Zack's Reviews: Lost Planet 2

Lost Planet 2 is a game that represents a very sad part of the quality spectrum in my mind. It’s in the same section as games like Prototype and…damn I’m out of ideas but the general point I’m trying to make is that these kinds of games bring really good ideas to the table but they are just lacking in certain areas. Lost Planet 2 is not a bad game at all, in fact it is quite good, but it is just missing some key elements that would have made it great.

Gameplay: This is where Lost Planet 2 sets itself apart from other games. The gameplay compliments the scenarios perfectly by giving you the ability to grapple through complex terrain while maintaining a rather fast paced feel in regards to the firefights. The gunplay works well with the game and while it may not be revolutionary, it’s fluid, intense, and thanks to the grappling hook, tactical. Now after you plow through whatever city, desert, ship, forest, or other various setting that was unfortunate enough to encounter you the chapters generally end with you participating in a kind of larger than life boss fight with a “Category G” Akrid. Now each one of these badboys requires a different tactic to fight and kill and while that may sound a bit like a gimmick they do a pretty good job mixing up the fights. An example of this is the boss fight everyone has seen since it was in the demo but you knock out one of the Category G’s legs and hop in its mouth and take a tour of its digestive track with your gun, and yes this includes the last stop on the line if you catch my drift. The part of all this that amazed me the most is that the gameplay doesn’t change much at all between the boss fights and the normal fights. The system they created worked perfectly for all situations and didn’t require huge changes, save the addition of a few extra giant mechs or the occasional laser cannon. Ahhh the mech-suits, what futuristic game should be without them, after all what kinda lame ass future has no giant robots pfft. Anyway the mechs control in a way similar to the normal player with a few tweaks such as the various mounted weapons. The mechs definitely help the gameplay flow smoothly and keep things tactical since you can switch the weapons that you mount on it and you can even take off one of the big guns and lug it around with you as you run. Now this game has no problem letting you know that it is meant to be played with more people than just yourself since it sticks you in a matchmaking-esque screen when you want to start a campaign mission. They do give you the option to do it by yourself with some AI partners but of course the catch is that the friendly AI is about as smart as a rock with a crack in it. The rock is also on fire and actively trying to kill itself. So yeah they get in your way more than help you, now people may say “Hey everyone says the friendly AI sucks in everything”. While that is true and people do call the friendly AI stupid all the time but this case was a bit different since I was killed by the friendly AI about as much as I was the enemy one. For example, I was fighting on a set of trains running side by side and when I grappled across the friendly AI decided it was also a good time to grapple except he walked right in front of me causing me to bounce off his head and fall to my death…did I mention he was running away from the enemies while this was happening? So in the end the gameplay works well except for a few things and it flows very smoothly and is a fun, enjoyable experience.

Overall Layout: Lost Planet 2 didn’t do so well when it came to their sense of continuity and while some degree of variation is nice, most of the level transitions left me baffled. How I start in a frozen wasteland and end up in some desert playing as a completely different set of people is a little flow breaking. The same applies to the levels and while the level designs were very different and constantly changing it would have been nice to be able to stay in one for more than one episode. I think over the course of the game I played as a Snow Pirate, Nevec Clone Trooper, Ex-Nevec Black Ops, Bandito, Oppressed worker/slave turned bandit, yeah you get the picture. Now if each one of these had its own campaign that would be awesome since giving different perspectives could help flesh out the general story. Unfortunately Lost Planet 2 had this idea and then butchered it. You end up playing as a different faction after most “Episodes” which are a collection of chapters which are basically just a couple of missions strung together with minimal guidance from the story. More often than not I found myself entering a new mission without a cutscene to advance the story or say anything other than “Hey look you are now these people go do this!”. I understand the goal of this is to show how everyone’s contributions have an effect on the end result of the game and while the last episode was pretty intense when you are in control of the Black Ops team and you get to see how the story tried to tie itself together. Sadly at at that point it was more of an “oh yeah I had forgotten about those people…look at em go”. Now the Ex-Nevec Black Ops are definitely the dominant faction that you are in control of which was nice but there were still major continuity issues. I’ll be including the story in this section as well since there really isn’t much to say about it since there wasn’t much of a story to begin with. Anyway the story basically starts out as a random bunch of missions that have you fighting all sorts of baddies and you have no idea why. Now putting you in a jungle and telling you to shoot them or die isn’t always a bad thing but there is literally no explanation for anything you are doing until about halfway through the game where they first mention the “OVER G!” (caps added for emphasis) which is apparently a big bad akrid it is roughly the size of a major city. Now one thing that confused me while I was playing this was the fact that every time I killed a Category G it made the part of the world I was in freeze and die. Now did I have a choice? Would I be thinking about the effects on the planet if I kill this giant dragon monster attacking me and my friends? No, I wouldn’t, my thought process would be closer to “HOLY HELL WHAT ON EARTH ARE YOU” and then I’d make a gattling gun look like the conservative option. But the story revolves around preventing the next super ice age and here I am contributing to it…I think so anyway I really couldn’t tell what the story was trying to do most of the time. But I did enjoy taking over the other bad guy’s orbital space station and their big shiny doomsday laser. The layout definitely needed work and had continuity and flow issues but it takes a backseat to the gameplay anyway. So I wouldn’t criticize the game too harshly for the lack of story since they make up for a lack of story with a surplus of bullets.

Sounds/Visuals: The soundtrack really didn’t stand out to me, kinda struck me as the typical game soundtrack but that doesn’t make it bad or anything it just wasn’t epic but then again I doubt they were looking for an epic soundtrack anyway. The voice acting was alright and they had some nice variety (I particularly liked the wasteland bandits, very funny). Unfortunately there wasn’t a great need for a lot of voice acting since there was little dialogue that went on outside of what you hear during the missions which is disappointing but it still worked alright. As for the visuals they were very nice and the level of detail was quite impressive, especially on some of the Category Gs. The character designs on the other hand needed some work. The few you see are well done but there is very little variety. Each type of baddie usually only comes with one or two alternates with the exception of a few and the same holds true with the characters you play as, hell they even have clone troopers who of course even look the same without their helmets. There really isn’t much more I can say about this, yeah I loved the Category G’s designs but I didn’t really feel the character designs except for a few cool ones but there was still a huge need for variety. The multiplayer on the other hand let you pick from basically every character design in the game plus a few added ones like Marcus and Dom from gears and Wesker from the RE series.

Overall: Gameplay was good, graphics were impressive, variety of weapons, and the heavy reliance on tactics made this game an enjoyable experience for me and it is definitely a title that I would recommend at least renting (which I did) and playing. Don’t expect much from the story since it can be a little hard to follow and really isn’t emphasized as much as the boss fights and gunplay are. If you choose to buy it I suggest you read up on the multiplayer which I didn’t have a chance to check out unfortunately due to lack of time (I needed to start Red Dead for next week) but if it just takes the single player and tosses it into a multiplayer setting then it couldn’t be too bad. Well that just about wraps up my first review, I hope this was helpful to those of you thinking about checking this game out and I certainly enjoyed writing it for you. Be sure to check back every Wednesday for a new one!

End Notes: You may have noticed I didn’t mention the first game and how LP2 measured up against it. Well that just has to do with my opinions on reviewing, I feel that I need to judge a game based on its playability and playability alone which has nothing to do with anything but the game itself. Also I don’t use a number scale since a number can’t tell you how much you will personally enjoy a game. So take from this review what you will, I hope I touched all the main issues that people would be concerned about so take care everyone! -Zack