Capcom brings the fire and ice.
Fighting giant creatures with oversized weapons is an idea frequently revisited within the science-fiction community. Just look at a large part of popular anime, Starship Troopers, Aliens - there are myriad examples. With games, such an idea seems popular since gamers tend to accept that any semblance of plot, character, or logic can be shoved out the door in favor of flashy graphics and the ability to detonate satisfyingly sizable amount of explosives. Lost Planet adheres to such a notion.
You play as Wayne, who witnesses the death of his father at the mandibles of a large Akrid, the game's insect-like alien menace, named Green Eye. Wayne gets knocked out, or something, and is later rescued by a band of snow pirates on the snow-choked slopes of a planet called E.D.N. III. When he comes to, Wayne is suffering from amnesia, and spends the rest of the game avenging his fallen father and discovering the nature of his past. Cutscenes are inserted before each of the game's story missions, and you'll likely enjoy Lost Planet more if you skip them entirely. The characters Wayne meets are about as interesting as sheets of loose-leaf paper, the plot often takes nonsensical twists as unknown personages are introduced and disappear, and by the end of the game you may find yourself writhing in anguish or laughter at the forced, unnatural cadence of the voice acting and writing quality.
The T-Eng mechanic works in Lost Planet because it keeps you charging forward and forces you to engage their enemy, as Wayne must act as a sort of heat vampire. He's got a few useful abilities on foot, such as a piton gun to ascend and descend, a number of grenades, and the ability to carry two different types of weapons. Rocket launchers, shotguns, several varieties of plasma rifles, and more are available. Perhaps the most enjoyable ability is how Wayne can rip giant VS weapons off mechanized frames to use on foot. The VS shotgun is particularly useful, as it utterly decimates anything within close range. There's something seductively empowering about obliterating a walking mech while on foot wielding a giant gun, and Lost Planet offers ample opportunity to do so.
Then there's the VS combat, which allows for two mounted guns to fire simultaneously and offers different avenues of locomotion based on the suit. Some can double-jump, some can float through the air, some can transform (the spider mech is a personal favorite), and others can quick-dash across the ground. These things help to keep the combat varied and, with their super-powered weaponry, do a good job of instilling in the player a sense of strength on the battlefield. As mindless as it may be, there's a charm to flinging out hundreds of bullets within a matter of seconds and flattening a line of foes, or detonating explosive barrels, or drilling an enemy's weak point with a precision laser cannon blast and watching them writhe in pain. The later parts of the game, aside from the black sheep of a final stage, offer up some explosive set pieces that will undoubtedly appeal to your sense of gleeful, destructive indulgence. Despite the expanded set of locomotive options in VSes, the controls still feel clunky and imprecise, resulting in many moments where Wayne doesn't do what you tell him to.
As far as the actual gameplay goes, there are design quirks that we were never really able to get over. Wayne, for whatever reason, cannot look directly upwards. He's limited to about 150 degrees from his feet to the uppermost plane of his gun's aim making some of the game's giant boss encounters frustrating since you have to shoot up at their vulnerable points. You'll experience significant animation delays as well, most notably when Wayne gets hit by a rocket or while bounding around with the piton gun. In the midst of intense action sequences, this can really bog things down as you're forced to watch for several seconds as Wayne fumbles to regain his footing, hop up onto platforms, or get to his feet after an explosion. Against foes that fire out rockets with an assembly-line frequency, this can sometimes result in annoying rocket juggles. They're not inescapable, but in the middle of a fight it's unnecessarily distracting.
Yet another strange game design decision is the total lack of progress barriers in each stage. If you felt so inclined, it's entirely possible to bypass nearly every enemy and proceed directly to the endboss. Often there's so much incoming fire such a tactic is ill-advised, but it's still possible. If you did decide to sprint to the end you'd miss out on chunks of marginally enjoyable gameplay, so it's usually worthwhile to stick around, amass T-Eng, and scrape together the most effective arsenal for the boss battle as possible. While this isn't really a design flaw, it's definitely an odd, unconventional choice. We suppose it's better than magically demarcating an area with invisible walls, but there are ways to realistically section off a level to encourage a player to engage content rather than drive on through.
Despite its quirks, some of Lost Planet's console awkwardness has been smoothed out on PC since it now includes mouse and keyboard support. Along with the more precise mouse-controlled aiming are three aim modes that allow varying types of control freedom while running and gunning. In cruise mode, for instance, you'll get a small box in front of Wayne within which you're free to aim without actually causing your straightforward view to shift for a turning animation. In fixed mode, any mouse movement rotates your view around. Across the three modes, you'll find one to suit your liking, which is certainly preferable to being forced into an aim mode.
One unfortunate side effect of the improved aiming is a lessened degree of difficulty. Only while riding in a VS and battling giant Akrid, bosses, or other VSes will you experience any kind of challenge. In combination with the game's short campaign, this contributes to Lost Planet's largest flaws - a general lack of depth and replayability. Whereas other console-style action games like Devil May Cry or God of War have dynamic combo systems, the combat in this title feels too one-dimensional to really be considered a fulfilling experience. Sure, you could call it an arcade game if you wanted to excuse the gameplay's sparseness, but even then there just isn't enough meat attached to the game's skeleton to warrant continued attention.
Actually, don't even expect to play multiplayer, since as of right now we can't seem to find any games online. The game's been out for a few days and despite frequent searches, we've only been able to get into two games. Each of those crashed within about five minutes of play, booting us back out to the server menu. We've created rooms as well, waited for up to 20 minutes for people to join, and still been the only one in the server. Considering how short the single player campaign is, you'll want to keep an eye out on Capcom's official Lost Planet forums as to when this game starts functioning properly in the online space.
If you enjoy the game's arcade-like feel, you might also be tempted to try out some of the higher difficulty levels and trying to hit all the hidden targets in each stage. Bumping up the difficulty dramatically affects the rapidity with which your T-Eng drains. We didn't find the gameplay to be compelling enough to warrant such continued play, however.
©2007, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved
It's hard to get too excited over Capcom's by-the-numbers port of a by-the-numbers game.
A number of console games from Capcom have made their way to the PC in the past few months. Big-name titles like Devil May Cry 3 and Resident Evil 4 have made the journey more or less intact, and the same can now be said for Lost Planet, a third-person action game that debuted earlier this year on the Xbox 360. Like the games that came before it, Lost Planet shows that making the journey from home console to home computer can be a very trying affair. Few ports are done well, and while this one isn't horrible, it's definitely taken some lumps during its trip.
First off, we're happy to report that Lost Planet lets you play with a mouse and keyboard. The lack of mouse support was a big letdown with the PC version of Resident Evil 4 and we're relieved the same mistake wasn't made here. Being able to play with a mouse and keyboard will make you wonder how anyone was ever able to make do with just a joypad.
One possible downside is that it makes the game much easier, especially once you're able to get your hands on the scoped rifle or the plasma rifle. Thanks to the precision control of the mouse, you can dish out headshots from 400 yards away with no problem and tear through your enemies without breaking a sweat. Unfortunately, all the tutorials in the game refer to the Xbox 360 controller, leaving you on your own to figure out what the equivalent buttons are on the keyboard.
Amnesia, Snow Pirates, and Lots of Angry Bugs
The entire game takes place on a frozen planet dubbed E.D.N. III. Humanity is in the midst of colonizing this icy world but is hindered by dangerous indigenous creatures known as the Akrid. To fight off these giant bugs humanity has created the Vital Suit, or VS, which is basically a mech. The hero of this game is a man named Wayne. Wayne has a problem; he can't remember who he is, but he does remember how to pilot a VS, and that skill earns him a place in a team of snow pirates who are out to rid E.D.N. III of Akrid.
As Wayne and his friends get closer to their ultimate goal he'll have to battle countless Akrid, rival snow pirates, and an evil corporation known as NEVEC. Along the way Wayne will eventually regain his memory and you'll most likely lose interest as the plot gets more and more convoluted and filled with instances of mistaken identity, jumps in time, and more amnesia. Fortunately, the game's good looks will at least provide you with decent eye candy during all the real-time cut scenes that move the story along.
DirectX Versus DirectX
Lost Planet supports both DirectX 9 and DirectX 10. There are also two versions available, one you can download from Steam and one you can buy off the shelf. (Capcom says that both versions are identical.) Our hefty GeForce 8800GTX-powered gaming PC had no problem playing the DirectX 9 version when using XP and getting our boxed copy running on Vista with DirectX 10 wasn't much of a problem either.
The big question is whether the DirectX 10 version is much different from the DirectX 9 version. When both versions are set to the same detail levels, we had a hard time telling them apart. The DirectX 10 version of the game does let you turn up a couple graphics settings one notch higher than you can in the DirectX 9 version and has more levels of anti-aliasing, but bumping those settings up caused a huge drop in performance. We got more blurring effects with the settings maxed out but that's about all that we could really tell was different. We'd have to give an edge to the DirectX 9 version for stability as it never crashed or locked up on us. When we played the DirectX 10 version crashes and bugs were a bit more frequent.
No matter what version of the game you're running, you'll definitely get treated to some great visuals. Lost Planet looked great running in 720p on the Xbox 360, and now with the higher resolutions offered by the PC it looks even better. It doesn't look like the polygon counts have been upped, and a few textures look like they could've been updated to a higher resolution, but overall the game is gorgeous. The big winner here is the snow, which deforms as you walk through it, is churned up by giant Akrids, and flies in the wind during blizzards, causing near white-out conditions. The VS suits themselves are also a treat. These machines feature fantastic animation and feel like they have real weight to them as they tromp over the landscape.
Love Thy Vital Suit
Early on in the game you'll spend an even amount of time fighting on foot and fighting in a Vital Suit, but later in the game you'll almost always be in one of these versatile mechs. Vital Suits come in many forms. Some have four legs and can drill through rock walls, others have special jump jets that allow them to leap over tall obstacles, and one can even transform into a fast-moving jet-powered snowmobile. Most Vital Suits can be mounted with different weapons, such as homing lasers, mini-guns, or rocket launchers. These weapons are found dotted throughout the landscape. Choosing the right combination of weapons to mount on your VS can make life a lot easier. For example, the rocket launcher is handy against other Vital Suits, but doesn't work too well against masses of flying Akrid.
Combat in Lost Planet is only as fast-paced as you make it. You can easily rush in, stir up the hornets nest, and quickly find yourself overwhelmed, or you can hang back and engage targets one at a time. The only time the pace truly speeds up a notch is during boss battles. Mostly these fights involve you finding some sort of weak spot to hit on a giant Akrid, but you'll also face VS bosses that'll require different tactics.
The cold is also an enemy. As you kill bad guys they'll leave behind red-orange globs of Thermal Energy, or T-ENG. You'll need to pick these up to stay alive. As long as you're outside you'll have a T-ENG meter that counts down, and once it hits zero you'll freeze to death. T-ENG is also needed to power Vital Suits; if you have less than 100 T-ENG you won't be able to pilot one. This definitely adds a sense of urgency to some missions, but is only a major factor on the hardest difficulty level.
The Woes of Combat
Our biggest complaint with the combat in Lost Planet is how easily you'll get knocked off your feet. You'll get flattened by an explosion from a rocket or cannon and get up only to get knocked over again, and again, and again. Sometimes we'd manage to get out of this situation by pure luck, other times we'd end up dying. There are even times when our VS would lock up, occasionally while under fire by a boss. We suppose this is the equivalent to being knocked down when you're on foot, but we wish there'd at least be some sort of indicator as to why your VS is unresponsive. Perhaps some static electricity appearing on the outside of your VS or some other visual cue would work.
The third-person camera also presents a problem during key battles. When you're on foot you have your standard third-person view, an alternate third-person view that lets you zoom in a bit, and a first-person view. You don't get these options when you're piloting a VS. As a result there will be some battles where the camera will move behind your VS and your field of vision will by blocked by your own mech. This happens mostly when you're fighting enemies that are above you. It's a frustrating misstep that could have easily been avoided by making your VS semi-transparent when it gets in the way of the camera.
Going Through the Motions
The only real problem with Lost Planet is its failure to really instill any strong response from us. We can't think of any reason to actively dislike this game, but at the same time we can't think of any reason to really praise it. The game can be finished in about eight hours, and you'll need to set it on the "hard" difficulty level if you want a real challenge. There is a fairly robust multiplayer mode included that features four play modes and eight maps and being able to use the Vital Suits in these games helps make it stand out from other multiplayer games. Unfortunately, finding someone to play with is nearly impossible and when we tried to set up a server no one joined. We know the modes can be entertaining because we've tried them on Xbox Live, but at the moment the multiplayer is, perhaps appropriately, somewhat of a lost planet itself.
If Lost Planet was a budget title, we'd have an easier time recommending it. The main campaign is short, multiplayer matches are nowhere to be found, and you'll need a lot of computing muscle if you want to run it with a decent level of detail. You'll also need to install Steam to play the game and there is no Live for Windows support, which means no Achievements or the ability to play against your Xbox 360 buddies online. On the plus side, the graphics do look great, and there are some good moments in the short single-player campaign. Unfortunately, these few pluses aren't enough to raise Lost Planet from decent to great, and nowadays, just being "decent" isn't good enough.
©2007, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved