I first came across the Lost Planet series in the dawn of xbox 360 gaming. There wasn't much choice back then as the games came very slowly into existence. I loaded it up excited and then after 3 hours came to a conclusion. I hated it. It seemed to just consist of shooting the glowing arses of huge insects on a very white planet. Can't remember the story, can't remember why I was there or what the goal was, The multiplayer was fun and different, but even that I got tired of compared to gears of war. I avoided the second instalment completely after reading some terrible reviews that were handed out.
So here we have the third instalment at the end of the xbox 360 lifespan, and what if anything is different? Thank you for asking and I will answer. In a nutshell there is still a lot of shooting of insects glowing bums. There is also a compelling well written and well acted narrative throughout the game. They have tried a lot of new things here, that borrow for other successful franchises and when it's good it's brilliant and when it's bad, it's bloody awful.
You play as a bearded working man called Jim who relays to his grand daughter an epic story of the past. A story where he was hired as a contractor to work on a distant planet (the lost one of the title) to help a mining organisation in their work on developing a new energy source called T-Energy. Jim leaves his wife and baby son behind on Earth in order to follow the dollar. We hear from his wife in some superbly acted and scripted video diaries between the two of them throughout the game. When you arrive you meet a host of funny and annoying characters in the main base who guide you around the quartermaster, engineering and HQ areas. Before you know it, you are sent out into the hostile environment on various missions.
You own a rig that you built to help you traverse the planet. This rig is basically a large mech. You sit in it and control through first person the movement, a large drill and claw arm. It moves very slowly and is sometimes cumbersome to control, but they have made it very atmospheric and highly impressive to play with. You even have a music playlist sent to you by your wife to keep you company on your lonely journey across the planet. I think it's possible to put your own soundtracks into the rig, but I didn't try this.
One of minor bugbears with the game is with the pacing. when travelling either on foot, around the base or chugging along the snow to the next mission, or in the rig itself. Sometimes it felt like a lifetime to get to one event or another. I would find myself wandering around aimlessly for 10 minutes before finding the right person to talk to or to kill. You have a target area on your map for your destination, but I found sometimes that just disappeared and I was lost again.
The major bugbear is the combat. You know the drill, there's some alien bugs called Akrid's to kill and you need their special juice. And thousands of them you will kill during the game. From small plant like things to the big bloody giant one with the famous glowing hot spots. You get a range of guns to take them down. The usual array of shotguns, pistols, assault rifles that you can customise and upgrade etc.,The weapons feel good and each one of them has a satisfying different punch to it that feels well thoughT through by the designers. What the problem then I hear you shout.
Well, it the mundane familiarity of it all that begins to grate. It all quickly begins to look the same as every other shooter off alien/bug games you have experienced over the last ten years. Shoot this, move forward, shoot a slightly bigger one , move forward. By the end of it I was looking forward to getting in the rig and listening to somecountry music rather than running around shooting boring glowing bugs.
However there are impressive boss battle galore to be had here. When you begin these huge battles, it impressive how small they make you feel and how impossible the task feels likes it going to be. So when you slay one of these behemoths it will feel like a real accomplishment. As this is Capcom the boss battles seem to last for days, so be prepared to knuckle down, go to the loo and get the refreshments piled up.
Missions wise these are a mixed bad of the good and the ugly . There are side missions as well to be had by talking to people around the base itself. In all there is around 15 hours of gameplay to be found in Lost Planet 3 , which is not bad at all for your money. There are the usual text and audio logs to collect that give extra information about the planet and the story. The main story itself I found really well told and the acting was a really big surprise for me with likeable characters and some nice twists. There are some really special laugh out loud lines as well that I won't spoil for you, but keep an eye out for the man staring at some pipes.
Visually the game is impressive. Specially with the cut scenes and character animations. The Base reminded me of John Carpenter's The Thing as I ran around it and is really well drawn. Outside there is a lot of white of course, but it's well done and rendered atmospheric. The graphics fall down sometimes in combat and the frame-rate gets a bit jerky. There is one section that I thought was going to break down completely . Overall though it was very visually pleasing.
Audio was the same, nice effects with solid voice work. Great weapons sounds and the soundtrack has some nice touches, Not ground breaking but good.
In multiplayer mode you have basically in very familiar ground again. Ten players per game, with some nice maps that suit that number. I died a lot, which isn't uncommon for me. It was lively, but instantly forgettable even though they are trying a few different things with some of the modes. As well as player vs player, there are AI akrid's in the mix as well, so you always looking over both shoulders. If you love the game , I think you could find some fun here but there nothing really satisfying here for new comers to the multiplayer series.
Conclusion
I was pleasantly surprised by this game. The story and atmosphere of the game really hooked me right from the beginning and the acting from the lead characters were really engaging. The combat is weak and boring, but there are some fun boss battle and exploring the world on the rig is really engaging. I really want to give the game 3 and a half stars but as we had a summer of some of the worst games to grace this world, I will put it up to 4. Good fun, but with all the games coming out soon I would buy it later in the year when it has gone down to a tenner.
