Lost Planet: Extreme Meh
Excellent visuals
Fun multi-player
Huge bosses
THE BAD:
Terrible story
Linear levels
Short single-player game
Repetitive and annoying gameplay
It's all been done before
I'll admit that Lost Planet wasn't exactly high on my list of 360 games to play. I originally rented it when it launched last year, but found it so boring I couldn't even bring myself to beat the first level. It wasn't until a year later that I would rent it again. People kept saying was a good game, so I decided to give it another go. This time, I could only get halfway through the second level before deciding I had more important things to do.
It's not that Lost Planet is a bad game. It's just so middle of the road. It does do some things well. But for everything it does well, there's something else that holds it back. Nearly everything about Lost Planet has been done before, and better. Sometimes this isn't a problem. Look at the game Mafia. Grand Theft Auto was better in nearly every way. But Mafia also had an excellent story and setting. That alone held the game together enough to turn an average game into a fairly good game.
Lost Planet doesn't have a good story or a good setting. In fact, it seems like a teenage Japanese schoolboy penned it while he was bored in class. It has so many Manga and Anime clichés that it's not even funny.
Here's a run down of the story. In the future, mankind leaves Earth for unexplained reasons. Someone had a brilliant idea of colonizing an ice planet called EDN III, and everyone was apparently OK with the idea. While the planet was colonized, a large race of insect like aliens called the Akrid were discovered. The Akrid were immediately hostile to the humans, and drove them off the planet. It was later discovered that the Akrid's bodies held thermal energy (T-ENG for short), which could be harvested to heat the human colony. The Vital Suit or VS was also invented to help combat the Akrid. This is basically just your typical anime style robot.
At this point, a re-colonization of EDN III is occurring. You play the role of Wayne, a Japanese looking soldier who looks like the sort of person that would write a story like this. The opening level has Wayne and a group other soldiers being lead by his father Gale, exploring the ruins of a sheltered part of the colony called "The Dome." During the ensuing fight with the Akrid, they encounter a very large Akrid dubbed "Green-Eye." Green-Eye supposedly kills Wayne's father before knocking Wayne unconscious. Wayne is rescued by a group of snow pirates, and conveniently gets amnesia.
This group of snow pirates is your typical cast of anime characters. You have the mysterious, white-haired leader named Yuri. Who might as been be holding a sign that says, "I will turn out to be evil, or die." Then there's Rick, the naïve funky haired tech expert of the group. Finally, there's Luka. She's the overly happy girl with huge juggs that are oddly exposed despite the temperature being sub-zero. At this point Wayne sets out on a path of revenge, and after reading the Wikipedia entry, the story only goes downhill from there.
Gameplay wise, Lost Planet is just average. You control Wayne from a 3rd person camera angle. You can carry two weapons plus grenades at anytime. You also have the ability to use a grappling hook, but this is really more of a gimmick than anything actually useful. You can only use it to get to higher ground in a couple locations. And when you do use it, you can't fire thus leaving completely exposed to enemies. You can also hop into various VS units that you find, but piloting them is like driving a pinto through a 7-foot deep snowstorm.
Sure, it can be fun to fight the Akrid (especially the boss fights), but they might as well be suicidal. Their weak points glow bright orange, and the AI controlling them follows very distinct patterns that are easy to avoid. When you do defeat an Akrid, you have to walk over the glowing piles of T-ENG to replenish your supply. This T-ENG meter is constantly draining. If your T-ENG supply runs out, you'll freeze to death. T-ENG also heals you automatically if you are injured. T-ENG is almost never in short supply, which makes the game very easy. The only time I died was because I fell off a ledge.
I mentioned that you need to manually walk over the T-ENG to pick it up, and the same goes for weapons. Although this makes sense for the weapons, what makes it annoying is that you need to press RB to actually pick up ammo for a weapon you already have. This becomes very troublesome during firefights when you need to stop and pickup more ammo because you ran out. You should just be able to walk over ammo to get more.
Lost Planet's graphics are probably it's most attractive feature. Blowing snow obscures your field of vision, and comes up to Wayne's knees. While running through the snow, Wayne looks like he's actually struggling. The longer to stay outside, the more snow will accumulate on Wayne. It will even melt once you go back inside. Perhaps best of all is the explosions. They are some of the best I have seen on the 360. The fire looks great, and expands outward.
But the sound in Lost Planet, like the gameplay, is just average. The voice acting, while not bad, is nothing to write home about either. In a way, it actually seems appropriate considering how childish and predictable the characters are. The bright spot for the sound is the combat effects. Gunshots sound great, and the afore mentioned explosions sound as good as they look. Even the VS units have a nice mechanical thump to them.
There isn't much lasting single-player value. If you can get past the terrible story, you'll find that the game is over in about 6 to 8 hours depending on difficultly and player skill. Although the multi-player is fun, it's nothing that hasn't been done better. The VS units in multi-player might as well be a huge bull's-eye. They can dish out damage, but they're so slow and go down too easily that it's almost always better to go on foot. The grapple hook plays a bigger role here by allowing you to get to higher ground quickly. But more multi-player options would have been nice.
Achievement wise, Lost Planet is also average. Most of the achievements come from the single-player campaign, and involve collecting hidden medals that you need to shoot. There are a couple for multi-player, but most of them take a while to unlock, and most players won't bother to unlock them.
Lost Planet is by no means a bad game, but its just so cliché. Nearly everything about it has been done better by other games. Maybe if it had a better story, some of the gameplay elements could be overlooked in favor of getting to the next interesting story sequence. But that's not the case, and Lost Planet will test your tolerance of boredom.
STORY – 4.5
PRESENTATION – 7.0
GAMEPLAY – 7.0
GRAPHICS – 8.5
SOUND – 7.0
VALUE – 7.0
OVERALL – 6.5