Lost Planet is an excellent old school shooter missing new elements, innovations.
What that means? It's third person, you go ahead, and KILL. Yes, basically, that. But it's a little more complex than that. In Lost Planet you have to fight against the Akrid and snow pirates. You can do that 2 ways: on foot, or in a mech. Unfortunately, you can't always be using mechs, but alot of times, yes.
The game has wide choice of weaponary, starting with the machine gun, shotgun, sniper rifle, but eventually you'll be able to de-attach laser guns, gantling guns from the mechs. Also, there are plenty of granades: 'sticky' granades, hand granades.... if you aren't blowing something up in the game, you're doing something wrong.
Because, that's what the game is about: explosive action. You're on your own fighting against sometimes 100's of enemies. Snow pirates fight against you with guns, akrids... well... these bug-like creatures have alot of things to fight against you with.
At the end of each map you'll fight a 'boss'. Sometimes a snow pirate(in a mech) other times a big akrid. You can defend akrids by hitting their weak spot, which is always yellow-ish. And you can defend mechs by using tactics. However, it's often really difficult, because all they do is jump all over the place, and they're impossible to follow with the lazy analogue sticks.
Unfortunately, the boss battles can be really frustrating: if you fall, you can hardly get back up, because most likely ,you'll get shot while you're down, preventing you from backing up: you lose energy, and then you lose health eventually, too.
What's the different between energy and health you may ask. To be alive, you need to collect energy, because on the planet you're fighting, the temperature is so low, it's unbearable. You can collect energy by killing enemies and taking their energy. Smaller enemies have little, bigger ones have alot of energy. If you take it, it'll show up on the HUD, and in every second, you lose a certain amount. If you're being attacked, then you lose more, because if you lose health, energy is used to heal you back. But if you run out of energy, health starts to drop, so unless you find some energy, you'll die.
It may sound complicated and difficult, it's not. The AI... well the AI is nothing special. Pretty dumb at places, but mostly OK. Although, I think the AI is a little dumbed down so you can shoot them: the aiming might be hard for some people in this game, since it's a little more complicated, however, more realistic( the character doesn't aim with the 'body', but with the 'hand ).
The game has a story, but it's really full of clichés. I excepted more from Capcom. It reminds me of Gears of War: there's only a story included to have an excuse for shooting. Nothing more.
Lastly, the graphics. The graphics are good. But. Enemy corpses disappear, dug up snow quickly disappears, and becomes untrodden snow. It's a little frustrating in such game: because alot of times all you see is snow. And I think snow should be the most detailed thing in the game. The characters are fair, kinda like in Dead Rising(it's using the same graphics engine, I think). The giant enemies, though, look really damn so good. Not only because they're big, but also because they're big AND detailed. Yummy. The framerate is stable, which is understandable: as I said, the graphics are GOOD, but it doesn't even come close to Gears of War.
Overally, very fun shooter on a 'snow-planet' against giant bugs, pirates. There is no puzzle solving, so it's pretty straight ahead. Although, I did get bored at times. Mostly when I was walking in the snow for long minutes, and I didn't meet one single enemy. That, unfortunately, bound to happen once or twice. The boss fights are fun, but by the end, they get more and more frustrating; I can see some gamer giving up on the game because of the difficult boss fights.
Lost Planet was the game I thought will innovate the third person shooters. There was alot of hype surrounding it: E3 demo, very early videos, interesting infos; but at the end, it's just a collection of good elements that other games already contain. Bit disappointing, but for every shooter fan out there: it's a must have.
[PS.: I didn't try the multiplayer part yet, but I hear it's good]