters through hell, she earns the ability to trade forms and make use of their specialized abilities. Shadow is the stealth-oriented, roguish character who's hunched over, dressed in rags, and armed with a nasty-looking claw. Abilities he can learn or improve by expending lost points are his claw attack, his cloaking mask, his deployable turret traps, his grapple ability, and his trap disarming skill. Instinct is more of a warrior type, suited for face-to-face combat. She can improve her sword skill, develop her boots, which allows her greater movement capability, and even train in the use of her bracers, which are very much like those employed by Linda Carter in Wonder Woman and can be used to deflect missile and melee attacks.

New to us were the rest of the characters from The Lost, who were shown for the first time in this E3 demonstration. Corruption, the son of Lucifer, is the third of the playable characters and is the slow, magic-focused persona. Corruption appears as a decayed, floating corpse, and his powers stem from the organs and body parts that he can replace, bestowing upon him new abilities. Corruption's default head, for example, can be removed and exchanged for that of Caligula, Attila the Hun, or Cain. These heads are imbued with ascending levels of power, which grant Corruption increased levels of magical influence.

Corruption's currently dubbed "Left Hand of Fury" fires explosive bolts at long ranges, and these blasts can also be detonated prematurely to injure foes along their path. Corruption's "Right Hand of Vermin," on the other hand, fires a swarm of insects, which inflict damage over time. Corruption's eyes can fire a beam attack, and for the truly macabre, Corruption can rip out his own heart, which, when held aloft, can suck out an opponent's soul, raising his own life-force reserves.

The background character whom Amanda encounters, Light, serves as an all-purpose modifier to the three primary characters, as raising her skills will help everyone. Light's skills include charm, which lets you buy items from hell's merchant, The Wastrel; capacity, which lets you carry more orbs and items; wealth, which lets you hold more of the game's currency, misery; and others, which affect such things as health, power, and each character's ability to inflict a critical hit.

We also got a chance to check out the game's orbs, which are non-character-specific items that serve a number of uses. Cage orbs let you save power-ups like health for a later time; infusion orbs let you use special items without depleting lemurs; and proximity orbs, which work much like proximity mines do in shooters, detonating once approached by any entity. Interestingly enough, just as you can hurt yourself with mines, character-specific attacks can also injure other player forms. So, if Corruption fires off a cloud of vermin and the player changes into Instinct, she must avoid that cloud--or it will damage her.

A few levels of The Lost were playable at E3, and we got a sense of the freedom of control in the game. The action was relatively slow-paced, but characters maneuvered fairly smoothly, without the common hindrance of traditional Resident Evil-style survival horror controls. Transitioning from character to character on the fly was simple to do, and while fighting some enemies was quite difficult, we got a good feeling for the game's complexity in combat, especially the mixing of attacks between characters in a single firefight. For example, we could sneak around with Shadow, lay down turrets around an enemy unseen, and then switch to Corruption and fire off a blast and vermin attack to lure the foe closer. The now beleaguered enemy would close the gap, only to be engaged by Instinct and her capable sword.

The final version of the lost will include 54 levels in all, representing the full nine circles of hell, with plenty of freedom for players to hack, blast, or sneak their way through them and only a single level actually requiring any particular character to be used for advancement. The Lost is currently scheduled for release later this fall.